Genesis 3:8

The Judgment Oracles of God at the Fall

3:8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God moving about ¹  in the orchard at the breezy time ²  of the day, and they hid ³  from the Lord God among the trees of the orchard.

Genesis 31:27

31:27 Why did you run away secretly ⁴  and deceive me? ⁵  Why didn’t you tell me so I could send you off with a celebration complete with singing, tambourines, and harps? ⁶ 

[3:8]  ¹ tn The Hitpael participle of הָלָךְ (halakh, “to walk, to go”) here has an iterative sense, “moving” or “going about.” While a translation of “walking about” is possible, it assumes a theophany, the presence of the Lord God in a human form. This is more than the text asserts.

[3:8]  ² tn The expression is traditionally rendered “cool of the day,” because the Hebrew word רוּחַ (ruakh) can mean “wind.” U. Cassuto (Genesis: From Adam to Noah, 152-54) concludes after lengthy discussion that the expression refers to afternoon when it became hot and the sun was beginning to decline. J. J. Niehaus (God at Sinai [SOTBT], 155-57) offers a different interpretation of the phrase, relating יוֹם (yom, usually understood as “day”) to an Akkadian cognate umu (“storm”) and translates the phrase “in the wind of the storm.” If Niehaus is correct, then God is not pictured as taking an afternoon stroll through the orchard, but as coming in a powerful windstorm to confront the man and woman with their rebellion. In this case קוֹל יְהוָה (qol yÿhvah, “sound of the Lord”) may refer to God’s thunderous roar, which typically accompanies his appearance in the storm to do battle or render judgment (e.g., see Ps 29).

[3:8]  ³ tn The verb used here is the Hitpael, giving the reflexive idea (“they hid themselves”). In v. 10, when Adam answers the Lord, the Niphal form is used with the same sense: “I hid.”

[31:27]  ⁴ tn Heb “Why did you hide in order to flee?” The verb “hide” and the infinitive “to flee” form a hendiadys, the infinitive becoming the main verb and the other the adverb: “flee secretly.”

[31:27]  ⁵ tn Heb “and steal me.”

[31:27]  ⁶ tn Heb “And [why did] you not tell me so I could send you off with joy and with songs, with a tambourine and with a harp?”