Parshat Bereshit5 min read

The Serpent Wept Before It Gave Eve the Fruit

It cried at her feet and called the grief holy. Eve would not pick the fruit herself. Then it made her swear on the throne and the cherubim.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. She Would Not Touch the Branch
  2. She Wept at the Tree She Had Just Used
  3. She Called the Fruit God's Gift
  4. Wheat as Tall as Cedars

The serpent wept for her.

The Serpent Wept Before It Gave Eve the Fruit Click for full size

Eve still stood inside the garden, still inside everything permitted, and the creature at her feet was performing grief. "May God live," it said. "I am grieved on your account. I would not have you remain ignorant. Come here. Listen. Eat, and mind the value of that tree."

No smirk. No speech about her beauty. The tone was wounded. It wanted her to believe it was on her side.

She Would Not Touch the Branch

Eve said what any sensible person says when an animal weeps at their feet and points toward the one fruit they were told to leave. She said she feared God would be angry.

"Fear not," the serpent said. "As soon as you eat, you will be as God, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:5). He knows that. That is why He forbade it.

She still would not take it. So the serpent changed the work. "Come here, and I will give it to you. Follow me." She opened a way for it. It walked a little, then turned. It had changed its mind, it said. It would not give her the fruit until she swore to give half to her husband.

"What sort of oath shall I swear?" Eve asked. She named the highest things she knew. By the throne of the Master, by the cherubim, and by the Tree of Life. She swore she would give also to her husband.

The serpent took the oath. Then it went to the fruit and poured the poison of its wickedness onto it from the outside, lust, the root and beginning of every sin. It bent the branch to the earth. Eve took. Eve ate.

She Wept at the Tree She Had Just Used

In that hour her eyes opened. She knew she was bare of the righteousness that had clothed her. The first thing she did, before she found Adam, was look at the tree. The tree she had just eaten from. And she wept.

The serpent had wept first, performing what it did not feel. Eve wept second, feeling what she could not reverse. She asked the creature why it had stripped the glory from her. She wept also about the oath, which she had already spoken and could not unsay. The serpent came down from the tree and vanished.

She began to look, in her nakedness, for leaves to hide herself. She found none. As soon as she had eaten, the leaves had showered down and left the branches stripped. The garden would not help her cover what the oath had cost.

She Called the Fruit God's Gift

She went looking for Adam. She found him near the water where he had been washing. She called him by name. She asked him to come. When she handed him the fruit she did not call it the knowledge she had been promised. She called it the food God had given her.

She could already deceive.

He ate. The same nakedness that had found her found him. The two of them stood in a garden that had been a home an hour ago and was now a place they had to hide in. The sword of fire still turned at the entrance. They had not reached it yet. They had already lost the inside.

Wheat as Tall as Cedars

The fruit never got a name in that telling. Not apple. Not grape. Not fig. Fruit. Later, in the study houses of the land of Israel, Rabbi Meir would not leave the gap alone.

He said wheat. When a person has no knowledge, people say that person has never eaten wheat bread in all his days. The knowledge of good and evil, for him, was bound to grain. Rabbi Shmuel bar Yitzhak asked Rabbi Ze'eira if wheat was even possible. It is written as a tree. Ze'eira said yes. In Eden the wheat rose to a great height, like the cedars of Lebanon, so a stalk could rightly be called a tree.

Others in that room said grape, which ends in a lost head. Others said fig, because the first covering after the transgression was fig leaves, as if the tree that wounded them was the tree that dressed them. Eve, in the older account, had found no leaves at all. The garden had dropped them. The rabbis, looking at a nameless fruit, put a crop in her hand that a later Israel would live on, or a vine, or the same fig that closed over shame.

None of those names change what the serpent poured. The tree was the boundary. What crossed the boundary had been altered by the creature that carried it across. Eve did not eat only what God had grown. She ate what the serpent made of it, with an oath already binding her mouth, and then she walked toward the water with that same fruit and called it a gift.

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From the tradition

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The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Apocalypse of Moses 18-23Life of Adam and Eve

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Books of Adam and Eve, trans. L. S. A. Wells, in The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. 2 (1913) · Public Domain

The serpent wept for her. That was the cruelest part. It pretended to grieve for her ignorance while plotting her destruction.

"May God live!" the serpent said to Eve, its voice dripping with false compassion. "I am grieved on your account, for I would not have you remain ignorant. Come here. Listen to me. Eat, and understand the true value of that tree."

Eve hesitated. "I fear God will be angry with me, as He warned us."

"Do not fear," the serpent whispered. "As soon as you eat, you will become like God -- you will know good and evil (Genesis 3:5). God knows this. That is why He forbade it. He was jealous of what you might become."

Still Eve resisted. The serpent pressed harder: "Look at the plant. See its glory." But she would not reach for it. So the serpent changed tactics. "Come here. Follow me, and I will give it to you."

Eve followed. The serpent walked a short distance, then turned and said: "I have changed my mind. I will not give you the fruit unless you swear an oath -- swear that you will also give it to your husband."

Eve swore. By the throne of the Master. By the Cherubim. By the Tree of Life itself. She would share the fruit with Adam.

The serpent took the oath and poured upon the fruit the poison of its wickedness -- lust, the root and beginning of every sin. It bent the branch down to the earth. Eve took the fruit. She ate.

In that very hour, her eyes were opened. She knew instantly that she was stripped bare of the righteousness she had worn like a garment. The glory was gone. She wept. "Why have you done this to me? You have stolen the glory I was clothed in!"

But the serpent was already gone. It had descended from the tree and vanished, leaving Eve naked and alone in her portion of Paradise.

She searched desperately for leaves to cover her shame. There were none. The moment she had eaten, every tree in her territory shed its leaves -- every tree except the fig. From the fig tree she took leaves and made herself a covering. The very tree whose fruit she had eaten now clothed her shame (Genesis 3:7).

Then Eve called out: "Adam, Adam, where are you? Come to me -- I will show you a great secret!"

When Adam came, the Adversary spoke through her. Eve opened her mouth and the words of transgression poured out -- words that would bring them down from their glory. "Come, my lord Adam, eat of the fruit of the tree God told us not to eat, and you will be like God."

Adam said: "I fear God will be angry."

"Do not fear," Eve echoed the serpent's lie. "As soon as you eat, you will know good and evil."

He ate. His eyes opened. He saw his own nakedness. And his first words to Eve were devastating: "O wicked woman! What have I done to you, that you have stripped me of the glory of God?"

In that same hour, the archangel Michael blew his trumpet. The call rang across all of creation: "Thus says the Lord -- come with me to Paradise and hear the judgment I will pronounce upon Adam."

God appeared in Paradise, mounted on the chariot of His Cherubim, with angels going before Him singing hymns. At the sound of His approach, every plant in Paradise burst into flower -- as if the garden itself still loved its Maker, even as its guardians had failed Him. God's throne was set beside the Tree of Life.

"Adam, where are you?" God called. "Can a house hide from the one who built it?" (Genesis 3:9)

Adam answered from his hiding place: "I was not trying to hide from You, Lord. I was afraid because I am naked. I was ashamed before Your power."

"Who told you that you are naked," God said, "unless you have broken the commandment I gave you to keep?"

Adam remembered Eve's promise -- "I will make you safe before God" -- and turned to her: "Why have you done this?"

And Eve, stripped of glory, stripped of lies, finally spoke the truth: "The serpent deceived me" (Genesis 3:13).

Full source
Bereshit Rabbah 15:7Bereshit Rabbah

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022 · CC-BY

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. 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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