First Love

Adam and Eve...

What a story.

Man and woman living in Paradise

Adam "dust; man; mankind";

and Eve "living one";

are characters from the book of Genesis, where they figure as the first man and woman created by God.

In Genesis 1 God creates humans "male and female" in His image, and gives them dominion over the living things He has created, and commands them to "be fruitful and multiply."

Genesis 2 opens with God fashioning a man from the dust and blowing life into his nostrils.

God plants a garden (the Garden of Eden) and sets the man there, "to work it and watch over it," permitting him to eat of all the trees in the garden except the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, "for on the day you eat of it you shall surely die."

Then God creates the animals, attempting to find a help-mate for the man; but none of the animals are satisfactory, and so God causes the man to sleep, and creates a woman from his rib. The man names her "Woman" (Heb. ishshah), "for this one was taken from a man" (Heb. ish). "On account of this a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his woman." Genesis 2 ends with the note that the man and woman were naked, and were not ashamed.

Genesis 3 introduces the Serpent, "slier than every beast of the field." The serpent tempts the woman to eat from the tree of knowledge, telling her that it will not lead to death; she succumbs, and gives the fruit to the man, who eats also, "and the eyes of the two of them were opened." Aware now of their nakedness, they make coverings of fig leaves, and hide from the sight of God. God, perceiving that they have broken His command, curses them with hard labour and with pain in childbirth, and banishes them from His garden, setting a cherub at the gate to bar their way to the Tree of Life, "lest he put out his hand ... and eat, and live forever."

Genesis 4 and 5 give the story of Adam and Eve's family after they leave the garden: they have three children, Cain, Abel and Seth, as well as other sons and daughters, and Adam's lifespan is 930 years. ("The woman" is given the name Eve in the closing verses of Genesis 3, "because she was the mother of all living"; Adam gets his name when the initial definite article is dropped, changing "ha-adam", "the man", to "Adam".)


All information gleaned from:
Wikipedia which has a wonderful page that will enrich your knowlege of the ancient story even if you are a Bible student.

The link above takes you right there.






C. H. Spurgeon

It was the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil the eating of which brought all this evil upon us which ye see this day.

Ye may eat of that tree still, if so it please you; but if ye taste not of the tree of life at the same time, your knowledge shall only open to you the gates of hell.

Knowledge of itself alone is as land which may either become a blooming garden or a howling wilderness.

It is a sea out of which you shall bring pearls or dead men's bones. Life and death, heaven and hell, are here: if it was said of old, "Take heed what you hear," I also say, "Take heed what you know."

"So that they are without excuse: because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful."—Romans 1:20, 21