Genesis 3

¹ The serpent was the most subtle of all the wild beasts that Yahweh God had made. It asked the woman, ‘Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?’

² The woman answered the serpent, ‘We may eat he fruit of the trees in the garden.

³ But of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden God said, “You must not eat it, nor touch it, under pain of death”.’

⁴ Then the serpent said to the woman, ‘No! You will not die!

⁵ God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.’

⁶ The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and pleasing to the eye, and that it was desirable for the knowledge that it could give. So she took some of its fruit and ate it. She gave some also to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.

⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realised that they were naked. So they sewed fig-leaves together to make themselves loin-cloths.

⁸ The man and his wife heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from Yahweh God among the trees of the garden.

⁹ But Yahweh God called to the man. ‘Where are you?’ he asked.

¹⁰ ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden;’ he replied ‘I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.’

¹¹ ‘Who told you that you were naked?’ he asked ‘Have you been eating of the tree I forbade you to eat?’

¹² The man replied, ‘It was the woman you put with me; she gave me the fruit, and I ate it’.

¹³ Then Yahweh God asked the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’ The woman replied, ‘The serpent tempted me and I ate’.

¹⁴ Then Yahweh God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, Be accursed beyond all cattle, all wild beasts. You shall crawl on your belly and eat dust every day of your life.

¹⁵ I will make you enemies of each other: you and the woman, your offspring and her offspring. It will crush your head and you will strike its heel’.

¹⁶ To the woman he said: ‘I will multiply your pains in childbearing, you shall give birth to your children in pain. Your yearning shall be for your husband, yet he will lord it over you.’

¹⁷ To the man he said, ‘Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat, Accursed be the soil because of you. With suffering shall you get your food from it every day of your life.

¹⁸ It shall yield you brambles and thistles, and you shall eat wild plants.

¹⁹ With sweat on your brow shall you eat your bread, until you return to the soil, as you were taken from it. For dust you are and to dust you shall return.’

²⁰ The man named his wife ‘Eve’ because she was the mother of all those who live[*a].

²¹ Yahweh God made clothes out of skins for the man and his wife, and they put them on.

²² Then Yahweh God said, ‘See, the man has become like one of us, with his knowledge of good and evil. He must not be allowed to stretch his hand out next and pick from the tree of life also, and eat some and live for ever.’

²³ So Yahweh God expelled him from the garden of Eden, to till the soil from which he had been taken.

²⁴ He banished the man, and in front of the garden of Eden he posted the cherubs, and the flame of a flashing sword, to guard the way to the tree of life.