It is clear that Eve listens to the serpent and does not radically turn away from him. She does not immediately reject the devil indignantly out of the love that the Lord has shown her and Adam from the beginning. She now looks at the tree of knowledge of good and evil. There are three things that entice her based on the serpent’s words to this tree and its fruit. Those three elements are:
• The fruit on the tree looks really nice to eat.
• The tree itself is also very beautiful.
• Precisely because of the two things mentioned above, it seems that the devil is right in everything he says.
The desire to eat the fruits of this tree arises in Eve. It is the yearning to supposedly become wise (by eating of this fruit) and gain a position next to God instead of having to live in service with him as his child. Then the worst thing that ever took place in history happens. It is an unmitigated disaster. Eve eats from the tree from which God had said that they should not eat. It is not only Eve who acts here. Adam was next to her and watched it happen. When she gives some of the fruit of the forbidden tree to Adam, he does not choose to go against his wife and obey the Lord out of love for the Lord. No, he follows his wife. Adam, who represents mankind and as such is the covenant head, rises up against God (see also Romans 5:12–21; 1 Corinthians 15:22).
Sometimes you notice that people are still susceptible to the argument that, after eating from the tree, man did become wise in the sense that man would know good and evil just like God. Yet that, too, is a complete lie. For the Lord knows evil outside of himself! The Lord has experienced the rebellion of the angels who were led by the devil. He sees that the devil and the evil angels seek and do evil. Yet evil has never become a part of the Lord. He is a complete enemy of all evil. Man comes to know evil in a very different way after the fall. Like the devil, man takes on an evil nature in himself, and becomes a sinful being.
6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.