Cheryl Schatz

Barry you asked:

How can an unfallen woman not hear or understand correctly what God clearly said and told them. Yet, doesn’t Eve say, ” You shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die.” Clearly, that’s not what God said.

Clearly, it is what God said. It is Eve’s testimony that this is what God said. Why would we doubt a woman who was sinless at the time. Did God or Adam accuse her of lying about God’s words? I think that we have come to the Bible with much prejudice. We doubt Eve because God’s words are contained in her statement, but they are not quoted directly in the mouth of God. If these words came from Adam rather than Eve, we would believe his word that this is what God said, but because the woman quoted God, we think she was gravely mistaken (perhaps even stupid) or that she lied. I say that we take these words for face value as God did not say she lied about His words.

You also asked:

<Secondly, How is it that an unfallen man can blatantly sin and an unfallen woman be deceived and all the while neither one think, before we do anything, shouldn’t we clarify and confirm with God the actual truth of the matter ?

Adam knew the truth. Eve was deceived. A watchman on the wall who allows the enemy to penetrate the wall is a traitor. That is what God called Adam. God called Eve “deceived” through the words of Paul in 1 Timothy 2. Deceived people do not know they are deceived. Deceived people think that the deception is the truth.

You asked:

Thirdly, just as a question, why shouldn’t God be there to protect them from a Deceiver in the garden ? As God, He absolutely knew it was going down.

God provided for both Adam and Eve by what Adam saw during God’s creative acts while Adam was naming the animals. Adam knew the truth of who God is by being a witness to what God can do that Adam could not. The text shows this along with the fact that Adam (the one who knew the truth) was told to guard the garden. God set them up to succeed. Adam knew the truth but he failed to speak up while his wife was being deceived. God allows testing. He does that now and He allowed for it in the beginning. If Adam had warned his wife who was by then fully deceived, he would have shown her great love by protecting her. He did not.

I will carry on answering in the next comment.