7 Ways That Eve Distorted The Word Of God

Let’s go back to Genesis 2:16-17 to review exactly what God said and then we’ll compare it to the distortion Eve came up with: “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’”

There are seven ways Eve distorted what God said:

• She omitted the phrase “surely eat” and replaced it with “we may eat.” God wanted them to eat with great delight to their heart’s content, but she downplayed God’s gracious permission. It’s as if she said, “Yeah, I guess we have some food to eat if we get really hungry.”

• She omitted the phrase “every tree of the garden” and just said, “of the fruit of the trees in the garden.” She characterized God as a kill-joy instead of the good God who graciously allowed them to eat as much as they wanted from every tree, except one.

• She adopted the serpent’s preferred name for God: “But God said…” instead of calling Him “LORD God.” Once we depersonalize God, it’s much easier to do whatever we want. If we think He is far away and uninvolved, it’s easy to think we can get away with sin. BTW, as soon as God goes looking for the fallen couple in the garden, the compound name Yahweh Elohim is used again, showing how powerful and personal He is.

• She did not use the correct name for the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” and simply called it “the tree.”

• She used the negative word “neither,” which means, “no or not” to emphasize what they can’t do.

• She added to God’s prohibition with the phrase “neither shall you touch it,” which God never said. Eve magnified God’s strictness, implying that even an inadvertent slip would lead to death. This man-made restriction is the first instance of legalism in the Bible.

• She omitted “in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” and replaced it with the softer phrase, “lest you die,” which changed a certainty to a possibility. Eve weakened the penalty for disobedience and diluted certain judgment.

Steven Cole writes: “Notice how Eve is drawn into Satan’s line of thinking. Her reply magnifies the strictness of God on the one hand but softens His threat of judgment on the other…she is falling into Satan’s trap by changing the character of God to be more to her liking…Eve was already beginning to waver. The fall really took place before she ate the fruit.”

Eve diminished, added to, subtracted from, and softened God’s Word. This made it easier to disregard what God had said.

- Brill Bill