This is part 2 to my Genesis commentary on chapter 3.
3:14-15 Curse of the Serpent
14 The Lord God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
As the serpent was wiser than any beast, he is now cursed above every beast. The wisdom makes him more culpable, just as the fact that Adam was not deceived makes him more culpable. The Bible frequently distinguishes between sin done in ignorance and sin done deliberately. This distinction has, of course, made it into our law as well.
The descriptions of the serpent's curse end up being the various categories of unclean animals (Lev 11). For example, "on your belly" is the direct contact with the cursed ground of the earth. We see this in unclean animals directly touching the ground with a paw, or in the case of sea animals, things that don't have scales to protect them from their environment. The "dust you shall eat" is reflective of the fact that we are "made of dust and to dust we shall return" (v19). Any animal that eats dead things is unclean. Likewise, the enmity between man and the serpent is reflected in the fact that a rebellious animal (Exo 21:28) becomes unclean. The ox can be eaten, but if it attacks a person it must be burnt and not eaten.
The theme of shoes being related to putting a barrier between us and the ground is brought out in the fact that Moses is told to take his shoes off when he is on holy ground (Exo 3:5; cf Jos 5:15). In that place the ground was not cursed, and thus he had no need of shoes. In Isaiah, his demonstration of the shame of Israel is described as having no clothing and no shoes (Isa 20:2).
The enmity of the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman is created by God as a direct result of the curse. This is represented symbolically at the natural antipathy between man and snake, but ultimately is reflected in the enmity between God and the world (Jas 4:4). The lines of the woman who are godly (the children of Seth) are set over and against the children who are ungodly (the line of Cain). Throughout the Bible this antipathy between the "wicked" and "the righteous" is drawn out.
Ultimately, of course, we all have fallen short of God's glory and are thus "wicked" in some sense and not "righteous". However, we also recognize that the circumcision of the heart (as it is described in the Old Testament) and the baptism of the Spirit (likewise in the New) do make genuine objective changes in a person's character such that it is not at all wrong to use the word "righteous" to describe them.
In my opinion, much poor exegesis and supposed problem passages come from the fact that this dichotomy of "even one sin makes you a sinner" and "perfectly righteous in every respect", which includes only Christ, is pushed too far. Of course, in some passages those are the relevant categories, but we cannot use them to make sense of verses like Psalm 1:5-6:
Psalm 1:5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; 6 for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
The congregation of the righteous removes any possibility of it referring only to Christ. Moreover the "way of the righteous" implies that this is no mere judicial accounting, such as in the classic presentation of justification. There is a sense in which some men are "righteous" and some men are "wicked" that actually is reflective of their real behavior in this life.
But in what way are the "ungodly" the seed of the serpent? They are not physically born from the serpent. They too are the "seed of the woman" in this sense. Rather, we can understand the woman's sin as a case of adultery. Adultery is a common theme in the Bible to explain the idea of turning away from God. Then, we understand the children of the devil to be "illegitimate children" in a sense (Heb 12:8). In a way then, every person who does not turn toward God and become a true "child of Abraham", will instead be "of their father the devil" (Jn 8:39-44).
There could also be something here in terms of federal headship. As mentioned above, Adam essentially paid fealty to the devil, making Satan the head of all living people through the covenant their father made with him. Only by being transferred out of this authority and under the "second Adam" (Christ) can a person be restored to his natural rights as a son of the woman (Col 1:13-14).
The image of the head being crushed and the heel being bruised is called the proto-evangelion by scholars, which basically means "the first shadow of the gospel". It is a reference primary to the work of Christ, whereby he crushes the power of Satan through his work in the cross, enabling the redemption and salvation of the world. This is typologically shown as Christ is crucified over Golgotha, the place of the skull, and in a sense his heels are literally over the skulls in his crucifixion.
The head/heel distinction also comes out in the theme of Genesis whereby the younger son displaces the older. This happens with Seth replacing Cain, with Shem displacing Japheth, Peleg replacing Joktan, Abram replacing whoever his elder brother was (probably Haran)1, Isaac replacing Ishmael, Jacob replacing Esau, Joseph being elevated above his brothers. This theme of the latter being greater than the former is common in scripture. It is noteworthy that Jacob essentially means "heel" (Gen 25:19) and literally Jacob grabs the heel of Esau.
