What have I done?

Anna Lea Merritt painted “Eve Repentant” as a memorial to her husband who died within a year of their marriage. Perhaps that’s why it evokes such a sense of grief and loss. In the Genesis 3 account, Eve doesn’t express her sorrow to God for eating the serpent-kissed apple and sharing it with her husband. I wish she did. When God asks her what she’s done, she simply replies, “The serpent deceived me and I ate.”

Adam doesn’t do any better. “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.” Both of them shift the blame to someone other than themselves. Rationally, that’s fairly easy to do. Emotionally, it’s a different story. Imagine the Lord, going for an evening stroll in the garden he created. The two human beings he had fashioned for the delight of each other and for himself are there, too, but instead of rushing to greet him they are hiding among the trees, ashamed to face him.

I’ve been there, haven’t you?

The painting of Eve shows her alone, bowed over, with the partially eaten apple laying beside her. Her face is hidden from us, but I’m sure there were tears in her eyes. The Father had formed her from the side of Adam to be his “ezer,” a word usually translated “helper,” which comes from two Hebrew root words meaning “to rescue, to save, to be strong.” It is often used of God, as in “You are my ezer and my deliverer” (Psalm 70:5). Eve was created to be a strong woman, an equal strength to Adam, but it is not her strength we see here. It is her humility, her recognition of her own sin, her sense of loss at hurting the One who loved her most—God, not Adam. If I had been her, I’m sure I’d repeat over and over to myself, “What have I done? What have I done? Why?” Isn’t that what we always say when we do the wrong thing, falling far short of who we know we could be?

Yet God shows his grace to both Adam and Eve, in spite of their eating fruit from the only forbidden tree in the garden. They don’t escape their sin without consequences and neither do we. They are driven out of the garden to pursue purpose and meaning in a fallen world. But it is the serpent who slithers away, having been told by God that Jesus, the future offspring of the woman, would ultimately crush his head, a promise fulfilled in Christ’s victory over Satan. Adam and Eve are given garments of skin to cover their shame, and Adam memorializes Eve’s significance to him and the human race by naming her Eve, the mother of all the living. God’s grace is always there for us, if we acknowledge our sin and turn to him.

When Eve sobbed in the garden, it was Jesus who dried her tears. Let him dry yours, too.