Parshat Bereshit6 min read

Abraham Looked Into the Picture and Saw Eden From Outside

God tells Abraham to look again at the cosmic picture. He sees Adam and Eve, a vast figure at the serpent's side, and the fruit changing hands.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Second Looking
  2. Adam as He First Was
  3. The Fruit and Who Held It
  4. What This Meant for Abraham's Descendants
  5. The Fruit the Rabbis Argued Over

The Second Looking

"Now look again in the picture," God said to Abraham. "See who it is that seduced Eve and what is the fruit of the tree. You will know what shall be and how it shall be for your seed among the people at the end of the days of the age."

Abraham had already looked down through the six heavens and seen the whole world at once: the sea, the garden, the living creatures, the fire below, the ungodliness of human souls alongside their righteous deeds. Now he was being directed to look at a specific scene within the picture, to focus on the moment the whole human story had turned.

He looked into the picture, and his eyes were drawn to the side of the Garden of Eden.

Adam as He First Was

He saw a man who was vast in height and terrifying in breadth, incomparable in appearance. This was Adam, whose stature when first created reached from one end of the world to the other.

The tradition insisted on this scale. The Adam who had fallen was not a small figure in a small garden. He was the size of the world because he had been created to encompass it, to be the image of the divine in dimensions large enough to fill creation. When he stood in Eden before the transgression, he was a figure whose shadow touched every boundary. What happened in Eden happened to something of that size.

Standing beside Adam was a figure of comparable vastness. It was Azazel in a form that fit the garden's scale: terrifying in its own proportion, standing at the tree, holding a fruit.

The Fruit and Who Held It

Abraham saw Eve beside Adam. He saw the serpent, with its feet and the form of a man, standing behind Azazel, both of them at the base of the tree of knowledge. Azazel held the fruit. He was the one passing it to Eve.

This is the Apocalypse of Abraham's specific contribution to the story of Eden: Azazel was not the serpent. He was the power behind it. The serpent was the visible agent; the Watcher was the concealed one. When Eve took the fruit, she was taking it from the hand of something larger and older than the snake, from a force that had been operating behind the visible mechanism of the transgression all along.

The rabbis who read the Eden story had always sensed something beyond the serpent. The creature was too clever, too articulate, too strategically effective to be simply a snake that had made a bad decision one afternoon. The Apocalypse gave that intuition a name and a figure: here was the force standing behind the serpent's speech, holding the fruit before Eve's hand reached for it.

What This Meant for Abraham's Descendants

God was not showing Abraham the scene in Eden to inform him about the past. He was showing him the connection between that moment and the future of Abraham's seed. What Azazel had done to Eve was the prototype of what he would continue to do to human beings across generations. The same force, the same method, the same offering of something that appeared to be knowledge but was actually entanglement.

When God said: you will know what shall be for your seed among the people at the end of the days, He was pointing at the Azazel visible in the picture and saying: this is what your descendants will be contending with. Not a serpent. Not a simple temptation. A cosmic force whose original act you are now seeing clearly for the first time.

Abraham had already refused Azazel once, at the sacrifice on the heights, when the bird landed on the carcasses and told him to run. Now he was being shown why Azazel had been there, what that figure's history with humanity was, and what it intended for the generations that would descend from the man in the vision.

The Fruit the Rabbis Argued Over

What was the fruit? The tradition offered many answers. Rabbi Meir said wheat, because knowledge and wheat bread were connected in everyday speech. Rabbi Nehemia said fig, because the fig leaves the couple used to cover themselves suggested they had taken the very thing that later clothed them. Others said grape, because wine was the first drink that stripped men of their judgment, and what the fruit had done to Adam's judgment was precisely the same thing. Some said etrog, the citron, whose fragrance matched the quality of what Eden held.

No answer settled the question. The rabbis preserved all the suggestions without choosing among them, which was itself a kind of answer: the fruit was whatever transgression looks like from the inside, whatever the thing is that appears to offer more than one already has and delivers less than one already had.

AbrahamAdam EveAzazelGarden Of EdenSerpentApocrypha
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From the tradition

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The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Apocalypse of Abraham XXIIIApocalypse of Abraham

"Now look again in the picture," God said. "See who it is that seduced Eve and what is the fruit of the tree. You will know what shall be and how it shall be for your seed among the people at the end of the days of the age."

Abraham looked into the picture, and his eyes were drawn to the side of the Garden of Eden.

He saw a man, vast in height and terrifying in breadth, incomparable in appearance. This was Adam, whose stature, when first created, reached from one end of the world to the other. Beside him was a woman, Eve, equal to him in aspect and form. They were embracing, standing under a tree of the Garden, and the fruit of the tree looked like a cluster of grapes on a vine.

