The Garden and the Choice

Latter-day Saint reading turns on the observation that these two commandments could not both be kept in Eden. 2 Nephi 2:23 says plainly that in that state Adam and Eve "would have had no children." Moses 3:17 preserves a phrase Genesis lacks and which changes the character of the second commandment entirely: "nevertheless, thou mayest choose for thyself, for it is given unto thee."

That single clause reframes the whole episode. The prohibition stands — "remember that I forbid it" — and yet the choice is explicitly placed in their hands. Whatever the Fall is in this reading, it is not a divine plan going wrong.

The uncomfortable fact about verse 5 is that God confirms it in verse 22: "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil." The serpent's statement is not a lie about the effect. What makes it a temptation is the framing — that this is something being withheld out of divine self-interest — and the route, which bypasses everything else.

Verse 15 has been called the protoevangelium — the gospel in embryo — since the earliest Christian centuries. The seed of the woman crushes the serpent's head while the serpent strikes the heel: an asymmetry, one wound fatal and one not. Latter-day Saints read it alongside Moses 4:21, which preserves the same pronouncement.

Verse 17 is worth reading precisely: it is the ground that is cursed, and it is cursed "for thy sake" — for Adam's benefit. Moses 4:23 keeps the phrase. The labour that follows is presented as being to his advantage, which is a very different thing from a punishment.

One verse, easily skipped, and it is the first act of mercy after the Fall. They had made themselves aprons of fig leaves (3:7); God replaces that with something durable. Skins imply a death — the first in the story — and a covering provided rather than improvised. The Hebrew root behind atonement, kāphar, means precisely to cover.

The difference is not that Latter-day Saints minimise the Fall. Its consequences in this theology are severe and comprehensive: physical death, spiritual death, a fallen nature, and a world of thorns. The difference is what the Fall was for. Here it is the door into a probation in which agency has stakes.

Alma 42:2–10 supplies the reading of Genesis 3:22–24 that most repays attention. The cherubim and the flaming sword are usually pictured as a punishment. Alma treats them as a protection: if fallen humanity had eaten of the tree of life immediately, there would have been no probationary space, and "the great plan of salvation would have been frustrated." Being kept from the tree is what preserves the possibility of repentance.