Genesis 3

reviewed Worded for an eighth-grade reader; the reading is the Translation's. Read the Translation with its notes.

1 The serpent was more shrewd than any wild animal the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Is it really so, that God said, 'You must not eat from every tree in the garden'?" 2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden. 3 But God said, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden. You must not touch it, or you will die.'" 4 The serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. 5 God knows that on the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened. You will be like elohim, knowing good and bad." 6 The woman saw that the tree was good for food. She saw that it was a craving for the eyes, and that the tree was desirable for gaining insight. So she took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made belts for themselves. 8 They heard the voice of the LORD God walking about in the garden in the wind of the day. The man and his wife hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

9 But the LORD God called to the human and said to him, "Where are you?" 10 He said, "I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked. So I hid." 11 He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?" 12 The man said, "The woman you gave to be with me—she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate it." 13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent tricked me, and I ate." 14 The LORD God said to the serpent, "You have done this. So you are cursed from all the livestock and from all the wild animals. You will crawl on your belly, and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 15 I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel." 16 To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pain and your pregnancies. In labor you will give birth to children. Your longing will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

17 To the man he said, "You listened to the voice of your wife. You ate from the tree I commanded you not to eat from. So the ground is cursed because of you. In pain you will eat from it all the days of your life. 18 It will grow thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 You will eat bread by the sweat of your face until you return to the ground, because you were taken from it; for you are dust, and to dust you will return." 20 The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. 21 The LORD God made tunics of skin for the man and his wife, and he clothed them.

22 Then the LORD God said, "Look, the human has become like one of us, knowing good and bad. Now he might reach out his hand and take fruit from the tree of life too, and eat it, and live forever—" 23 So the LORD God sent him out of the garden of Eden to work the ground he had been taken from. 24 He drove the man out. On the east side of the garden of Eden he stationed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned this way and that. They were there to guard the way to the tree of life.