Knox Bible

1

Of all the beasts which the Lord God had made, there was none that could match the serpent in cunning. It was he who said to the woman, What is this command God has given you, not to eat the fruit of any tree in the garden?

2

To which the woman answered, We can eat the fruit of any tree in the garden

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except the tree in the middle of it; it is this God has forbidden us to eat or even to touch, on pain of death.

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And the serpent said to her, What is this talk of death?

5

God knows well that as soon as you eat this fruit your eyes will be opened, and you yourselves will be like gods, knowing good and evil.

6

And with that the woman, who saw that the fruit was good to eat, saw, too, how it was pleasant to look at and charmed the eye,✻ took some fruit from the tree and ate it; and she gave some to her husband, and he ate with her.

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Then the eyes of both were opened, and they became aware of their nakedness; so they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves girdles.

8

And now they heard the voice of the Lord God, as he walked in the garden in the cool of the evening; whereupon Adam and his wife hid themselves in the garden, among the trees.

9

And the Lord God called to Adam; Where art thou? he asked.

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I heard thy voice, Adam said, in the garden, and I was afraid, because of my nakedness, so I hid myself.

11

And the answer came, Why, who told thee of thy nakedness? Or hadst thou eaten of the tree, whose fruit I forbade thee to eat?

12

The woman, said Adam, whom thou gavest me to be my companion, she it was who offered me fruit from the tree, and so I came to eat it.

13

Then the Lord God said to the woman, What made thee do this? The serpent, she said, beguiled me, and so I came to eat.

14

And the Lord God said to the serpent, For this work of thine, thou, alone among all the cattle and all the wild beasts, shalt bear a curse; thou shalt crawl on thy belly and eat dust all thy life long.

15

And I will establish a feud between thee and the woman, between thy offspring and hers; she is to crush thy head, while thou dost lie in ambush at her heels.✻

16

To the woman he said, Many are the pangs, many are the throes I will give thee to endure; with pangs thou shalt give birth to children, and thou shalt be subject to thy husband; he shall be thy lord.

17

And to Adam he said, Thou hast listened to thy wife’s counsel, and hast eaten the fruit I forbade thee to eat; and now, through thy act, the ground is under a curse. All the days of thy life thou shalt win food from it with toil;

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thorns and thistles it shall yield thee, this ground from which thou dost win thy food.

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Still thou shalt earn thy bread with the sweat of thy brow, until thou goest back into the ground from which thou wast taken; dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

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The name which Adam gave his wife was Eve, Life, because she was the mother of all living men.

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And now the Lord provided garments for Adam and his wife, made out of skins, to clothe them.

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He said, too, Here is Adam become like one of ourselves, with knowledge of good and evil; now he has only to lift his hand and gather fruit to eat from the tree of life as well, and he will live endlessly.

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So the Lord God drove him out from that garden of delight, to cultivate the ground from which he came;

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banished Adam, and posted his Cherubim before the garden of delight, with a sword of fire that turned this way and that, so that he could reach the tree of life no longer.