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).