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

by Martin Luther

Now if Eve had not departed from the Word, thus to look upon the fruit with a desire to taste it, it would have been to her an abhorrence. But having thus departed, she turns over the sin in her mind with gratification. Whereas had she before seen any other stretch forth the hand to touch this tree, she would have recoiled with horror. But now, she is impatient of delay. Sin has burst forth from her heart, and has descended to the lower members of her body, her mouth and tongue. This desire and delightful longing therefore to eat the fruit are as it were the diseases gendered by the sin of her heart from which death follows; though Eve, while sinning, feels it not. This is plain from the next portion of the context.

PART II. THE AWFUL FALL BY SINNING.

V. 6. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and she gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.

Mark here the manner in which sin diffuses itself through all the five senses. For what did Eve neglect that could be used in the service of sin when once she had believed Satan contrary to the Word of God, and had listened to his lies in telling her that she would not surely die, but that her eyes would be opened and that she would know both good and evil. Her eyes could not be satisfied with seeing. It was nothing to her now that she possessed the knowledge of God, and that she had a sound and perfect mind. She was not content without the addition of the knowledge of evil also. And this was the very essence of Satan's poison; her desire to be wise above that which God had spoken to her as his command. For such wisdom was death and the very enemy of that wisdom of God, which had been delivered to her in his Word. For this wisdom caused her to consider that to be righteousness, which was really sin, and to look upon that as most desirable wisdom which was utter madness.

The whole point therefore lies in this which the Latin version has omitted to express: that the tree was a tree to be desired, because it made the eaters thereof wise. And this is the very aim of the devil, to cause a man to think his knowledge and wisdom the greater, the further he departs from the Word.

Hence the Sacramentarians think it the sum of all wisdom to assert that bread is bread, and that wine is wine; but that bread is not the body, nor wine the blood of Christ. So Arius considers that he has carried off the palm of all wisdom, when he asserts, from certain Scriptures evilly distorted from their manifest sense, that the Logos was indeed before all creatures; but that still he was created. In like manner the Anabaptists imagine that they trumpet forth the very height of wisdom, when they declare aloud with full-swollen cheeks that water cannot reach the soul or the spirit, but that it washes the naked skin only, and that therefore baptism avails nothing to the remission of sins. Hence we have known fanatical spirits to baptize here and there without any water at all, who nevertheless continued to boast that they never dissented from us or our doctrine. And truly, this is wisdom. But it is the wisdom of the devil; and directly contrary to the Word and wisdom of God. And it is the peculiar and proper temptation of the devil thus to render us wise in our own conceits contrary to and above the Word of God. Just as he himself was once in heaven, and then fell. And this high wisdom is a temptation of his, far exceeding in destructive efficacy all the grosser temptations of lust, avarice, pride, etc.

The verb HISKIL signifies "to be prudent" or "wise." Hence, MASKIL is "wise" or "prudent," as in Psalm 14:2, "Jehovah looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek after God." And again, Is. 53:11, "By the knowledge of himself, JASKIL, shall my righteous servant justify many." The word signifies properly that wisdom by which God is known and acknowledged. And Eve had this light or rather this sun of knowledge in her heart before she fell; because she had the Word. And she had moreover the knowledge of all the creatures. But not content with this wisdom, she wished to mount higher and to know God otherwise than he had revealed himself to her in his Word. This was her fall. She let go the true wisdom, and that being lost, she rushed into utter blindness.

Just as Satan acted in the garden of Eden, so he acts now. God commands us to believe the Gospel of his Son, that we may thus be saved. This is true wisdom, as Christ himself also affirms: "This is life eternal, that they should know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ," John 17:3. This wisdom the monk utterly disregards, and turns aside to other things. He puts on a cowl, girds himself with a rope and takes upon him the vow of celibacy; and he thinks that by such means he shall please God and be saved. And all this is that sublime wisdom which is exercised in the worship of God, and in a great religious observance toward him; all of which is the implantation of Satan, engrafted on the original sin of our fallen nature; causing men to turn away from the Word of God, which he has himself "set forth" as the way of salvation, and to turn aside to following their own cogitations. Just like Eve. She was created the wisest of all women that ever existed; but she longed for another wisdom contrary to and above the Word; and on account of this newly desired wisdom she fell and sinned, in a multiplicity of forms, with all her senses, with her thoughts, with her sight, with her desire, with her touch, with her taste, with her whole act.

They are not to be listened to, therefore, who argue it was cruelty that this nature of ours should be thus miserably corrupted, sunk under death, and involved in all the other calamities to which it is subject for the simple act of tasting a certain fruit. The Epicureans, indeed, when they hear these things, laugh at them as a mere fable. But to a careful reader, who duly ponders these recorded facts, it will at once be manifest that the simple bite of the fruit was not the cause of these awful consequences. Such an one will see that the sin committed was the cause of the whole calamity which followed, even the sin of Eve, which she committed against both tables of the law, against God himself and against his Word. For her sin was of that description that she cast aside the Word of God and gave herself up wholly to Satan, and to his teaching as his disciple.