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
Genesis 4:9 And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper?
Genesis 16:8 And he said, Hagar, Sarai’s maid, whence camest thou? and whither wilt thou go? And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai.
Genesis 11:5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
Genesis 18:20-21 And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous;
Joshua 7:17-19 And he brought the family of Judah; and he took the family of the Zarhites: and he brought the family of the Zarhites man by man; and Zabdi…
Revelation 20:12-13 And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: an…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Genesis 3:9-10
We have here the arraignment of these deserters before the righteous Judge of heaven and earth, who, though he is not tied to observe formalities, yet proceeds against them with all possible fairness, that he may be justified when he speaks. Observe here,
I. The startling question with which God pursued Adam and arrested him: Where art thou? Not as if God did not know where he was; but thus he would enter the process against him. "Come, where is this foolish man?" Some make it a bemoaning question: "Poor Adam, what has become of thee?" "Alas for thee!" (so some read it) "How art thou fallen, Lucifer, son of the morning! Thou that wast my friend and favourite, whom I had done so much for, and…
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
What then does he mean by "Adam, where art thou?" Does he not mean "in what circumstance" are you; not, "in what place?" It is therefore not a question but a reproof. From what condition of goodness, beatitude and grace, he means to say, have you fallen into this state of misery? You have forsaken eternal life. You have entombed yourself in the ways of sin and death.
For in the first stirring of the disobedient motion which was felt in the flesh of the disobedient soul, and which caused our first parents to cover their shame, one death indeed is experienced, that, namely, which occurs when God forsakes the soul. This was intimated by the words He uttered, when the man, stupefied by fear, had hid himself, "Adam, where art thou?"—words which He used not in ignorance of inquiry, but warning him to consider where he was, since God was not with him.
And the Lord God called Adam and said to him: Where are you? Certainly, he did not ask out of ignorance but admonished by rebuking, so that he might consider where he was wherein God was not. For now that he had eaten from the forbidden tree, he was dead in the death of the soul, when it is said that his life had deserted her. "And this indeed pertains to a certain meaning, that just as the command was given to the man through whom it would reach the woman; so the man is first questioned. For the command from the Lord comes through the man to the woman: but the sin from the devil comes through the woman to the man. These things are full of mystical meanings, not by those in whom they were done, but by the most powerful wisdom of God doing this through them; however, let us not now express the meanings, but defend the deeds."
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…
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…
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.…
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…
Conviction · .Adam and Eve, after their di — .Adam and Eve, after their di
Disobedience To God · .Of Adam and Eve, eating the forbid — .Of Adam and Eve, eating the forbid
Escape · NONE, FROM THE — NONE, FROM THE
Fall Of Man · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
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
And the Lord God called unto Adam,.... The Jerusalem Targum is, the Word of the Lord God, the second Person in the Trinity; and this is the voice he is said to have heard before:
and said unto him, where art thou? which is said, not as ignorant of the place where he was, nor of what he had done, nor of the circumstances he was in, or of the answers he would make; but rather it shows all the reverse, that he knew where he was, what he had done, and in what condition he was, and therefore it was in vain to seek to hide himself: or as pitying his case, saying, "alas for thee" (u), as some render the words, into what a miserable plight hast thou brought thyself, by listening to the tempter, and…
And the Lord God called unto Adam. They had been already smitten by the voice of God, but they lay confounded under the trees, until another voice more effectually penetrated their minds. Moses says that Adam was called by the Lord. Had he not been called before? The former, however, was a confused sound, which had no sufficient force to press upon the conscience. Therefore God now approaches nearer, and from the tangled thicket of trees [185] draws him, however unwilling and resisting, forth into the midst. In the same manner we also are alarmed at the voice of God, as soon as his law sounds in our ears; but presently we snatch at shadows, until he, calling upon us more vehemently, compels…
The man could not hide himself from God. "Jehovah God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?" Not that He was ignorant of his hiding-place, but to bring him to a confession of his sin. And when Adam said that he had hidden himself through fear of his nakedness, and thus sought to hide the sin behind its consequences, his disobedience behind the feeling of shame; this is not to be regarded as a sign of peculiar obduracy, but easily admits of a psychological explanation, viz., that at the time he actually thought more of his nakedness and shame than of his transgression of the divine command, and his consciousness of the effects of his sin was keener than his sense of the sin its…
Where are you? The true intent of this rhetorical question is revealed in the man’s answer (3:10). The real question was, why are you hiding? (cp. 4:9-10). • I was afraid because I was naked: Modesty was not the issue. The shame brought on by rebellion drove Adam and his wife to hide. Possibly they also feared punishment (see study note on 3:8).
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).
