Q. I have a couple of questions to ask, if I may. (1) If, pre-Fall, Adam had say fallen from a tree he was climbing, would he have bounced, or might he have been killed or badly injured? After all, gravity and the earth’s hardness then were presumably as now. (2) Does Genesis 3 (in the original Hebrew) in any way indicate that post-mortem eternal life is being offered to Adam and Eve through the institution of sacrifice to cover sins? Thank you for any light on this.
(1) In response to you first question, let me refer you to a post on one of my other blogs in which I take up the very thing that you are wondering about: “Do we suppose that if Adam, when innocent, had fallen forty feet out of tree and broken his neck, he would not have died?” This is the post:
44 Was there death before the fall of humanity? (Part 1)
However, I would caution you, and ask you to respect the fact, that as you can see, not only is this post the first half of a two-part discussion, both parts will also only make sense within the context of this entire blog, Paradigms on Pilgrimage: Creationism, Paleontology, and Biblical Interpretation, of which they are posts 44 and 45 of a total of 53. So you may also wish to read the introduction to the blog, at least, which will explain the background to the entire blog and help you see where I’m coming from as I offer the observations in this post.
(2) In response to your second question, I can assure you that there is nothing latent in the original Hebrew that does not come out in the typical English translation of the account of the fall in Genesis. The statements that might point to a substitutionary sacrificial atonement are straightforward in Hebrew, and they come out that way in English. Perhaps most relevantly, “The Lord God made garments of skins for the man and his wife and clothed them,” and then also, spoken to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.”
The first statement indicates only by implication that animals at least died, and more likely were sacrificed, to provide the “garments of skins” with which God “clothed” the man and woman. I would personally say that we can only appreciate the implications of this action by situating it in light of the Scriptures as a whole, where we learn about the function of animal sacrifices in God’s redemptive purposes and the notion of “clothing” someone, giving them garments or new garments, as a metaphor for salvation. (For example, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness.”)
Similarly it is only in the context of the Scriptures as a whole that we can appreciate the meaning of the statement “he will bruise your head,” that is, the seed of the woman will bruise the head of the serpent. If Keith Green could sing in his song “The Victor,” “See Him bruise the serpent’s head,
the prisoners of hell he’s redeeming, all the power of death is dead,” this is only because centuries of Scriptural development, interpretation, and understanding have enabled us to connect this promise with the work of Christ on the cross.
Nevertheless, I would commend you for wanting to go deeper into the biblical text to get the answer to your questions. In this case, it is just a matter of going broader rather than deeper, of catching the sweep of the whole story of Scripture, rather than understanding a specific Hebrew expression. So … read on!
Good Question 