Genesis 3

Easy-to-Read Version

The Beginning of Sin

3 The snake was the most clever of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. The snake spoke to the woman and said, “Woman, did God really tell you that you must not eat from any tree in the garden?”

² The woman answered the snake, “No, we can eat fruit from the trees in the garden. ³ But there is one tree we must not eat from. God told us, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden. You must not even touch that tree, or you will die.’”

⁴ But the snake said to the woman, “You will not die. ⁵ God knows that if you eat the fruit from that tree you will learn about good and evil, and then you will be like God!”

⁶ The woman could see that the tree was beautiful and the fruit looked so good to eat. She also liked the idea that it would make her wise. So she took some of the fruit from the tree and ate it. Her husband was there with her, so she gave him some of the fruit, and he ate it.

⁷ Then it was as if their eyes opened, and they saw things differently. They saw that they were naked. So they got some fig leaves, sewed them together, and wore them for clothes.

⁸ During the cool part of the day, the Lord God was walking in the garden. The man and the woman heard him, and they hid among the trees in the garden. ⁹ The Lord God called to the man and said, “Where are you?”

¹⁰ The man said, “I heard you walking in the garden, and I was afraid. I was naked, so I hid.”

¹¹ God said to the man, “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat fruit from that special tree? I told you not to eat from that tree!”

¹² The man said, “The woman you put here with me gave me fruit from that tree. So I ate it.”

¹³ Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What have you done?”

She said, “The snake tricked me, so I ate the fruit.”

¹⁴ So the Lord God said to the snake,

¹⁶ Then God said to the woman,

¹⁷ Then God said to the man,

²⁰ Adam^[c] named his wife Eve.^[d] He gave her this name because Eve would be the mother of everyone who ever lived.

²¹ The Lord God used animal skins and made some clothes for the man and his wife. Then he put the clothes on them.

²² The Lord God said, “Look, the man has become like us—he knows about good and evil. And now the man might take the fruit from the tree of life. If the man eats that fruit, he will live forever.”

²³ So the Lord God forced the man out of the Garden of Eden to work the ground he was made from. ²⁴ God forced the man to leave the garden. Then he put Cherub angels and a sword of fire at the entrance to the garden to protect it. The sword flashed around and around, guarding the way to the tree of life.