Eve was a Risk Taker, Not a Temptress or Victim

Significantly, God's edict that man must till the soil to bring forth food follows immediately after his pronouncement on woman's role—"He shall rule over you"—linking their roles as complementary. It is clear that Adam and Eve's relationship is about collaboration, not subjugation. Woman is to bring forth life with pain, but she will also derive satisfaction from watching her offspring mature. Man is to eke out a living by the sweat of his brow, but he will also be feeding his family with a sense of accomplishment.

The humans' reactions to God's judgments go unrecorded. God's devastating final punishment—"For dust you are, and to dust you shall return"—is followed by an apparent non sequitur: "The man named his wife Eve [Hava in Hebrew], because she was the mother of all the living."

This name highlights Eve as the archetype for all women, whose unique role is to give life. It is the first of rare husband-to-wife compliments in the Bible; it is also hardly the contrite admission of guilt that might be expected in response to God's stern edicts. Instead, man and woman participate in the ritual act of giving a name, which suggests Adam's appreciation for his wife's action. He has stopped blaming her.

The next sentence exemplifies God's compassion and mercy. He upgrades the fig leaves they wear to "garments of skins for Adam and his wife." His gift of clothing protects his children from the elements outside the garden. The garments also portend the beginnings of aesthetic appreciation and, with it, civilization.

Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden is necessitated by a second tree in the garden, one previously mentioned but playing no part in the story thus far. God, mysteriously using the royal we, observes: "Now that man has become like one of us, what if he should stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever!" Now that man has breached the previous demarcation by gaining knowledge of good and evil, the Creator is determined to draw a line between the human and the divine; human beings are henceforth destined to live as mortals. God not only banishes Adam "to till the soil from which he was taken" but also "drove the man out, and stationed east of the Garden of Eden the cherubim and the fiery ever-turning sword, to guard the way to the tree of life."