After conversing with the serpent, the woman adopted his point of view as her own. The more she looked at the tree and the fruit, the better it looked to her. Once the woman adopted the serpent’s thoughts as her own she acted on them.
The same eye problems exist today because the serpent is still an expert at making appear desirable what God has prohibited. The longer we look at things through the lens he presents to us, the more convinced we become that what we are now seeing is reality. The deadliest deception is self-deception because we identify ourselves with it. The eye problem becomes an "I" problem.
As soon as the woman disobeyed God, she became an agent of temptation to her husband and he joined with her in eating the forbidden fruit. “With her” in the text has been misinterpreted by some modern expositors to mean that Adam was by Eve’s side at the tree during the entire exchange with the serpent, but that conclusion doesn’t make sense for several reasons:
- Why did the woman need to give the man the fruit if he was with her at the tree? Didn’t he have hands of his own to pick and eat the fruit?
- Why did the serpent address only the woman and ignore the man if he were present? Also, why was he completely silent throughout the entire exchange?
- Paul states clearly that “Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression” (1 Tim 2:14). If the man had been present during the dialogue and yet said nothing in protest, he would have been deceived as well, for by his silence he would be complicit to the deception.
That said, it is important to keep in mind that because Adam was not deceived does not make him somehow better or smarter than Eve. In fact his guilt is greater than the woman’s because he wasn’t tricked, but rather chose to disobey God completely conscious of his error. He chose unity with his spouse over unity with God. Many will be lost today for making the same mistake of exchanging peace in the home for peace with God and conscience.
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