Eve- Hebrew/Jewish FigureMortal"Mother of All Living"

From Adam's Side

God declared it was not good for Adam to be alone. He put Adam into a deep sleep and took something from his side. The Hebrew word is tsela, usually translated as "rib." From it God fashioned a woman.

The Talmud in Berakhot 61a asks why God put Adam to sleep for this. The answer: so he would not watch the process, flesh being shaped from flesh and bone from bone. When Adam woke and saw the finished creation, he spoke the first recorded human words: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." The Midrash says that before the Fall, both of them wore garments of light that filled the garden.

The Fruit

The serpent spoke to Eve, not Adam. It opened with a distortion: "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" Eve corrected it. They could eat from every tree but one. But she added something God had not said: that they could not even touch the fruit. The Midrash in Bereshit Rabbah seizes on this. When the serpent pushed Eve against the tree and she did not die, it used her own words against her. "See, you touched it and did not die. Neither will you die from eating."

The serpent told her that eating would make her like God, knowing good and evil. Eve looked at the tree. It was good for food. It was beautiful. It promised wisdom. She took the fruit and ate. She gave some to Adam, who was with her. He ate too.

Their eyes opened, and what they saw was their own nakedness. They sewed fig leaves together and hid among the trees. When God walked in the garden and called to them, Adam blamed Eve: "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree." Eve blamed the serpent: "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

The Curses

God cursed the serpent to crawl on its belly and set enmity between the serpent's offspring and the woman's offspring. To Eve: "I will multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children." To Adam: toil and dust and death.

Then Adam named his wife. He called her Chavah, "living," because she was the mother of all living. Genesis places this naming after the curse, after everything was lost. God made garments of skin for them, which required the first death of a living creature, and drove them from the garden. Cherubim with a flaming sword stood guard over the way to the Tree of Life.

Cain and Abel

Outside Eden, Eve bore Cain. At his birth she said: "I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord." Then Abel came. The two brothers grew, and Cain brought an offering of grain while Abel brought the firstborn of his flock. God accepted Abel's offering and rejected Cain's. Cain rose up in the field and killed his brother.

Eve lost two sons at once. Abel was dead. Cain was cursed to wander the earth. The first family, already expelled from paradise, was broken again.

She bore another son and named him Seth. "God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel," she said, "for Cain killed him." Through Seth the line continued to Noah, and beyond him to Abraham.

The Second Fall

The Vita Adae et Evae imagines what happened next. Driven from the garden, Adam and Eve could not find food. Adam proposed penance: he would stand in the Jordan River for forty days; Eve in the Tigris for thirty-seven. Both would plead for mercy.

Eighteen days in, Satan came to the Tigris disguised as an angel of light. He told Eve that God had heard her prayer and she could come out. She believed him. When Adam saw her walking toward him with the deceiver beside her, he cried: "O Eve, where is the labor of your repentance? How have you been again deceived by our adversary?"

Eve collapsed and wept. She asked Satan what she had ever done to him. His answer: it was because of them that he had been cast from heaven. The first sin had not only cost Adam and Eve their home. It had cost Satan his.