Genesis 3:21 "The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them."
In the recent sections God enumerated the consequences of sin.
- The serpent, or shiny one, would be brought low – severely crippled for now, defeated in the end.
- Humans lost the benefit of direct fellowship with God.
- Reproduction would no longer be directly done by God. He would no longer fashion people from dust, nor would He put Adam to sleep and create another person from him.
- Eve would be reproducer rather than God, and it would be painful.
- Without direct fellowship with God, the woman would look to her husband to provide things God provided, and her husband would willingly stand in God’s place (3:16, “your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you”).
Without the benefits of God’s garden, the man would now have to work hard for his food, eat plants from the field, and weed through thorns and thistles by the sweat of his brow to eat “bread.” Adam brought death into the world. Without God’s continual sustenance he would return to the dust from which he was formed.
That’s where we’ve just been.
In this final section of the Garden story, God responds to sin in the people He created and loves. How will God treat ones who sinned against Him?
V.21, says God clothed them with skins.
It seems to be a given in many peoples’ minds that God sacrificially slaughtered an animal and made clothing out of pelts for Adam and Eve. Those who read it this way often say this was the first animal slaughtered as sacrifice for human sin - sacrificed by God Himself as an example for the Jews and foreshadowing of Christ!
Did God sacrifice an animal to Himself for the original the sin of mankind? This sounds nice on the surface, but it carries several problems.
First, to whom would God be sacrificing this animal? Animal sacrifices were given BY the sinner TO God (e.g., Gen 46:1; Exod 3:18, 5:3; etc.). Why would He sacrifice to Himself?
Secondly, it doesn’t help that the Good News Translation, New Living Translation, New International Reader's Version, and New Century Version actually insert the phrase “animal skins.” But no literal or responsible Bible translation includes or even implies the word “animal” in verse 21. That’s because it’s not in the Hebrew. The Hebrew text simply says God “
clothed them with garments of skin,”
`owr (ע֖וֹר).
This is reflected, for example, in NASB, ESV, KJV. Unfortunately the usually excellent HCSB is not literal on this verse either when it says that the Lord God “made clothing from skins” for them.
There are at least two other reasons for doubting that the text means “animal skin.”
- This “skin clothing” is mentioned in the context of God's wrath - a theme that continues for a few more thoughts after this verse. It would be odd to read a description of God’s providence stuck into the context of His wrath without an explanation, such as "The LORD God clothed Adam and his wife with garments of animal skin, saying, `I will not completely abandon you. This clothing demonstrates that I will watch over you and your descendants now and forever.'"
- Adam and Eve weren’t physically naked. They were dressed with fig leaves. Their nakedness was already covered, so God didn’t need to cover it. And besides, they lived in a warm climate and there was no one around to cover their nakedness from. If God wanted to demonstrate His providential care, it seems He could have picked a better way than giving them more clothes. For instance, He could have fed them. But the theme in this section is not God’s providence. The theme is His wrath and our first parents’ SEPARATION from God’s providence.
There's another way to interpret the statement about skin clothing. It is just as linguistically permissible, it may be more contextually desirable, and it is supported by a great deal of truth taught throughout the rest of the Bible.
The text simply says “skin.” We can only identify what the skin was by going beyond the text to its context.
The context has been about mortality. Before sin, Adam and Eve were incorruptible. But now, in v.21, they are corruptible. “Skin” is corruptible, too.
So it is reasonable to interpret the text this way:
When God gave Adam and Eve corruptible bodies, He clothed those bodies with skin.
Restated: When they changed from spiritual beings to physical beings, their new corruptible bodies were “
clothed with garments of skin.” That is, their bodies became like ours are today.
This is not a foreign concept to the Bible:
- Job described God clothing him with skin when he was created: "Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese, clothe me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews?" (Job 10:10-11). This verse describes the process of birth which, in a sense, is what has just happened to Adam and Eve. They were in effect “born” into corruptible bodies after the Fall.
- Ezekiel wrote figuratively about God clothing His people with skin during rebirth: "`I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am LORD'" (Ezek. 37:6).
If Job and Ezekiel could speak of being "clothed with skin" by God, the first readers of Genesis could have easily understood Genesis 3:21 as God putting skin onto our first parents’ bodies when their bodies became corruptible. 14 Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.
Moreover,
Hebrews 2:14-15 says that “
since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives” (NASB).
So Jesus took on flesh and blood so that He could die. He did this in order to save others with flesh and blood who die. Flesh and blood, then, are inextricably connected to mortality, which was the result of the curse.
This Genesis story takes place in a spiritual-temporal context. By that I mean that Adam and Eve here pass from a spiritual world of direct fellowship with God in His garden, and into broken fellowship with God in a temporal world that is physical and corruptible. God giving them skin, which is corruptible, for the first time fits this context very well.
Genesis 3:22 “Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"
Because man had become like God knowing Good and Evil, it was important that he not also have the capability of living forever.
In Gen 1:26 it says man was created in God’s image. But this verse says that through sin man became “like God.” Dwell on that for a moment. Adam was created in God’s image before he sinned, but he became like God after he sinned? How should we understand this?
Both eternal life and knowing good and evil are aspects of divinity.
Eating the fruit of life would have resulted in Adam and Eve living forever. God lives forever, so in that respect they would have been like Him.
Eating the forbidden fruit caused them to know good and evil. God knows good and evil. So in that respect they became like Him.
Adam and Eve were promised death if they ate the wrong fruit, so now the way to eternal life had to be blocked. For God to save them, they would have to die. Their salvation required the defeat of sin and death. Without death, they would likely live eternally in the lake of fire (Rev. 20:15).
Genesis 3:23-24: “therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.”
No longer would man guard (“keep”) the garden as he was tasked with in 2:15 (see my notes there – the Hebrew word translated “keep” in that verse is the same one used here for “guard”).
Now that man was made a little lower than angels, the angels themselves would guard it.
So the cherubim guarded the way to the Garden. Everywhere in scripture that cherubim are mentioned, they function as guards to holy places (see Exodus 25, 1 Kings 6:23ff; 2 Chron 3:10ff; Ezekiel 10; Rev. 4:6-9).
One last note:
Beginning in Genesis 4:1, all of the symbolic and metaphysical language ends abruptly. That, I believe, is because they now are in our familiar, corruptible world living in corruptible, dying bodies like ours. Symbolic language is no longer needed from this point onward.
