According to Rabbi Tamara Kolton writing for the Jewish publication Forward, Eve was the world’s victim of sexual assault. God was her assaulter.

Is it satire? Sadly, no. Kolton was ordained as a rabbi in Humanistic Judaism. As the Society for Humanistic Judaism explains, “Humanistic Judaism offers cultural and secular Jews a nontheistic alternative in contemporary Jewish life.” It’s Judaism without belief in God.

According to Kolton’s interpretation of Genesis 3:

[Eve] is a young, beautiful, intelligent, naked woman living in a state of Grace. She’s hungry, so she does the most natural thing in the world and eats a piece of fruit. For following her instincts, trusting herself, and nourishing her body, she is punished. Her punishment? She will never again feel safe in her nakedness. She will never again love her body. She will never again know her body as a place of sacred sovereignty.

Such a twisted take on this pivotal biblical passage disfigures God’s word into something dangerously deceptive. God is not an assaulter. He is loving and just, and He offers redemption to us through Jesus. But before we can understand His love and justice, and our need for redemption, we must understand the real story in Genesis 3.

The Real Villain

When God created the world, he gave Adam and Eve dominion over every living thing. This included the fruit-bearing plants surrounding them in abundance. “You shall have them for food,” God said. 

So the problem in Genesis 3 isn’t that Eve was hungry and ate. The problem is that she ate the one thing God forbade — fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God even gave a reason for this command: “In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” He wanted to protect them.

The real villain of the story (whom Kolton ignores) is the deceiving serpent. In Genesis 3, he tells Eve that if she eats the forbidden fruit, she will “be like God, knowing good and evil.” She eats.

And it’s not just Eve. Kolton completely omits the fact that Adam stood there with her. He did not protect Eve from the serpent. We might surmise that he also hung on every lie the serpent spun, hungry for god-like power. After Eve ate, so did he.

Not Silenced

Here’s the next part of the story that Kolton gets wrong:

“What have you done?” … God thunders. Eve wants to defend herself, but she is too ashamed to speak. Eve, our first mother whose name means the “mother of all living things,” is silenced.

In reality, as soon as Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they noticed their nakedness. Before God ever confronted them about their sin, they sewed clothing for themselves out of fig leaves. And when they heard God walking in the garden, they hid.

When God eventually asked Adam if he’d eaten the forbidden fruit, Adam blamed Eve. “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 

This is when God asked Eve, “What is this that you have done?” Eve wasn’t too ashamed to speak, as Kolton claims. She wasn’t silenced. “The serpent deceived me,” Eve responded, “and I ate.”

Consequences

God didn’t chide Eve right away. First, He condemned the serpent. “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field.” 

Only then did God reveal the consequences that Adam and Eve (and their offspring) would suffer for their disobedience.

They were sent away from the perfect garden in which they lived. Adam would toil in his work. Eve would suffer pain in childbearing. The perfect harmony they enjoyed as a couple would now be marred by conflict. 

Worst of all, they were separated from God because of their own wrongdoing. 

God Our Rescuer

Kolton writes that the first story in the Bible was the “first case of #MeToo.” To anyone who actually pays attention, it should be obvious that this is false. It is because Adam and Eve sinned that #MeToo happens. When Adam and Eve fell prey to the serpent’s lies, they brought sin into the world.

But God isn’t callous toward us, despite our sin. He sees us, even in our shame and despair. He binds up the brokenhearted. God is our rock, fortress and deliverer. He is our avenger. And He doesn’t silence us; He hears our cries.

(For more on what the Bible really says about sexual assault, see here and here.)

But even that’s not the end of the story. As soon as Adam and Eve fell prey to sin, God enacted a plan to restore them and all their offspring to perfect union with Him once more.

How? Through Jesus Christ the Messiah. While we suffer the natural consequences of sin, we don’t have to suffer the punishment we deserve. Jesus took that punishment himself when He was tortured and killed on the cross. The good news is that He rose to life again. And if we follow Him, we’ll be restored to a full and right relationship with God.

What Genesis 3 Doesn’t Teach

According to Kolton, Genesis 3 “granted generations of men permission to violate women. It teaches us that women are liars and sinners. Even if ‘She’ is telling the truth, she deserved it.”

This is an egregious, and perhaps willful, misunderstanding. Genesis 3 does not grant men permission to violate women or commit any other sin. On the contrary, it shows us the dire consequences of sin. Sin takes us from a safe, perfect relationship with God and exposes us to the dangers of evil.

Genesis 3 doesn’t teach us that women are liars and sinners. It teaches us that all of us — men and women — are susceptible to temptation. And thanks to Adam and Eve, we are born with sinful natures that must be redeemed.

Genesis 3 does not teach that women deserve abuse. The entire biblical narrative reveals that God is angered when we are wronged. That His justice is terrible. And that there is redemption, grace and hope for everyone through Jesus Christ. 

I pray that Kolton will one day see the truth. She apparently has access to the Bible, though she hasn’t read it very carefully. May God open her eyes so that next time she cracks it open, she really understands the nature of our sin, God’s justice, and redemption through Jesus.