This idea of the younger replacing the older, particularly when the older is wicked and the younger is "of God" is throughout the book of Genesis. And of course, the literal head being crushed happens with Sisera in the book of Judges (Jud 4:21).
3:16 Curse of the Woman
16 To the woman he said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”
The curse on the woman is next. We can see that God is sort of working backward through the accusation thread, and forward through the deception thread, cursing each person separately. For the woman we see that her pain in childbearing is much greater than it would have been otherwise. She brings forth children also into pain and sorrow. This is most explicitly demonstrated in the birth of Seth, who comes about after her first son murdered her second and was exiled from her presence. In sorrow she brings forth a child. This pattern is repeated when Rachel dies in childbirth of Benjamin, whose name literally means "son of my sorrow".
Furthermore we recognize that people are now born "dead" (1 Cor 15:22; cf Rom 5:12-21). Essentially the life-giving power of the woman has been cursed so that the children she gives birth to are dead on arrival. They have a simulacrum of life in their bodies, but no true life through the Spirit, no "breath of life" in the Hebrew. They must be raised to life through the resurrection power of Christ mediated through the Holy Spirit in order to be really "alive".
This also helps us to understand that death and resurrection both, in our case, happen in two phases. The spirit or the soul dies and the body follows. The spirit or the soul is resurrected, and the body will follow. The new spirit gives rise to the new body, as the old spirit's death gave rise to the death of the old body.
It is clear though that she will have children, which is the blessing implied here in this aspect of the curse. Of course, in Genesis the women are frequently barren, so they frequently have to wait for the blessing. This highlights God's role in blessing us with children and prefiguring the idea of "children of the promise" as discussed in Galatians 4.
The second half of the woman's curse is that she and her husband are in contention. The question naturally arises as to whether authority of a family is a result of the fall. Were men and women intended to be without hierarchy but such became necessary with the fall?
We know that hierarchy as such is certainly a good thing. Authority was the fundamental issue in the fall itself, the rejection of such is the essence of sin. Rebellion and sin are largely synonymous concepts. We can also see that God specifically made the woman to provide help to the mission which was originally given to the man alone. This implies the pattern that marriage is intended to follow through the rest of the Bible. Thus, I do not think it is tenable to view the authority hierarchy in a marriage as a result of the fall.
Then what is this curse about? It seems that the woman is going to be constitutionally oriented in such a way as to desire the authority of the husband, but resistant to it. This creates contention in marriage, which is especially harmful and painful to women as they tend to be highly relationally oriented. We know that a godly, sanctified woman is submissive to her husband (1 Pet 3:6; Eph 5:22) and to his headship; thus it makes sense that, apart from God in their cursed state, the woman will wish to rebel against the authority of the man. It appears that men are consistently tempted to be irresponsible in their flesh, and abdicate this headship role and women are consistently tempted to dominate in their flesh and overthrow authority. However, God gives grace in that the authority of the man does ultimately triumph.
In our modern era this is particularly troublesome, as feminism, at its core, is a rejection of God's design of the sexes. Women are creationally a different being than men, but we wish to collapse the distinction down to nothing. We want men to be less "toxic", ie: more feminine, and women to be more like the worst parts of men, in single-minded pursuit of career and sexual pleasure. This is evil and rebellious against our creational nature. Without going into more detail, feminism is the sinful, cursed resistance of a woman to her husband writ large in society. As men have begun to forsake their roles as protector and provider, we have a societal breakdown of fatherhood. As women pursue career over family, we have a society wide breakdown of motherhood.
Feminism, as I am using it here, is any attempt to break down the natural hierarchy of a marriage as instituted by God. This, of course, has peripheral issues that require more nuance, but the fundamental egalitarian sentiment of feminism is straight from the sinful heart of man and is nothing more than institutionalized rebellion against God and the created order.
It should go without saying, though it probably won't, that this says nothing about the relative "value" of a person. It is also a sinful part of the human heart that values those in authority over those not in authority. The impulse to view women as somehow "less" because they are not put in charge of the marriage is an evil. Men can be prone to this sin as men tend to compete with one another according to power and influence. This is not necessarily a problem between men, but it is wildly inappropriate and sinful to compete with your wife in this same way. Every member has value and the sinful heart is the one that says "because I am not an eye then I am not part of the body".
