(44) Why they did not hide themselves in some other place, but in the middle of the trees of the Paradise? (#Ge 3:9). Every thing is not done by sinners with wisdom and sagacity, but it often happens that while thieves are watching for an opportunity of plunder, having no thoughts of the Deity who presides over the world, the booty which is close to them and lying at their feet is by some admirable management wrested from them without delay: and something of this kind took place on the present occasion. For when they ought rather to have fled to a distance from the garden in which their offence had taken place, they still were arrested in the middle of the Paradise itself, in order that they might be convicted of their sin too clearly to find any refuge even in flight itself. And this statement indicates in a figurative manner that every wicked man takes refuge in wickedness, and that every man who is wholly devoted to his passions flies to those passions as to an asylum.
(45) Why God asks Adam, “Where art thou?” when he knows everything: and why he does not also put the same question to the woman? (#Ge 3:10). The expression, “Where art thou?” does not here seem to be a mere interrogatory, but rather a threat and a conviction: “Where art thou now, O man? from how many good things art thou changed? having forsaken immortality and a life of the most perfect happiness, you have become changed to death and misery in which you are buried.” But God did not condescend to put any question to the woman at all, looking upon her as the cause of the evil which had occurred, and as the guide to her husband to a life of shame. But there is an allegorical meaning in this passage, because the principal part is the man, his guide, the mind, having in itself the masculine principle, when it gives ear to any one introduces also the defect of the female part, namely that of the outward sense.
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