(37) Why the woman first touched the tree and ate of its fruit, and the man afterwards, receiving it from her? (#Ge 3:6). The words used first of all, by their own intrinsic force, assert that it was suitable that immortality and every good thing should be represented as under the power of the man, and death and every evil under that of the woman. But with reference to the mind, the woman, when understood symbolically, is sense, and the man is intellect. Moreover, the outward senses do of necessity touch those things which are perceptible by them; but it is through the medium of the outward senses that things are transmitted to the mind. For the outward senses are influenced by the objects which are presented to them; and the intellect by the outward senses.
(38) What is the meaning of the expression, “And she gave it to her husband to eat with her?” (#Ge 3:6). What has been just said bears on this point also, since the time is nearly one and the same in which the outward senses are influenced by the object which is presented to them, and the intellect has an impression made on it by the outward senses.
(39) What is the meaning of the expression, “And the eyes of both of them were opened?” (#Ge 3:7). That they were not created blind is manifest even from this fact that as all other things, both animals and plants, were created in perfection, so also man must have been adorned with the things which are his most excellent parts, namely, eyes. And we may especially prove this, because a little while before the earth-born Adam was giving names to all the animals on the earth. Therefore it is perfectly plain that he saw them before doing so. Unless, indeed, Moses used the expression “eyes” in a figurative sense for the vision of the soul, by which alone the perception of good and evil, of what is elegant or unsightly, and, in fact, of all contrary natures, arise. But, if the eye is to be taken separately as counsel, which is called the warning of the understanding, then again there is a separate eye, which is a certain something devoid of sound reason, which is called opinion.
(40) What is the meaning of the expression, “Because they knew that they were naked?” (Genesis 3:7). They first arrived at the knowledge of this fact, that is to say, of their nakedness, after they had eaten of the forbidden fruit. Therefore, opinion was like the beginning of wickedness, when they perceived that they had not as yet used any covering, inasmuch as all parts of the universe are immortal and incorruptible; but they themselves immediately found themselves in need of some corruptible coverings made with hands. But this knowledge was in the nakedness itself, not as having been in itself the cause of any change, but because their mind now conceived a novelty unlike the rest of the universal world.
(41) Why they sewed fig-leaves into girdles? (#Ge 3:8). They did this in the first place, because the fruit of the fig is very pleasant and agreeable to the taste. Therefore the sacred historian here, by a symbolical expression, indicates those who sew together and join pleasures to pleasures by every means and contrivance imaginable. Therefore they bind them around the place where the parts of generation are seated, as that is the instrument of important transactions. And they do this, secondly, because although the fruit of the fig-tree is, as I have already said, sweeter than any other, yet its leaves are harder. And, therefore, Moses here wishes by this symbol to intimate that the motions of pleasure are slippery and smooth in appearance, but that they, nevertheless, are in reality hard, so that it is impossible that he who feels them should be delighted, unless he was previously sorrowful, and he will again become sorrowful. For to be always sorrowing is a melancholy thing between a double grief, the one being at its beginning, and the other coming before the first is ended.
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