Behind the tree stood a figure in the form of a serpent, but this was no ordinary snake. It had hands and feet like a man's, and wings on its shoulders, six on the right side and six on the left. Twelve wings. This was Azazel himself, riding the serpent, using it as his instrument, the same role the tradition elsewhere assigns to Sammael (Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer 13).

The serpent-figure held the grapes of the tree in its hands, and both Adam and Eve were eating.

Abraham asked: "Who are these two embracing? Who is the one between them? What is the fruit they are eating?"

God answered: "This is the human world. This is Adam, and this is their desire upon the earth. This is Eve. But he who is between them represents ungodliness, the beginning of their path to perdition. He is Azazel."

"O Eternal, Mighty One! Why have you given him power to destroy the generation of men in their works upon the earth?"

God's answer was chilling in its precision: "Those who will to do evil, and how much I hated it in those who do it, over them I gave him power, and they came to love him."

Abraham pushed further, to the hardest question: "Why have you willed that evil should be desired in the hearts of men, since you are angered over the very thing you yourself permitted?"

The question of theodicy, asked before the throne of heaven, in the presence of the divine picture where everything was laid out from the beginning.

Full source
Bereshit Rabbah 15:7Bereshit Rabbah

An apple? Maybe… but our tradition offers a whole orchard of possibilities! The rabbis of the Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary), in Bereshit Rabbah 15, really sink their teeth into this question.

Rabbi Meir, surprisingly, suggests it was wheat. Wheat! He argues that knowledge and intelligence are connected to eating wheat bread. "When a person does not have knowledge," he says, "people say: That person has never eaten wheat bread in all his days." It's a fascinating idea, isn't it? That the very grain that sustains us could also be the key to understanding. Rabbi Shmuel bar Yitzḥak even asks Rabbi Ze’eira, "Is it possible that it was wheat?" And Rabbi Ze’eira answers in the affirmative, explaining that the wheat in Eden grew to immense heights, like the cedars of Lebanon. So tall, it could be considered a tree!

This idea connects to a debate between Rabbi Neḥemya and the Rabbis, concerning the blessing over bread, "who brings forth [hamotzi] bread from the earth." Rabbi Neḥemya believes that finished bread grew directly from the ground in Eden, a bounty lost after the sin. The Rabbis, on the other hand, envision this happening in the Messianic future. As it says in (Psalms 72:16), "There will be bread [pisat] from grain upon the earth." It’s a beautiful vision of abundance and ease.

Then there's the curious case of the lefet, which means turnip. Rabbi Ḥanina bar Yitzḥak and Rabbi Shmuel bar Ami debate: Was the turnip once bread [lo pat]? Or will it be bread [lo pat] in the future? It's a playful, thought-provoking exploration of loss and redemption.

But wheat isn't the only contender. Rabbi Yehuda bar Ilai puts forth grapes, citing (Deuteronomy 32:32): "Their grapes are grapes of poison, clusters of bitterness for them" – those clusters brought bitterness to the world. A powerful image of the consequences of disobedience.

Rabbi Abba of Akko champions the citron. He points out that the Torah says the tree "was good for eating," implying the tree itself had a good taste. And, he asks, which tree has wood that tastes like its fruit? Only the citron! It’s a clever bit of reasoning.

And Rabbi Yosei? He suggests figs. His argument is contextual: Adam and Eve used fig leaves to cover themselves after the sin. It's like the story of a prince's son who sins with a maidservant. No other maidservant would take him in except the one he had sinned with. Similarly, after the sin, only the fig tree offered its leaves to Adam. As Rabbi Berekhya says, "Here is the thief who deceived his Creator." The other trees wouldn’t allow him to use their leaves to clothe himself!

Rabbi Avin specifies the berat sheva species of fig, as it brought seven [sheva] days of mourning to the world – because the sin introduced death and mourning into the world. Rabbi Yehoshua of Sikhnin, in the name of Rabbi Elazar, suggests the berat elita species, as it brought weeping [elita] to the world.

But the most intriguing idea comes from Rabbi Azarya and Rabbi Yehuda bar Simon, in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi: that God never revealed, and never will reveal, the identity of that tree. Why? They bring up the law in (Leviticus 20:16) about bestiality: the animal is killed so it won't be paraded through the marketplace, reminding everyone of the sin. If God is concerned about the dignity of descendants, how much more so is He concerned about the dignity of Adam himself!

So, we're left with a multitude of possibilities, and perhaps, ultimately, the question itself is more important than the answer. Maybe the point isn't what the fruit was, but what it represents: the human capacity for choice, the allure of forbidden knowledge, and the enduring consequences of our actions. What do you think?

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