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Scholia on Genesis: Genesis 3:11

June 25, 2024

“Who told you that you were naked?”

We perhaps hear God speaking in an angry tone, which is unfortunate, since the text indicates no such thing.  The fact that no one answers the question should be taken, not as an indication of God’s ‘impatience’, but as representing fearful silence on the part of Adam and Eve.

Who told them that they were naked?  No one, of course; they simply became aware of this terrible fact.  They needed no one to tell them; nor does God need to find out.  Again, I suspect that we tend to hear His following question (“Have you eaten…?”) as God piecing together the crime, but this is clearly absurd.  Why, then, does God ask this?

God does all things for the purpose of teaching and forming His creatures toward fullness of life and understanding.  Adam and Eve, pondering this question, would have to answer as we did above:  “No one told us that we were naked.  We discovered it after eating the fruit.”  It is true: they now know good and evil for themselves.

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