We have been working through a most remarkable book. Written by Alex Motyer, it is entitled, Look to the Rock: An Old Testament Background to our Understanding of Christ (Intervarsity Press, 1996). It is full of profound observations. Here is one of them:
In . . . Genesis 3:9, 10 there is the matter of a bad conscience. We are not told how the man and the woman greeted the Lord's earlier visits to them. However, the air of easy delight that breathes through the narrative in Genesis 2 suggests that, when God spoke to the man about his place in the Garden and the law under which he was to live, and when he shared with the man and woman the divine ideal of marriage, they stood in his presence with open minded pleasure.
Now, however, that fear of God which is henceforth to mark human reactions to his appearing--that moral fear which cries out 'I have seen him; I will die'--has entered the world. Never again can humans stand unafraid before God. Yet it is not the awesomeness of his presence that warned the first couple of this, but the inner voice of conscience: it was now natural for them to be afraid of God.
Genesis 3: 7-10 lays the groundwork for all human ills in a fallen world; we are dislocated within ourselves, dislocated from each other, dislocated from God. Personal fragmentation, social tension and spiritual alienation are now the parameters of life upon earth. ( p.119)
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