Women in white raiment

by John Lemley

Perhaps there never lived a woman who has been “talked about” so much as this first woman in White Raiment, for who has not said, If Eve had not been beguiled into a violation of the one commandment by partaking of the fruit of the forbidden tree, we would all be as happy and sinless as was she and her husband before that act of disobedience. But we shall miss the great lesson Eve’s experience intended to convey if we fail to recognize that God put humanity on probation, and the fact of the first temptation is the symbol of every temptation; the fact of the first fall is the symbol of every transgression; the great mistake that lay in the first sin is the symbol of every effect of sin.

After the Lord God had formed man, we read that He “planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man.” What pen could describe the garden of the Lord’s planting? There were splashing fountains. There were woodbine, and honeysuckles, and morning-glories climbing over the wall, and daisies, and buttercups, and strawberries in the grass. There were paths with mountain mosses, bordered with pearls and diamonds. Here and there cooling streams sparkled in the sunlight or made sweet music as they fell over ledges and rippled away under the overstretching shadows of palm trees or fig orchards, and their threads of silver finally lost amid the fruitage of orange groves. Trees and shrubs of infinite variety added their beauty to the many picturesque scenes everywhere spread out. In the midst of the overhanging foliage were all the bright birds of heaven, and they stirred the air with infinite chirp and carol. Never since have such skies looked down through such leaves into such waters. Never has river wave had such curve and sheen and bank as adorned the Pison, the Havilah, the Gihon and the Hiddekel, even the pebbles being bdellium and onyx stone. What fruits, with no curculio to sting the rind! What flowers, with no slug to gnaw the root! What atmosphere, with no frost to chill and with no heat to consume! Bright colors tangled in the grass. Perfume filled the air. Music thrilled the sky. Great scenes of gladness and love and joy spread out in every direction.

We know not how long, perhaps ever since this man had been created in the “image” of his God, he had wandered through this Eden home, had watched the brilliant pageantry of wings and scales and clouds, and may have noticed that the robins fly the air in twos, and that the fish swim the waters in twos, and that the lions walk the fields in twos, and as he saw the merry, abounding life of his subject creatures, every one perfectly fitted to its environment, and each mated with another of the same instincts and methods of living, he felt the isolation of his own self-involved being, and, possibly, a shadow of loneliness may have crept into his face, and God saw it. And so He said, “It is not good that the man should be alone.” So “He caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam,” as if by allegory to teach all ages that the greatest of earthly blessings is sound sleep.

When he awoke, a most beautiful being, the crowning glory of creation, stood beside him, looking at him with heaven in her eyes, her exquisite form draped with perfect feminine grace and strength. As Adam looked into the face of this immaculate daughter of God, this Woman in White Raiment, he said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called Woman” (Hebrew Isha), because God had clothed in separate flesh the gentler and more conscientious part of Adam’s nature, that it might share the work and bliss of Paradise.

How long that first married pair lived in Paradise we are not informed. The story of their disastrous disobedience is given in as few words as possible. Eve may have sauntered out one beautiful morning and as she looked up at the fruit of the various trees of the garden must have recognized “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” and doubtless she had heard Adam say that this was the forbidden tree, and possibly may have cautioned her, “For,” said he, the Lord had said, “in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” As she looked up at the tree and saw the beautiful fruit hanging on the branches, she may have admired its bright, fresh color without any thought of evil in her heart. It is the characteristic of woman to admire the beautiful. Indeed her finer feelings can better appreciate than man, the blendings of color and shadings that combine to give expression to the beautiful.

But it was Satan’s moment. We do not know how long he had been in hiding among the recesses of the garden waiting for just such an opportunity. Quickly he entered a serpent, which, it is declared, “was more subtle than any beast of the field,” and came up to Eve as she admired the tree and its fruit, and in most questioning surprise said, “Yea hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” The query is very cautiously made, expressing great surprise: Yea, truly, can it be possible? The query, with its questioning surprise, had in it now a yes, and now a no, according to the connection. This is the first striking feature in the beginning of the temptation. The temptation of Christ, in the wilderness, was very similar to this. Satan twice challenged our Lord on the point of his divine Sonship: “If thou be the Son of God.” As if he had said, “You claim to be the Son of God, I doubt it, and challenge the claim. If you are, prove it by doing what I suggest.” This was also a blow at the confession of God Himself, “This is My beloved Son.” So here, Satan, in the most cautious manner, would excite doubt in the mind of Eve. Then the expression also aims to awaken mistrust at the goodness and wisdom of God, and so weaken the force of the temptation. As if he had said, “What, not eat of every tree of the garden? I doubt it. Such a prohibition seems unreasonable.”

Here Eve would assure the tempter that she was not mistaken in regard to the prohibition. “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” Notice the Italic words are added by Eve to the command of God concerning the tree. No doubt, as she stood there admiring the tree, the monitor of her heart kept saying, “Don’t touch it, don’t touch it,” and, in her guileless simplicity, she adds the words to the prohibition. And yet by this very addition does her first wavering disguise itself under the form of an overdoing obedience. The first failure is her not observing the point of the temptation, and allowing herself to be drawn into an argument with the tempter; the second, that she makes the prohibition stronger than it really is, and thus lets it appear that to her, too, the prohibition seems too strict; the third that she weakens the prohibition by reducing it to the lesser caution. God had said, “Thou shalt surely die.” She reduces it to “lest ye die,” thus making the motive of obedience to be predominantly the fear of death.

Her tempter, who could quote Scripture to our Lord in his second temptation, after he had failed in the first, was quick to take up the woman’s rendering of the prohibition, and makes answer, “Ye shall not surely die!” What an advance over the first suggestion, “Yea, hath God said.” No doubt he had noted her wavering, and, instead of turning promptly away from the author of her wavering, saw her disposed to inform him of what God had said concerning this “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” and he promptly steps out from the area of cautious craft into that of a reckless denial of the truth of God’s prohibition, and a malicious suspicion of its object. Eve had not repeated the words of the prohibition, and of the penalty, in its double or intensive form, but Satan repeats it, in blasphemous mockery, as though he had heard it in some other way, and stoutly denies the truth of the threatening, that is, the doubt becomes unbelief.

The way, however, is not prepared for the unbelief without first arousing a feeling of distrust in respect to God’s love, His righteousness, and even His power. So the tempter denies all evil consequences as arising from the forbidden enjoyment, whilst, on the contrary, he promises the best and most glorious results from the same. “Instead of your eyes closing in death,” he said, “they shall be opened.” The tempter would have the woman believe that, in eating of the fruit, she would become wonderfully enlightened, and, at the same time, raised to a divine glory—“shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And so, in like manner, is every sin a false and senseless belief in the salutary effects of sin.

We tremble for Eve at this point of her interview with her tempter. It is an awful moment, a moment in which her own happiness and that of her husband’s and all the generations of earth are in the balances.