3:17-19 Curse on Adam
17 And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
While the woman has painful labor in childbirth, the man is cursed with painful labor in, well, labor. Working is no longer a joyful task, but a difficult one where the ground itself pits itself against the dominion-taking efforts of the man. His food is no longer plentiful but is difficult to get. It is a measure of mankind's blessing through the restoration brought about by the Christian church that food is no longer so difficult to produce and that man's labor is more joyful today than it was in the immediate aftermath of the Fall.
The ground being cursed becomes the source of the cleanliness laws regarding animals, as discussed above. But a greater theme comes in the scriptures regarding cursed and blessed land. The promised land is a land flowing with milk and honey (Exo 3:8), a "new garden". However, as rebellion takes hold in various lands, we see a similar sort of cursing expressed in the prophets (Isa 34:13; Jer 49:33, 51:37; Rev 18:2). Even the promised land will become a "desolation" if they do not obey the Lord (Lev 26:33).
This becomes a critical theme when Christ gives the curse on the leaders of Israel in Matthew 23:38. With the leaders' final rejection of Christ and the predicted rejection of the apostles that Christ will send (Mt 23:34-35), Jerusalem is destroyed (Mt 24:1-2). The Spirit no longer dwells in the Temple built with human hands, but in the temple built out of human stones (1 Pet 2:5). We see further development of this theme later in Genesis with the blessing/cursing of the land. In a sense, there is no further "curse" on the land (Gen 8:21), but the initial curse remains and the desolation and blessing theme still resonates as God gives or withdraws his blessing. Without God's favor, the land becomes desolate of itself. The word "desolate" indicates a removal of God's presence and the attendant blessing.
The second part of the curse mentioned is that of thorns and thistles. Thorns are related in the scripture to wicked men (Num 33:55; Jos 23:13; Jud 2:3; 2 Sam 23:6; Is 33:12; Eze 28:24; Hos 9:6, 10:8; Mt 7:16; Heb 6:8). This gives us an understanding of the crown of thorns that Christ bears on the cross. He is symbolically carrying the deeds of the wicked and, in a sense, the wicked themselves onto the cross.
In a sense, then, the thorns that the "ground" bears are also the wicked men and women that are borne from Adam's family line. "Adam" is very similar to the Hebrew word for "ground" (Adamah), which relates to the fact that Adam (man) is made from the dust of the earth. We have already noted that the "earth" is used as a symbol for a mother's womb, and thus the first thorn that is borne from the ground for Adam is Cain.
This, of course, does not in any way reduce the relevance of the literal curse. The ground used to bring forth fruit of its own accord, now it must be sown and cultivated. Adam is told that he must cultivate the earth and eat of the plants that he grows. He is reminded that his labor will be hard and taxing until the day of his death. At that time, he will become dust again, as his body decays in the earth.
The theme of being "in the earth" as a metaphor for death is used in the Psalms (Ps 63:9, 71:20, 146:4) and in the New Testament (Phil 2:10). Sheol (the place of the dead) is pictured as being under the earth, as is its New Testament equivalent "Hades". In post-ascension times, heaven becomes the place of the righteous dead and is pictured as above the earth, but in the Old Testament, the dead are always below the earth. It is this that is generally meant by the apostles creed "he descended into hell". Hades is both paradise and the place of the damned in the Biblical sense, though paradise ceases to be a category when heaven is opened in the ascension.
Other worthwhile things to note in this passage are the "eating the bread by the sweat of your brow" which is temporarily overturned during the exodus story as God provides bread that the Israelites do not work for. This serves a particular purpose but is mirrored in Christ's feeding of the 5000 in the New Testament. The provision of bread from heaven becomes a major theme in John 6 as he is preaching to the people after the feeding. In a sense this is part of what is symbolized in the communion meal and the theme finds its root here.
This is contrasted with the eating of the fruit of the ground, which by the way is cursed. This has the significance of taking the curse into yourself, that the innermost parts of man's heart are cursed and is the basic illustration of the idea of the sin nature. Unlike the "bread from heaven" which does not curse but blesses and restores the innermost heart of man.
More generally, we can make the point that God's plan of redemption is to undo the curse of mankind. He undoes death itself "to dust you shall return", as well as restoring the land. This is prefigured in the promised land, but the goal is that the faithful will inherit the whole world (Rom 4:13). Isaiah speaks particularly of the restored paradisical creation, for example:
Isaiah 65:21 They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 22 No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the work of their hands. 23 They will not labor in vain, nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the Lord, they and their descendants with them.
