Cheryl Schatz

Hi Ingrid,
Glad for your questions.
You said:

Why did Adam fail to protect his wife (Gen 3:6), and allowed Eve to be deceived while in his sinless state? He knew very well that the serpent was lying to Eve because he was right there, yet he did nothing. Not exactly the behavior of a perfect, sinless person.

This is the $64,000 question that the Bible does not give to us directly. We do have some facts that can help us. We do know that Adam’s actions were considered treachery by God (Hosea 6:7) How do we get treachery out of his actions and why he did this can be explored.

We can liken what Adam responsibility to use his knowledge to one who is a watchman on the wall. The one who has been assigned his turn to be on the wall to watch for any sign of the enemy will have knowledge that the people inside the city do not have. He will be the first to see the enemy. His responsibility will then be to warn the city of the impending attack. It would then be the responsibility of the city to heed the warning of the watchman in order to prepare for the attack and defend themselves. The watchman is not responsible for what the citizens do with the warning, but he is responsible for giving the warning.

God has said that the watchman who fails to give the warning is guilty of treason. So we can understand why Adam was guilty of treachery and God considered him to have acted in a treacherous way. But why did he act this way?

We know that God created both the man and the woman to be rulers over the earth and that entailed being rulers over the animals and rulers over the earth itself. Because of this we can understand that Adam would have known that Eve was also ruler of the serpent who was talking with her. Was Adam going to step into the conversation and be bold enough to contradict the serpent in front of his wife thus making it look like his wife didn’t have full authority over the serpent? Perhaps. Whatever his reason, we know that he kept silent when he should have spoken out. Silence was the easy way out of what he may have seen was a dilemma. Silence enabled him to not contradict his wife’s rule. But it was the coward’s way out no matter what his reasons were for keeping silence. Perhaps he thought that she would come to her senses on her own so he waited and kept silent. He lost his opportunity to act as a faithful watchman when his wife took the fruit and ate. Now it was too late. Now what to do? His silence was a failure. She ate and she would die. He knew that. And so he chose to carry on the unfaithful direction and he ate the fruit by taking it from the hand of his deceived wife.

What I think happened was the first sin of omission. I think that it was akin to Cain who claimed innocence when he told God that he wasn’t his brother’s keeper. I think that Adam felt that he didn’t need to be his wife’s keeper because it was more comfortable to be silent and hope for the best than to be confrontational and be a “helper” to his wife. I think that a perfect man can sin through omission but by failing to protect his wife from death, this failure of Adam’s was an act of treason in God’s eyes.

I do expect that when we get to Heaven that God will tell us the “rest of the story” and why Adam did what he did. But I do think that Adam’s silence as a sin of omission was the start of the full fall. It really is sad and if Adam had given up of himself for his wife, I believe that the fall would never have happened. I think that is also why men are instructed to give up of themselves for their wives and only in Christ are they able to fulfill their godly duty to their wives. The failure of the first man is not the example of a godly husband and Christian husbands can receive God’s wisdom and power to be to their wives what Adam should have been to Eve – one who places her first and sacrifices themselves on her behalf.

Does this help a little?