Jonathan Poletti
1 min readSep 24, 2020

Yes, thanks. In this passage, the humans are shifting into the mortal world. They seem to be understood earlier as essentially spirit beings, wearing "garments of light." Leaving Eden, they are given "garments of skin." They become like animals.

These references were unfamiliar to me from Evangelical Christianity. They're common in Bible scholarship, and I first read them in "The Garments of Shame" by Jonathan Z. Smith.

In the Bible, a 'garment' seems to be understood as a type of body. Any discussion of a 'coat' has this underlying suggestion.

So, from wearing "garments of light" the humans are given "garments of skin." They become like animals, and God's speech to Eve is indicating the terms of reproduction are changing. The woman now has pain in childbirth and will have to keep 'returning' to the man to conceive life.

Note that pain in childbirth is a prominent theme in the Bible. The messianic birth is often said to have been painless, as if this was the ideal way that spirit beings reproduce.

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