Genesis 3:8–24

⁸When they heard the sound of God strolling in the garden in the evening breeze, the Man and his Wife hid in the trees of the garden, hid from God.

⁹God called to the Man: “Where are you?”

¹⁰He said, “I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked. And I hid.”

¹¹God said, “Who told you you were naked? Did you eat from that tree I told you not to eat from?”

¹²The Man said, “The Woman you gave me as a companion, she gave me fruit from the tree, and, yes, I ate it.”

God said to the Woman, “What is this that you’ve done?”

¹³“The serpent seduced me,” she said, “and I ate.”

^14–15God told the serpent:

“Because you’ve done this, you’re cursed,

cursed beyond all cattle and wild animals,

Cursed to slink on your belly

and eat dirt all your life.

I’m declaring war between you and the Woman,

between your offspring and hers.

He’ll wound your head,

you’ll wound his heel.”

¹⁶He told the Woman:

“I’ll multiply your pains in childbirth;

you’ll give birth to your babies in pain.

You’ll want to please your husband,

but he’ll lord it over you.”

^17–19He told the Man:

“Because you listened to your wife

and ate from the tree

That I commanded you not to eat from,

‘Don’t eat from this tree,’

The very ground is cursed because of you;

getting food from the ground

Will be as painful as having babies is for your wife;

you’ll be working in pain all your life long.

The ground will sprout thorns and weeds,

you’ll get your food the hard way,

Planting and tilling and harvesting,

sweating in the fields from dawn to dusk,

Until you return to that ground yourself, dead and buried;

you started out as dirt, you’ll end up dirt.”

²⁰The Man, known as Adam, named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all the living.

²¹God made leather clothing for Adam and his wife and dressed them.

²²God said, “The Man has become like one of us, capable of knowing everything, ranging from good to evil. What if he now should reach out and take fruit from the Tree-of-Life and eat, and live forever? Never—this cannot happen!”

^23–24So God expelled them from the Garden of Eden and sent them to work the ground, the same dirt out of which they’d been made. He threw them out of the garden and stationed angel-cherubim and a revolving sword of fire east of it, guarding the path to the Tree-of-Life.