Genesis 3:8 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Genesis 3:8
And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
to hear intelligently (often with implication of attent… · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural
voice
ק֨וֹלKol
H6963
a voice or sound · noun, common masculine singular construct
LORD
יְהוָ֧הYah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
God
אֱלֹהִ֛ים'E.lo.Him
H430
gods in the ordinary sense · noun, common masculine plural absolute
walking
מִתְהַלֵּ֥ךְmit.ha.Lekh
H1980
to walk (in a great variety of applications · verb, hithpael active participle, masculine singular absolute
garden
בַּגָּ֖ןba.Gan
H1588
a garden (as fenced) · preposition with the article + noun, common both genders singular absolute
cool
לְר֣וּחַle.Ru.ach
H7307
wind · preposition + noun, common feminine singular construct
day
הַיּ֑וֹםhai.Yom
H3117
a day (as the warm hours) · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
Adam
הָֽאָדָ֜םha.'a.Dam
H120
ruddy i.e. a human being (an individual or the species · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
wife
וְאִשְׁתּ֗וֹve.'ish.To
H802
a woman · conjunction + noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
themselves
וַיִּתְחַבֵּ֨אvai.yit.cha.Be'
H2244
to secrete · conjunction + verb, hithpael sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
presence
מִפְּנֵי֙mi.pe.Nei
H6440
the face (as the part that turns) · preposition + noun, common masculine plural construct
LORD
יְהוָ֣הYah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
God
אֱלֹהִ֔ים'E.lo.Him
H430
gods in the ordinary sense · noun, common masculine plural absolute
amongst
בְּת֖וֹךְbe.Tokh
H8432
a bisection · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct
trees
עֵ֥ץ'etz
H6086
a tree (from its firmness) · noun, common masculine singular construct
garden
הַגָּֽןha.Gan
H1588
a garden (as fenced) · definite article + noun, common both genders singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Jeremiah 23:24 Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the LORD. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the LORD.
Proverbs 15:3 The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.
Hebrews 4:13 Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have…
Job 34:21-22 For his eyes are upon the ways of man, and he seeth all his goings.
Psalms 139:1-12 O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me.
Genesis 3:10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
Jonah 1:9-10 And he said unto them, I am an Hebrew; and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land.
Romans 2:15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Genesis 3:6-8
Here we see what Eve's parley with the tempter ended in. Satan, at length, gains his point, and the strong-hold is taken by his wiles. God tried the obedience of our first parents by forbidding them the tree of knowledge, and Satan does, as it were, join issue with God, and in that very thing undertakes to seduce them into a transgression; and here we find how he prevailed, God permitting it for wise and holy ends.
I. We have here the inducements that moved them to transgress. The woman, being deceived by the tempter's artful management, was ringleader in the transgression, Ti1 2:14. She was first in the fault; and it was the result of her consideration, or rather her inconsideration. 1. She…
they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden--The divine Being appeared in the same manner as formerly--uttering the well-known tones of kindness, walking in some visible form (not running hastily, as one impelled by the influence of angry feelings). How beautifully expressive are these words of the familiar and condescending manner in which He had hitherto held intercourse with the first pair.
in the cool of the day--literally, "the breeze of the day," the evening.
hid themselves amongst the trees of the garden--Shame, remorse, fear--a sense of guilt--feelings to which they had hitherto been strangers disordered their minds and led them to shun Him whose approach they us…
The voice of the Lord - The voice is properly used here, for as God is an infinite Spirit, and cannot be confined to any form, so he can have no personal appearance. It is very likely that God used to converse with them in the garden, and that the usual time was the decline of the day, לרוח היום leruach haiyom, in the evening breeze; and probably this was the time that our first parents employed in the more solemn acts of their religious worship, at which God was ever present. The time for this solemn worship is again come, and God is in his place; but Adam and Eve have sinned, and therefore, instead of being found in the place of worship, are hidden among the trees! Reader, how often has th…
The Church Fathers
Rather they discerned the approach of the Lord by a certain breeze. As soon, therefore, as they had sinned, God appeared to them, producing consciousness of their sin, and calling them to repentance.
It was not only by the patience he exhibited that God wished to help them; he also wished to benefit them by the sound of his feet. God endowed his silent footsteps with sound so that Adam and Eve might be prepared, at that sound, to make supplication before him who made the sound. .