In terms of practical application, we can understand that part of the work the Spirit is doing to renew the world through his church is renewing of physical creation. We should be seeking ways to improve the environment in which we live, both on a personal and a societal level. We should build things for glory, for the new heavens and the new earth. The cities we live in ought to reflect something God will be pleased with because of its beauty and glory.
Work that creates beauty and brings glory is possible through Christ, and we can bring physical and spiritual bounty to our brethren. We should take pride in the work we do and do all to the glory of God (Col 3:23). Take joy in your work and find something you can do with your hands (1 Thes 4:11). There's something about using our hands to make creation more glorious that is truly in the image of God. We pray for God to establish the work of our hands (Ps 90:17).
Thank God that in the new creation of Christ, work is not in vain and can be meaningful and fulfilling.
3:20-21 - Naming of the Woman and Clothing
20 The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. 21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
Finally, after a chapter and a half, we find that Adam does the last act of his naming task by naming his wife "Eve". Eve roughly means "life". It is interesting that this is the rationale. She is obviously not the mother of all biological life, so this can only mean that she is the mother of all that are spiritually alive. This also must mean that he understands something of the resurrection life and the gospel. For if death reigned through Adam (Rom 5:12-14) then life must come from some other source. Since the proto-gospel had been given above, Adam rightly intuited that this future of life would be granted through (one of) his children. Thus, Eve becomes the mother of all living.
Rightly understood, in terms of covenant, Adam is not the father of Christ. Fatherhood passes through the male line and thus Christ's virgin birth makes him not under the familial headship of Adam. Thus Eve is the mother of Christ, but Adam is not the father in this sense. Since all come to life in Christ (Rom 5:17), her motherhood of "all living" is ultimately her motherhood of Christ and those who would be included with Christ in faith.
The identification of Christ with "life" is most apparent in the first chapter of 1 John:
1 John 1:2 ...the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us...
This echoes Christ's own words of him being "the way, the truth and the life".
The understanding of the ultimate need for the gospel continues in the verse after this, where God makes "clothing" for Adam and Eve out of the bloody sacrifice of animals. As mentioned above, they needed a garment of glory and attempted to take it for themselves. Now the garment is necessary for another reason: that they must cover their sin. By killing animals and forming the clothing of their remains, God demonstrates the need for a payment of death, a sacrifice, to cover sin. In a sense, he is setting up the sacrificial system, which, we know from the next chapter, is already well understood by Cain and Abel.
The other layer to the giving of a garment is that God is providing the appropriate garment of glory to them as is necessary for their new station. Fallen as they may be, they also now have the knowledge of good and evil and are thus now required by God to exercise judgment, wisdom and discernment. This is not the action of a newborn baby (who is naked), but of a grown person (who wears clothing). The fact that the garment is not as glorious as the robes washed in the blood of Christ (22:14) merely reflects the fact that Christ has not yet brought the true form of his glory. They are in the realm of shadows and signs. The garment is literally "bloody", in a sense, but this is not the blood that really cleanses, and thus they lack the glory that is to be revealed (cf Rom 8:18).
Nevertheless, they are sent out, with the original dominion mandate, and an understanding that death must pay for their sin, and even an understanding of the substitutionary death of sacrifice. They become, in a way, priests to the world, with the message of reconciliation and sacrifice entrusted to them.
This dual purpose frames the human purpose, as a dual reality of kingship and priesthood, having dominion and teaching, and bringing sacrifice to God. (You can, and many theologians do, say that it is King, Prophet and Priest that are the three roles of a human.) When we proceed into our daily lives, we do all three of these things, bringing goodness and order to our sphere of influence, teaching and proclaiming the truth of God, and worshipping the Lord both with our voice and our actions.
The world is bifurcated into two peoples, the "seed of the woman" and the "seed of the serpent". Much of Genesis will draw out this distinction and the resulting conflict. In Psalms we will see frequent comparisons drawn between "the wicked" and "the righteous". As we know from later passages like 1 John 1, "righteous" does not mean "without sin", and yet there is certainly a distinction drawn between those who are sincerely following Christ and those who are in rebellion against him.
3:22-24 - Ejection From the Garden
22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—”
This verse is often cited as one of the more confusing verses in the early part of Genesis. Commentators are split on how to understand it. There are a few oddities that need to be explained:
Wasn't man already "like God"?
