The serpent opens with a question: 1"Did God actually say" that you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? God had said something much more generous, that the man could eat from every tree but one. The serpent turns a wide gift into a narrow prohibition and invites Eve to correct him. She does, and her correction slips in two places. She adds a fence God never built, 3"neither shall you touch it," and she softens the penalty to "lest you die." Once she is weighing God's word in the serpent's company, the ground has already shifted, and the flat contradiction arrives: 4"You will not surely die."
Verse 6 gives three appeals in a single breath. The tree was 6"good for food," "a delight to the eyes," and "to be desired to make one wise." Appetite, beauty, and the wish to know more than she was given. The end of that verse matters too. She gave some to her husband, who was with her. Adam stood beside her for the whole exchange and said nothing. Centuries later, another Adam faced appetite, display, and the offer of a kingdom in a wilderness, and where the first Adam reached out and took, this one stood and refused (Matthew 4:1-11).
The serpent's promise comes true in the narrowest sense. 7"The eyes of both were opened," and what they see is their own exposure. They sew fig leaves together, and when they 8"heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden," they hide among the trees. The couple who had nothing to hide have just learned how to hide.
God's response is the hinge of the passage. He calls out, 9"Where are you?" He knows the answer. The hiding was over before it started, since nothing in the garden could shelter them from the one who made it. The question is a summons from a God who comes looking for people who have just run from him, and it gives them room to step out and say it. Adam begins honestly: 10"I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself." Then his answer slides. He blames 12"the woman whom you gave to be with me," a sentence that reaches past Eve to God's own gift. Eve points at the serpent: 13"The serpent deceived me." Nobody in the garden owns it in a single sentence. Sin's first fruit was hiding, and its second was blame.
The God who asked "Where are you?" in the cool of the day is the same God who, in the fullness of time, came into the world he made to find people who had gone into hiding. Every hiding place since Eden has been answered by a God who keeps coming.
Ask what you are hiding this morning, and hear the question as an invitation. He already knows where you are, and he is asking you to come out.
Prayer
Father, we know what it is to stay too long in a conversation we should have walked away from, and to let a small question about your word become a slow drift. Forgive us for hiding and for blaming. Thank you that you still ask where we are because you are still willing to come looking. Meet us this morning in whatever we have kept from you, and call us out into the open. In Jesus' name, amen.