Adam

Adam is the first human in the Genesis account: the LORD God forms him from the dust, gives him life, and places him in Eden to cultivate and guard the garden. His story moves from a created world of provision and companionship to disobedience, exile, and the burden of mortal labor; his relationship with Eve also establishes the narrative’s account of human kinship.

Formation and life in Eden

The account introduces Adam in a land not yet cultivated: no rain had fallen and there was no man to till the ground. The LORD God formed him from the dust of the ground and breathed life into his nostrils. God then planted a garden eastward in Eden and put Adam there, where he was charged with dressing and keeping it.

Eden offered trees both pleasing to the sight and good for food, including the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam was permitted to eat from the garden’s trees except the latter; the LORD God warned that eating from it would bring death. The setting thus joins abundance with a clearly stated boundary.

Adam named the animals brought before him, but none proved a fitting companion. The LORD God caused him to sleep, made a woman from one of his ribs, and brought her to him. Adam recognized her as bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh; the account presents their joining as the pattern by which a man leaves his parents, cleaves to his wife, and becomes one flesh. At first, the two were naked without shame.

Disobedience and its consequences

The serpent challenged the woman about God’s prohibition and contradicted the warning of death. Seeing that the forbidden fruit was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom, the woman ate and gave some to Adam, who also ate. Their eyes were opened, they recognized their nakedness, and they made coverings from fig leaves.

When they heard the LORD God in the garden, Adam and his wife hid among the trees. Asked where he was, Adam said that fear and awareness of his nakedness had led him to hide. When questioned about the forbidden tree, he attributed his act to the woman God had given him; the woman in turn said that the serpent had beguiled her.

The consequences changed Adam’s relation to the ground and to daily work. The ground was cursed on his account, producing thorns and thistles; he would eat by toil and the sweat of his face until he returned to the ground from which he had been taken. The LORD God made garments of skins for Adam and his wife before sending them out of Eden to till the ground.

Expulsion and legacy

The LORD God declared that Adam had become like one of the divine company in knowing good and evil, and barred him from also taking from the tree of life and living forever. Adam was driven from the garden, and cherubim with a flaming sword turning every way guarded the path to the tree of life. His expulsion makes the loss of Eden—and access to its life-giving tree—a lasting consequence of the transgression.

Outside the garden, Adam knew Eve, and she bore Cain, then Abel. Eve later bore Seth, saying that God had appointed another seed in place of Abel. Through these births Adam belongs to the opening genealogy of humanity, while his story’s movement from dust, through life and work, back to dust gives the narrative its first account of human mortality.