Commentary on Genesis, Vol. 1: Luther on the Creation

by Martin Luther

We may therefore appropriately cite the words of the prophet Isaiah, "If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established," Is. 7:9. For if we should inquire and inquire until we burst with curiosity, yet we shall never understand how the eye sees, nor how the ear hears, nor what the soul is, etc. And yet, all these things are a part of us, and we use them every day and every moment in all our actions. How then shall we understand those things which exceed all our faculties and senses, and are found in the Word of God alone? Hence it is found in the Word alone, that the ordained bread is the body of Christ, and that the ordained wine is the blood of Christ. These things it is our duty to believe, not to understand; for understand them we cannot.

In like manner too the words of God in the present passage of Moses were most simple and plain, "Of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden ye shall not eat." But in those words reason did not understand the mind of God, why he willed these things so to be. When therefore Eve, not content with the command of the Lord which she had heard, began curiously to inquire into it, she perished. This temptation therefore is a true example of all those temptations, in which Satan assaults the Word and faith. Before the desire of eating the fruit came to Eve, she had let go the word which God spoke to Adam. Had she held fast this Word, she would have stood in the reverence of God and in faith. On the other hand, no sooner had she let go the Word, than contempt of God entered; and then followed obedience to the devil.

It is profitable for us to learn these things and to know them. Hence it is that Peter admonishes us to stand fast under temptation, and to resist the Tempter, keeping fast hold of the Word by a firm faith, and keeping our ears shut, so as not to listen to anything contrary to the Word, 1 Pet. 5:9. For such "sufferings" and temptations of Eve are most truly "lessons" to us; that we suffer not the same things, by being drawn aside from the Word and faith, as she was.

That which follows in our text, "For God doth know that your eyes shall be opened," may be taken in a twofold sense. We may either understand Satan to have thus spoken, for the purpose of exciting an ill-will against God, for having forbidden man to eat of a fruit so good and useful by which means Satan would create in Eve the beginning of a hatred towards God for not being sufficiently indulgent. Or again, I would rather understand the passage, Satan speaks this, as in praise of God; that he may thereby the more easily entrap Eve in his deception. As if he had said to her, "Be assured that God is not such an one as to wish you and Adam to live in darkness as it were without the knowledge of good and evil. He is good. He envies you nothing which can in any way conduce to your benefit or pleasure. He will be quite satisfied and content that you should be like himself, as to the knowledge of good and evil."

When Satan thus praises God he has the razor fairly in his hands, so that he can cut the throat of a man in a moment. For the fall of a man is thus rendered by Satan the most easy, when the pretext of the Word and the will of God is brought in upon the back of that which the lust of the heart desires. This is why I would rather understand the words now in question to be spoken by Satan, as intended to persuade Eve, rather than to excite in her any hatred toward God. I leave it however quite free to you, my hearers, to adopt the sense of the passage which pleases you best. The sum of the whole or the one aim of Satan, is this: to draw Eve away by all possible means from the Word, and to persuade her to do that, which had been forbidden by the Word. For Satan is the most bitter enemy of the Word of God; because he knows that our whole salvation lies in our obedience to that Word.

But here an inquiry by no means absurd is raised. How was it that Eve did not yet feel her sin? For, although she had not yet swallowed the fruit, yet she had sinned against the Word and against faith. She had turned away from the Word unto a lie and from faith to disbelief; from God to Satan and from the worship of God to idolatry. As this was the sum and substance of her sin, for plucking the apple was not the sum of her sin, how was it that death did not immediately follow? How was it that she did not feel so mighty a sin? Nay further how was it, that after she had eaten the fruit, she did not feel the death which was the decreed punishment of it, before she persuaded Adam to eat of it also?

The schools dispute much and variously about the superior power, and the inferior power of reason. They hold, that Adam possessed the superior power of reason, and Eve the inferior. We will cast aside all such half-learned and scholastic arguments and seek the true meaning of the passage, which is as follows:

In the first place the long-suffering of God is great. Therefore he does not punish sin immediately. If he did we should soon perish. This long-suffering of God Satan ever abuses. And it just suits his purpose that man should not immediately feel his sin. For because punishment is thus deferred, Satan fills the mind with security and unconcern. So that a man is not only kept blind to the fact that he has sinned, but is caused to take delight and to glory in his sins.

All this we behold in the popes and the Papists. If they could see with their eyes and hearts the slaughter-house of conscience, yea, the perdition into which they bring men by their impious doctrine, they would without doubt change their doctrine. But now, Satan so dazzles their eyes as it were with his delusions, that they cannot perceive their own judgment and the wrath of God which hangs over them. Therefore in the very midst of these mighty sins, they live with the greatest security, even with gladness and rejoicing, displaying their magnificent triumphs as if they had performed the most noble achievements.

This was exactly the case with Eve. By her disbelief she rushed from the Word into a lie. Therefore in the eyes of God, she was now dead. But as Satan still held under his power her heart and eyes, she not only did not see her death, but was gradually more and more inflamed with a longing for the fruit; and was positively delighted with this her idolatry and with her sin.