Thoughts/Discussion questions interspersed throughout! (Starting at day 3, they will be at the bottom.)
One sentence summary: God creates the first humans Adam and Eve along with all animals and places them in a perfect garden paradise named Eden, they listen to the devil and eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they were commanded not to eat, and God bars them from Eden and the tree of life so that they do not live forever in their fallen state.
It starts! Created by God, man begins his existence in a perfect paradise, living in uninterrupted bliss... for two chapters. It only takes three for us to fall from grace.
We all know the story. The ancient serpent and a deception. The first doubt and unbelief. The fall from perfection. Maybe you have have heard of the idea that animals talked before the Fall, as Eve didn't seem surprised that a serpent was talking to her. What are your thoughts on this? Did certain animal species other than the snake cooperate with the Satan, the evil one? We don't get any backstory here on where he comes from or why he turned evil (that comes later in Scripture and in the book of Enoch.)
How did Eve even know the word "deceive" when she blamed the devil for her choice to eat the forbidden fruit? Could she telepathize when she spoke to God? Or did she have to make it up on the spot? Interesting...
What happened to the tree of life? An angel guarded the way with a flaming sword so that Adam and Eve would not be condemned to eternal life in their corrupted state. Did it remain until the Great Flood? Was it taken up into heaven where it will come down again after the Resurrection? What about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? There is a site in Iraq that claims a dead tree as the original tree, but how would it have survived the Flood? So many questions!
It is interesting to note that all the great evils that have come into the world were and still are a result of our trying to get our life source (eating) from the wrong "tree." There is a principle in Scripture that can be seen throughout: first, the natural; then the spiritual (things happen first in the natural world that represent what is to come spiritually.) We perpetually eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil by trying to decide for ourselves what is right apart from God's revealed Word. I think chapter three is the saddest chapter in the Bible. What a way to start! But God still has a plan...