Genesis 3:8–24

SIN’S CONSEQUENCES

⁸Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze,^A and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.^{a 9}So the Lord God called out to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”

¹⁰And he said, “I heard you^B in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.”

¹¹Then he asked, “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

¹²The man replied,^b “The woman you gave to be with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate.”

¹³So the Lord God asked the woman, “What have you done?”

And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”^c

¹⁴So the Lord God said to the serpent:

Because you have done this,

you are cursed more than any livestock

and more than any wild animal.

You will move on your belly

and eat dust all the days of your life.^d

¹⁵I will put hostility between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and her offspring.

He will strike your head,

and you will strike his heel.^e

¹⁶He said to the woman:

I will intensify your labor pains;

you will bear children with painful effort.^f

Your desire^g will be for your husband,

yet he will rule over you.

¹⁷And he said to the man, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘Do not eat from it’:

The ground is cursed because of you.^h

You will eat from it by means of painful labor^D

all the days of your life.

¹⁸It will produce thorns and thistles for you,

and you will eat the plants of the field.ⁱ

¹⁹You will eat bread^E by the sweat of your brow

until you return to the ground,^j

since you were taken from it.

For you are dust,

and you will return to dust.”

²⁰The man named his wife Eve^F because she was the mother of all the living. ²¹The Lord God made clothing from skins for the man and his wife, and he clothed them.

²²The Lord God said, “Since the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out, take from the tree of life, eat, and live forever.”^{k 23}So the Lord God sent him away from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. ²⁴He drove the man out and stationed the cherubim and the flaming, whirling sword east of the garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life.^l