The Message Prayerful Reading Bible Sampler - Flipbook - Page 25
7 G enesis 3
23-25 The Man said,
“Finally! Bone of my bone,
flesh of my flesh!
Name her Woman
for she was made from Man.”
Therefore a man leaves his father and
mother and embraces his wife.
They become one flesh.
The two of them, the Man and his
Wife, were naked, but they felt no
shame.
3
1 The serpent was clever, more clever
than any wild animal God had made.
He spoke to the Woman: “Do I understand
that God told you not to eat from any tree in
the garden?”
2-3 The Woman said to the serpent, “Not at
all. We can eat from the trees in the garden.
It’s only about the tree in the middle of the
garden that God said, ‘Don’t eat from it; don’t
even touch it or you’ll die.’”
4-5 The serpent told the Woman, “You won’t
die. God knows that the moment you eat from
that tree, y
ou’ll see w
hat’s r eally going on.
You’ll be just like God, knowing e verything,
ranging all the way from good to evil.”
6 When the Woman saw that the tree
looked like good eating and realized what she
would get out of i t—she’d know e verything!—
she took and ate the fruit and then gave some
to her husband, and he ate.
7 Immediately the two of them did “see
what’s really going on”—saw themselves
naked! They sewed fig leaves together as
makeshift clothes for themselves.
8 When they heard the sound of God strolling in the garden in the evening breeze, the
Man and his Wife hid in the trees of the garden, hid from God.
9 God called to the Man: “Where are you?”
10 He said, “I heard you in the garden and
I was afraid because I was naked. And I hid.”
11 God said, “Who told you that you were
naked? Did you eat from that tree I told you
not to eat from?”
12 The Man said, “The Woman you gave me
as a companion, she gave me fruit from the
tree, and, yes, I ate it.”
God said to the Woman, “What is this that
you’ve done?”
13 “The serpent seduced me,” she said,
“and I ate.”
14-15 God told the serpent:
“Because you’ve done this, you’re cursed,
cursed beyond all cattle and wild
animals,
Cursed to slink on your belly
and eat dirt all your life.
I’m declaring war between you and the
Woman,
between your offspring and hers.
He’ll wound your head,
you’ll wound his heel.”
16 He told the Woman:
“I’ll multiply your pains in childbirth;
you’ll give birth to your babies in pain.
You’ll want to please your husband,
but he’ll lord it over you.”
17-19 He told the Man:
“Because you listened to your wife
and ate from the tree
That I commanded you not to eat from,
‘Don’t eat from this tree,’
The very ground is cursed because of
you;
getting food from the ground
Will be as painful as having babies is for
your wife;
you’ll be working in pain all your life
long.
The ground will sprout thorns and weeds,
you’ll get your food the hard way,
Planting and tilling and harvesting,
sweating in the fields from dawn to
dusk,
Until you return to that ground yourself,
dead and buried;
you started out as dirt, you’ll end up
dirt.”
20 The Man, known as Adam, named his
wife Eve because she was the mother of all
the living.
21 God made leather clothing for Adam
and his wife and dressed them.
22 God said, “The Man has become like one
of us, capable of knowing everything, ranging from good to evil. What if he now should
reach out and take fruit from the T
ree-of-Life
and eat, and live forever? N
ever—this cannot
happen!”
23-24 So God expelled them from the Garden of Eden and sent them to work the
ground, the same dirt out of which they’d
been made. He threw them out of the garden
and stationed angel-cherubim and a revolving sword of fire east of it, guarding the path
to the Tree-of-Life.