3 The serpent was the craftiest of all the creatures the Lord God had made. So the serpent came to the woman. “Really?” he asked. “None of the fruit in the garden? God says you mustn’t eat any of it?”

^2-3 “Of course we may eat it,” the woman told him. “It’s only the fruit from the tree at the center of the garden that we are not to eat. God says we mustn’t eat it or even touch it, or we will die.”

⁴ “That’s a lie!” the serpent hissed. “You’ll not die! ⁵ God knows very well that the instant you eat it you will become like him, for your eyes will be opened—you will be able to distinguish good from evil!”

⁶ The woman was convinced. How lovely and fresh looking it was! And it would make her so wise! So she ate some of the fruit and gave some to her husband, and he ate it too. ⁷ And as they ate it, suddenly they became aware of their nakedness, and were embarrassed. So they strung fig leaves together to cover themselves around the hips.

¹¹ “Who told you you were naked?” the Lord God asked. “Have you eaten fruit from the tree I warned you about?”

¹² “Yes,” Adam admitted, “but it was the woman you gave me who brought me some, and I ate it.”

¹³ Then the Lord God asked the woman, “How could you do such a thing?”

“The serpent tricked me,” she replied.

¹⁷ And to Adam, God said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate the fruit when I told you not to, I have placed a curse upon the soil. All your life you will struggle to extract a living from it.

²² Then the Lord said, “Now that the man has become as we are, knowing good from bad, what if he eats the fruit of the Tree of Life and lives forever?”

²⁴ Thus God expelled him, and placed mighty angels at the east of the Garden of Eden, with a flaming sword to guard the entrance to the Tree of Life.