Why does God first speak to the man, since the woman sinned first?

Explanation:

Eve is tempted by the serpent and then eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Next, Eve gives the fruit to Adam, and he eats. Then the Lord God confronts Adam and Eve for their sin. God does this by calling out to the man. Given that Eve sinned first, it might seem strange that God speaks first to the man, but there is a reason for this. When we review the larger context of the narrative, we find that even before Eve was created, God commanded the man not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The text states, 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 (Genesis 2:16–17). Adam is given a direct command. Next, God sees that it is not good for the man to be alone, and so he creates Eve Gen (Genesis 2:22). Genesis 2:22 concludes by explaining that the man and woman shall become one flesh, and that Adam and Eve were naked without being ashamed.

The sequence and details of Genesis 2:1–25 are important, because Genesis 3 immediately begins with the serpent’s tempting Eve to disobey the command that God had given to Adam (Genesis 3:1). It is clear from Eve’s initial response to the serpent that she was aware of God’s command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3:2), but she succumbs to the temptation (Genesis 3:6). She then gives the fruit to Adam and he also sins. The two realize they are naked and are ashamed, so they hide. When God confronts the couple, he speaks to Adam first. Given the content of Genesis 2:1–25, this is no surprise. God had originally given the command to Adam, so he carried the greater responsibility to keep it.¹ 

Counterargument:

The argument here is that since the command was entrusted to Adam first, he carried the greater responsibility for keeping it. That is why, even though Eve disobeyed the command first, God confronts Adam first. This argument sounds reasonable except for one problem. After hearing their case, God lays punishment on the guilty parties. He begins with the serpent, then the woman, and then the man (Genesis 3:14–19). If Adam is the most responsible party, we should expect to find him, if not the first to receive punishment, certainly punished before Eve, but he is the last to be addressed by the Lord. Thus, the problem with this argument is that while it can account for the order of confrontation, it cannot account for the order of punishment.

Response to counterargument:

The order of punishment is not as strong an indicator of who bears greater responsibility as the order of confrontation. Who gets punished first is not as important as the fact that, when God initially confronts the human pair, he confronts Adam. Since we know from Genesis 2:24 that the couple was one flesh, and it is only possible to speak to one party at a time, God marks Adam as the family representative by confronting him first. This should not surprise us given that the command was initially entrusted to Adam.

Still, it is interesting to note that the punishment reflects the order of the crime. The serpent was the deceiver, so he is punished at the outset. The serpent’s punishment is followed by Eve’s because she ate from the tree first, and finally Adam is punished. The fact that God confronts Adam first but announces his punishments based on the order of the crime shows that God considered Adam and Eve equals under one family unit. As the representative, Adam is confronted first, but as equals, Eve receives her punishment just as well as Adam does.

Possible weaknesses:

There were only two people for God to address, so God was either going to address Adam first or Eve first. Since they both disobeyed, and both are punished, there may be no literary intent on the part of the author as to why God spoke to Adam before Eve. If this is the case, then while one might argue that Adam holds a greater responsibility than Eve because he was entrusted with the command, this may not be what the author meant to convey by having God speak first to Adam. In other words, while there is an argument for why God spoke to Adam first, the case is not as strong as one might like.

Explanation:

After Eve disobeys the command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, she gives the fruit to her husband, and he also sins. Eve clearly sinned first. When God confronts the couple in the garden, he addresses the man first. This might seem strange because Eve is the one who sinned first. Unfortunately, the text does not explain why Adam was addressed before Eve, which means the reason for the order is inconclusive.² Maybe Eve’s responsibility was subsumed under Adam’s, but since the text does not state it, we cannot know for sure.³

Counterargument:

The fact that the text does not state why the man was confronted first does not entail that we cannot deduce a possible reason. There are many things a text will not state but that can still be deduced. For example, the text never states that Adam told Eve the command, but we can deduce that he did because when she is tempted by the serpent, she reveals knowledge of the command (Genesis 3:3). Similarly, we might deduce why God confronts Adam from the fact that Adam was given the command first. In any case, just because something is not specified directly does not mean we cannot infer plausible explanations.

Response to counterargument:

The point here is not that everything that can be inferred must be directly stated in a text. Such an assertion would undermine the art of narrative, which often draws greater emphasis to certain themes by leaving out specific details. Still, we cannot infer just anything from a text, for such a procedure would mean that a text can mean anything, and if it can mean anything, it ends up meaning nothing. Certain narrative decisions are intended, and others might be a coincidence. Unfortunately, when it comes to why God confronts the man first, there is not enough information in the text to offer an explanation as to why this is the case, or whether the detail is intentional on the author’s part, so the investigation is inconclusive.

Possible weaknesses:

The problem with this view is that it might raise the interpretive bar to the notion that unless an interpretation is self-evident, we cannot find more meaning in the text. While it is true that self-evident interpretations, once understood, are unquestionable, to set such a high interpretive bar is to exclude many of our interpretations. The fact is that interpreting is an art and a science. When an interpretation is not self-evident, our task is to build a case. Even if our case concludes that we cannot know why an author has chosen a certain course with certainty, as in the case of Interpretation 2, we should still offer reasons for why certainty cannot be had. If the only reason for uncertainty is because something is not directly specified, such an argument might not be strong enough.