The Forbidden Fruit

The words

Genesis 3:1–24 (opens a new tab)

1. Apron

   The couple’s first clothing is their own work: they “made themselves aprons,” coverings worn around the waist.

   Did you know?

   The King James Bible kept William Tyndale’s word, “aprons.” The Geneva Bible of 1560 said “breeches,” which earned it the nickname “Breeches Bible.”

   Genesis 3:7 (opens a new tab) · Strong’s H2290 (chagorah) (opens a new tab) · Geneva Bible (1599), Genesis 3:7 (opens a new tab) · Wikipedia: Geneva Bible (opens a new tab) · Bible Gateway: about the Geneva Bible (opens a new tab)

2. Bruise

   In older English, to crush. Webster’s 1828 dictionary defines it “to crush by beating or pounding.”

   The serpent’s judgment ends with these words: “it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”

   Did you know?

   Hebrew uses one rare verb, shuph, for both blows. It appears only twice more; in Job 9:17 the blow comes from a storm: “he breaketh me with a tempest.”

   Genesis 3:15 (opens a new tab) · Webster’s 1828: bruise (opens a new tab) · Strong’s H7779 (shuph) (opens a new tab) · NET Bible note, Genesis 3:15 (opens a new tab) · Job 9:17 (opens a new tab)

3. Coats

   Tunics, shirt-like garments worn next to the skin, rather than outer coats.

   Unlike the aprons they sewed themselves, these are God’s work: he “clothed them” just before the man is sent “forth from the garden of Eden.”

   Did you know?

   The Hebrew word, kethoneth, is the same one used for Joseph’s “coat of many colours” in Genesis 37:3, the story of puzzle 16.

   Genesis 3:21, 23 (opens a new tab) · Strong’s H3801 (kethoneth) (opens a new tab) · Genesis 37:3 (opens a new tab)

4. Curse

   Genesis 3 uses “cursed” only twice, for the serpent and for the ground: “cursed is the ground for thy sake.” The man and woman are not called cursed.

   Did you know?

   After the flood, Genesis 8:21 says, “the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake.”

   Genesis 3:14, 17 (opens a new tab) · Genesis 8:21 (opens a new tab)

5. Dust

   Dust appears in two of God’s judgments: the serpent will eat it, and Adam hears, “dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

   Did you know?

   The graveside words “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust” are not found in the King James Bible. They come from the Book of Common Prayer’s burial service.

   Genesis 3:14, 19 (opens a new tab) · Church of England: BCP burial service (opens a new tab) · Wiktionary: ashes to ashes, dust to dust (opens a new tab) · Bible Gateway: KJV search, “ashes to ashes” (opens a new tab)

6. Eyes

   The woman eats, then her husband, and “the eyes of them both were opened.”

   Did you know?

   The Hebrew verb for “opened,” paqach, is used for eyes and once for ears. In 2 Kings 6:17, God opens the eyes of Elisha’s servant to “horses and chariots of fire.”

   Genesis 3:6–7 (opens a new tab) · Strong’s H6491 (paqach) (opens a new tab) · 2 Kings 6:15–17 (opens a new tab)

7. Fig Leaves

   To cover themselves, the couple “sewed fig leaves together.” This is the Bible’s first mention of the fig, and the only one in Genesis.

   Did you know?

   Thanks to this verse, “fig leaf” came to mean any flimsy cover. The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as “a usually insufficient concealment or camouflage.”

   Genesis 3:7 (opens a new tab) · Bible Gateway: KJV search, “fig” (opens a new tab) · American Heritage Dictionary: fig leaf (opens a new tab) · Wiktionary: fig leaf (opens a new tab)

8. Flaming Sword

   When the man is driven out, God places “Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way” at the garden. Genesis never says who holds the sword.

   Did you know?

   John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) ends with this scene: as Adam and Eve leave, “The brandisht Sword of God before them blaz’d / Fierce as a Comet.”

   Genesis 3:24 (opens a new tab) · Milton, Paradise Lost (Gutenberg) (opens a new tab) · Britannica: Paradise Lost (opens a new tab)

9. Fruit

   Every tree is open to them but one “in the midst of the garden.” From it “she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat.”

   Did you know?

   Genesis Rabbah, a rabbinic commentary from the mid-first millennium C.E., weighs wheat, grapes, citrons and figs. Scholar Azzan Yadin-Israel argues the apple first appears in 12th-century French art.

   Genesis 3:2–3, 6 (opens a new tab) · TheTorah.com: Yadin-Israel on the apple (opens a new tab) · Wikipedia: Forbidden fruit (opens a new tab)

10. Hide

    When they hear God “walking in the garden in the cool of the day,” Adam and his wife hide “amongst the trees of the garden.”

    Did you know?

    Adam’s answer, “I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself,” is the Bible’s first use of yare, the Hebrew verb “to fear.”

    Genesis 3:8, 10 (opens a new tab) · Strong’s H3372 (yare) (opens a new tab) · Bible Gateway: KJV search, “afraid” (opens a new tab)

11. Naked

    Before the fruit, “they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” After it, “they knew that they were naked.”

    Genesis 3:7 (opens a new tab) · Genesis 2:25 (opens a new tab)

12. Seed

    In the judgment on the serpent, God puts “enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed.”

    Did you know?

    The Hebrew word, zera, from the verb “to sow,” means both plant seed and descendants. It first appears in Genesis 1:11: “the herb yielding seed.”

    Genesis 3:15 (opens a new tab) · Strong’s H2233 (zera) (opens a new tab) · Genesis 1:11 (opens a new tab)

13. Subtil

    An older spelling of “subtle,” in its old sense of sly or cunning.

    Genesis 3 opens with the serpent, “more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made.” Genesis never names it Satan.

    Did you know?

    The Hebrew has a wordplay English loses: the couple are arummim, “naked,” in Genesis 2:25, and one verse later the serpent is arum, “subtil.”

    Genesis 3:1 (opens a new tab) · Genesis 2:25 (opens a new tab) · Wiktionary: subtil (opens a new tab) · American Heritage Dictionary: subtle (opens a new tab) · Webster’s 1828: subtil (opens a new tab) · Strong’s H6175 (arum) (opens a new tab) · Strong’s H6174 (arom) (opens a new tab) · NET Bible note, Genesis 3:1 (opens a new tab) · Bible Gateway: KJV search, “Satan” (opens a new tab) · Wikipedia: Serpents in the Bible (opens a new tab)

14. Sweat

    God tells Adam that bread will cost him hard labor: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.”

    Did you know?

    Abraham Lincoln echoed this verse in his Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865: it may seem strange, he said, that men should ask God’s help “in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces.”

    Genesis 3:19 (opens a new tab) · Park Service: Lincoln’s Second Inaugural (opens a new tab) · Wikipedia: Lincoln’s second inaugural (opens a new tab)

15. Thorns

    Adam’s farming will be a struggle: the cursed ground will yield “Thorns also and thistles,” and he will “eat the herb of the field.”

    Did you know?

    The Hebrew pair, qots and dardar, “thorns” and “thistles,” appears together only once more: in Hosea 10:8, “the thorn and the thistle shall come up on their altars.”

    Genesis 3:17–18 (opens a new tab) · Strong’s H6975 (qots) (opens a new tab) · Strong’s H1863 (dardar) (opens a new tab) · Hosea 10:8 (opens a new tab)