It’s clear
that Eve is soaking this up. But then, why wouldn’t she? Eve is not a rube.
She’s not completely clueless. She’s intelligent, but unexperienced. This can
lead people into thinking that she’s naïve, and well, in a way, she is. But,
factually, she’s never had any dealings with someone of a duplicitous nature.
There’s no reason for Eve not to
believe the serpent. She’s spoken to God and she’s spoken to Adam, and neither
of them have been duplicitous for any reason, so she has no way to gauge that.
But she
also doesn’t surrender her judgement to the Serpent. She evaluates the fruit on
its own, finding it pleasing. She also has a noble aspiration to be like God.
And once the serpent removes the threat of death from the equation, what reason
is there for her to not eat the fruit?
Yes, God’s
command that they shouldn’t, and the prohibition that if they did, they would
die. That is a big deal, no mistake. So those are the pros and cons laid out
before us. The Serpent neatly disarmed the idea of dying with what appeared to
be a fully rational argument, as far as Eve could understand the argument.
Remember, she’s not clueless, simply uninformed as to good and evil. She has no
experience with evil and deception.
We already
know the choice she made. She ate the fruit. But I like to believe that she did
so for the deceptive argument that the serpent gave: to become like God. This
is a noble purpose. Children often aspire to be like their parents, and that
was Eve’s desire as well.
Unfortunately,
understanding good and evil also led her to understand the full ramifications
of her choice.
There is
some confusion about how this bit of the story unfolds, though. Eve is first by
herself, then the Serpent talks to her, and then when she takes form the fruit,
Adam is here. It’s possible that Adam could have been there the whole time, but
this seems unlikely. Why didn’t he speak up? Why didn’t the Serpent address
him? Why wasn’t he mentioned sooner? Speaking with the Serpent and partaking of
the fruit seem to be two different events. After speaking with the Serpent, Eve
got Adam, and then went to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It could
have even be three separate events: Eve spoke to the Serpent, then partook of
the Fruit, then went and got Adam and explained what happened.
We don’t
know the answers as to which is the right scenario. The story simply doesn’t
give us enough information to be able to say. Like most of Genesis, the
storytelling is very bare bones. It only mentions important details, but does
not give us any sense of time or pacing. Adam was said to live over 900 years,
but we don’t know how many of those years were spent in the Garden with Eve
prior to eating of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It
could have been days, it could have been centuries.