We read in Genesis that when Adam transgressed, when he paid heed to the serpent rather than to God, when he hid himself from the face of God, then God came into the garden and was walking about in the cool of day. Now listen to what the Scripture says. God sought out Adam, not at midday but in the evening. Adam had already lost the sunlight, for his high noon was over.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Adam — Red, a Babylonian word, the generic name for man, having the same meaning in the Hebrew and the Assyrian languages. It was the name given to the first man, whose creation, fall, and subsequent…
Day — The Jews reckoned the day from sunset to sunset (Lev. 23:32). It was originally divided into three parts (Ps. 55:17). “The heat of the day” (1 Sam. 11:11; Neh. 7:3) was at our nine o’clock, and “the…
Devil — (Gr. diabolos), a slanderer, the arch-enemy of man’s spiritual interest (Job 1:6; Rev. 2:10; Zech. 3:1). He is called also “the accuser of the brethen” (Rev. 12:10). In Lev. 17:7 the word “devil” is…
Face — Means simply presence, as when it is recorded that Adam and Eve hid themselves from the “face [R.V., ‘presence’] of the Lord God” (Gen. 3:8; comp. Ex. 33:14, 15, where the same Hebrew word is…
Serpent — (Heb. nahash; Gr. ophis), frequently noticed in Scripture. More than forty species are found in Syria and Arabia. The poisonous character of the serpent is alluded to in Jacob’s blessing on Dan (Gen.…
Sun — (Heb. shemesh), first mentioned along with the moon as the two great luminaries of heaven (Gen. 1:14-18). By their motions and influence they were intended to mark and divide times and seasons. The…
Tree of the knowledge of good and evil — Stood in the midst of the garden of Eden, beside the tree of life (Gen. 2, 3). Adam and Eve were forbidden to take of the fruit which grew upon it. But they disobeyed the divine injunction, and so…
Anthropomorphisms · .Walking — .Walking
Conscience · .Of Adam and Eve, after they sinned — .Of Adam and Eve, after they sinned
Conviction · .Adam and Eve, after their di — .Adam and Eve, after their di
And they heard the voice of the Lord God,.... Which they had heard before, and knew, though perhaps now in another tone, and very terrible, which before was mild and gentle, pleasant and delightful: some by it understand a clap of thunder, sometimes called the voice of the Lord, Psalm 29:3 and the rather because mention is made afterwards of a wind; but rather the voice of the Son of God, the eternal Word, is here meant, who appeared in an human form, as a pledge of his future incarnation, and that not only as a Judge, to arraign, examine, and condemn the parties concerned in this act of disobedience to God, but as a Saviour of men, to whom, as such, he made himself known, as the event shows…
And they heard the voice of the Lord God. As soon as the voice of God sounds, Adam and Eve perceive that the leaves by which they thought themselves well protected are of no avail. Moses here relates nothing which does not remain in human nature, and may be clearly discerned at the present day. The difference between good and evil is engraven on the hearts of all, as Paul teaches, (Romans 2:15;) but all bury the disgrace of their vices under flimsy leaves till God, by his voice, strikes inwardly their consciences. Hence, after God had shaken them out of their torpor, their alarmed consciences compelled them to hear his voice. Moreover, what Jerome translates, at the breeze after midday,' [18…
"Then the eyes of them both were opened" (as the serpent had foretold: but what did they see?), "and they knew that they were naked." They had lost "that blessed blindness, the ignorance of innocence, which knows nothing of nakedness" (Ziegler). The discovery of their nakedness excited shame, which they sought to conceal by an outward covering. "They sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons." The word תּאנה always denotes the fig-tree, not the pisang (Musa paradisiaca), nor the Indian banana, whose leaves are twelve feet long and two feet broad, for there would have been no necessity to sew them together at all. חגרת, περιζώματα, are aprons, worn round the hips. It was here tha…
When the cool evening breezes were blowing: The Hebrew has traditionally been interpreted as referring to the cool part of the day, most likely the evening. Others think that the language refers to a powerful manifestation of God’s presence (a theophany; see Exod 19:16-25; 1 Sam 7:10) as a storm. If this view is correct, the man and the woman were hiding from the sound of the Lord appearing in judgment (see 2 Sam 5:24; Ps 29). • God put trees in the garden as an environment for humanity to enjoy fellowship with God. Now the man and woman used them to evade the divine presence.
Evening, The · Called: Cool of the day — Called: Cool of the day
Fall Of Man · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Fall Of Man, The · Man in consequence of: Estranged from God — Man in consequence of: Estranged from God
Fear, Unholy · A guilty conscience leads to — A guilty conscience leads to
God · .To Adam — .To Adam
Innocency · Contrasted with guilt, compare — Contrasted with guilt, compare
Man · Disobeyed God by eating part of the forbidden fruit — Disobeyed God by eating part of the forbidden fruit
Serpent · Satan appears to Eve in the form of — Satan appears to Eve in the form of
Sin · .No es — .No es
Temptation · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Women · Fall of, and curse upon — Fall of, and curse upon
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