Isn't it a good thing to be "like God"?
Does this mean the devil wasn't lying when he said "this will make you like God"?
Isn't it a good thing to "know good and evil"?
With regard to the first, in some sense, yes man is made in God's image, but as mentioned in the commentary on Chapter 2, man was created to develop:
This is specifically played out here in this very chapter, but it's apparent that more development was necessary. God, in his divine will, wished to create man as a creature that develops. This is mirrored in the progress of a new-born person, that they require many years of learning and development before they are ready to truly be who they are.
Mankind was created alone and needed the woman to be able to truly carry out his dominion task. We could also note that there is a substantive difference between newly created Adam and the glorified Christ. One aspect of this difference is that the glorified Christ wears clothes. Thus we can understand that it is in fact true that eating of the fruit, in a sense, made man more like God, in his knowledge of good and evil.
Then, isn't it a good thing to be like God? Yes, Paul reminds us to imitate him as he imitates Christ. Becoming "like Christ" in our character is absolutely a good thing. If God is good, then to be "like God" is good.
It is true that the devil was not lying when he said "when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Verse 22 says that it did make them like God and verse 7 says that their eyes were opened. We do also know that Eve was deceived, both from her own testimony (v13) and later scripture (1 Tim 2:14). It is simply the case that that part of what the serpent said wasn't the lie.
It is a good thing to know good and evil. "Know good and evil" is bible-talk for "be wise". Eve correctly identifies it as such in verse 6, but it is also used that way elsewhere in scripture:
2 Samuel 14:17 And your servant thought, ‘The word of my lord the king will set me at rest,’ for my lord the king is like the angel of God to discern good and evil. The Lord your God be with you!”
1 Kings 3:9 Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?”
Hebrews 5:14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
Knowledge of good and evil is "wisdom", and is an aspect of maturity. The likeness of God is in his judging capacity. This is the state to which man is called, as we will even judge angels (1 Cor 6:3). Christ, the ultimate man, is also the judge of the world (2 Tim 4:1). This fact, combined with the fact that God promised that we will (at some point) have all the trees for food (Gen 1:29), implies that the restriction on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was temporary, just as Adam's lack of a wife was temporary. This is further backed up by the phrasing of God's warning to Adam, that "in the day you eat of it". There is no if in the sentence, and it certainly implies that the eventual consumption of the fruit was intended.
I think it is hard to get around the conclusion that the knowledge, and therefore the greater likeness of image that Adam gained by having the knowledge, was man's intended end in glory. Indeed, otherwise we would expect that the knowledge of good and evil would be removed from us in our glorified state. The error came not in the consumption itself, but in the violation of God's authority to withhold the fruit, for the time being or forever, whichever it pleased him to do.
The wrinkle in this perspective is the fact that God warned them of death to come if they eat of the fruit, or really "when" they eat of the fruit. That may mean that God was simply aware that they were going to fall and declared it in such a way, or it could be that the wording didn't have the same "future-certain" implications in the original Hebrew. So then could they have eaten the fruit without dying? I think God would have removed the "death" aspect of it if he allowed them to eat the fruit. It may have been like the "deep sleep" that Adam went into when Eve was created.
There's probably an aspect of this involving the resurrection, because it seems clear to me also that our resurrected bodies are not like our fleshly bodies. This would seem to also indicate that Adam's body was not a glorified body. That glorification now comes through resurrection, but since in this hypothetical Adam wouldn't be dead, perhaps it would've been in the sense of "we shall not all die but we shall all be changed" (1 Cor 15:51).
Some of this is still unclear to me, and the details of how exactly this hypothetical would have played out are likely unknowable, as they simply did not. However, it seems inescapable that the eating of the fruit did make them more like God in a sense, even though it made them immoral and in that way, less like God.
23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.
Therefore God removes the human race from the garden, and both physically and symbolically cuts them off from the "fruit of life", which is the "bread of life" and ultimately the life of God himself. No longer does life come easily to him, but now is brought about by the sweat of his brow.
There is a theme here in that the fallen natural man is condemned to try and work to achieve life, and it is a hopeless cause. No matter how much one works, life is always temporary and at the whim of God's good pleasure. Death is inevitable, regardless of the quality and quantity of one's work. The only real release from the curse of death comes through the gift of faith, by the Holy Spirit in Christ.
