Cheryl Schatz

Craig,
Thanks for thinking out loud and answering your own question! Your answer is very good. I would only add an answer that is referenced in the passage but Paul saying (vs 14) And it was not Adam who was deceived…

Connect this together with the original account and you have God’s assessment of Adam’s non-deceptive state when God says:

Genesis 3:17 (NAS) Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have ….

Hear God pronounces a curse on the land for two reasons. The first and most important reason for the curse is Adam’s listening to the voice of his wife. Notice that God didn’t say that Adam listened to his wife (as if she had commanded him) but that he listened to her voice. Vine’s complete expository dictionary gives this basic definition for the Hebrew word used for “listening”:

Basically, this verb means to “hear” something with one’s ears, but there are several other nuances. In Gen. 37:17, a man told Joseph that he “heard” Joseph’s brothers say, “Let us go to Dothan”; in other words, he unintentionally “overheard” them say it. Shama? can also be used of “eavesdropping, or intentionally listening in on a conversation; so Sarah “overheard” what the three men said to Abram (Gen. 18:10). Vine, W. E., Unger, M. F., & White, W. (1996). Vol. 1: Vine’s complete expository dictionary of Old and New Testament words (pg 107).

Adam’s “hearing” of Eve’s voice was the conversation with the serpent. It was an intentional listening in on a conversation but it was not an intentional correction to the lie that she was being fed. Adam remained silent.

The fact is that God knew Adam’s internal state and that Adam was not deceived. He also knew that Adam listened to the conversation between Eve and the serpent. Lastly He knew that Adam did not act for Eve’s benefit or for God’s benefit by saving Eve from the lie. Rather he allowed another human being to be ensnared by the enemy in his own watch. Adam was the watchman on the wall and the deliberate abdication of his watch by refusing to use his knowledge to benefit another and refusing to snatch them from the fire through his knowledge, an action which God identified as treachery in Hosea 6:7, was also identified by God as the initial reason why God brought a curse on the earth because of Adam’s sin.

So is Adam’s silence of vital importance to the text in 1 Timothy 2:12-15? Absolutely! Adam was not deceived. Adam listened without acting on his state of non-deception. God cursed the earth for the first reason that Adam listened without action.

What’s the moral of the story? We are responsible for what we know and staying silent with our knowledge in the face of deception brings God’s disfavor. And what is the correction of the specific problem in Ephesus? It is fixed with his participation (thus the importance of “they” in verse 15).

I will bring up one more point in answer to another person’s question later.