Under Adam, there is hopeless toil; under Christ there is fruitful labor (Phil 1:22). The distinction between a natural sinful man operating under his own "works" (Rom 9:32) and the "good works" under Christ (Eph 2:10) is night and day. One is a desperate effort to bring life to the dead, hopelessly. The other is the fruit of life already granted to us by faith. The work itself might look vaguely similar but it is not.
We will see this dramatically demonstrated in the next chapter.
24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
The entrance to the garden was to the east, and the theme of east and west is established here and reinforced throughout the Pentateuch. Specifically, movement from west to east is symbolic of moving away from God, whereas west to east is toward God. This ends up coming into play with the wise men, coming from the east to pay homage to Christ (Mt 2:1) and various other places. I will endeavor to point it out. Note that it's not quite as single dimensional as that, it's a poetic device, but generally movement from east to west is a "good" thing and movement from west to east is a "bad" thing.
The cherubim and flaming sword utterly block any possible return to God and create the separation between God and man. Sword and fire become the method by which man approaches God through the sacrificial system and the burnt offering, and the cherubim play a big role in the construction of the Tabernacle when we get to Exodus.
For now, the most important thing to understand is the symbolic "cutting off" of mankind from God. They are sent out to the east to work the ground in suffering and pain.
Conclusion to Part III
Again, I need to acknowledge the deep influence of Peter Leithart and James Jordan in the above analysis. I have synthesized it enough and added my own thoughts enough that it is hard to point out specifically where I am borrowing various points from.
I have been accused of worthless speculations in the assertion that God would have allowed Adam to eat of the tree eventually. I would argue that it is the best way to harmonize many areas of scripture that would appear to conflict with the idea that the tree was entirely an evil thing. As an atheist and even as a child I wondered why God would want to keep knowledge from mankind. The fact that it made them to be more in the image of God is debated in many commentaries. The clothing being a result of the fall is inconsistent with glorified Christ; the fact of Adam having an unglorified body is odd.
The theory that the tree was eventually to be given to man in God's own time and that the sin was in grasping for that which God had not yet seen fit to grant appears to make the most sense of these concerns. We find many times in Scripture that being patient and waiting on God is a theme, not that the thing waited for is bad in itself but that God is the authority and grants it in his own time and in his own way.
This is most dramatically illustrated with the kingship of David, who does not take the throne until God sees fit to depose Saul by means of a stray arrow. Of course, Christ then recapitulates this in the temptation of the wilderness, which I have previously written about.2
The fundamental sin of mankind is the refusal to submit to God's authority. In an era that celebrates rebellion and the casting off of tradition and hierarchy, we are deeply in the throes of the devil's work. In our time we see people even rebelling against biology itself in the trans movement. This is the most fundamental rebellion against God, the denial of reality itself. The assertion that my sheer will can overturn reality is a feature of all postmodern thought and it is no surprise that it is taking the most insane routes imaginable.
We must absolutely submit to God in his authority over our lives and over nature and providence. He is the ruler and creator of all of reality and we owe him our full and complete allegiance. Every step that denies or minimizes the role of God as our king and final authority is a step toward madness, insanity, wickedness and death. Every step toward submitting our will to his is the route to life and peace and prosperity.
If we learn nothing else from the tale of Adam and Eve, let it be that the word of God stands apart as our fundamental presupposition of all of existence. No intuition may be allowed to question it. The infallibility of scripture is the bedrock foundation of a Christian worldview and no progress may be truly made before the absolute and unquestioning acceptance of its truth in all its particulars, above any and all objections that might come from our foolish hearts.
We must submit and learn from the word, as it contains everything we need for life and godliness. This is not to entirely devalue non-scriptural sources of enlightenment (as this commentary hopefully is) but to recognize that no amount of scientific knowledge, logical reasoning or lived experience can ever be allowed to stand in opposition to the word of God. We take every thought captive, and make it obedient to Christ, whose mind is recorded for us in the Word.
You can see that Abram was not the eldest son because Terah is 70 years old when he "fathers" his three sons and 205 when he dies, after which Abram leaves Haran at the age of 75. Thus, he is certainly not the firstborn. As for the question of who was: the fact that Terah took Haran's son Lot with them to Haran would appear to mean that Haran was already dead and that Lot was an older grandchild, which is why I think Haran is older than Abram. This is not 100% certain but seems very likely.