What Does Genesis 3:3 Mean?

The woman's account of God's command is largely accurate but contains one small addition: she says they may not touch the fruit of the tree in the center of the Garden, though God's command as recorded in Genesis 2 only prohibited eating it. Whether this addition came from Adam as an added hedge, or whether she added it herself, cannot be determined. What is clear is that the prohibition is beginning to be reshaped in her telling.

The tree is described again as standing at the center of the garden. Its centrality is not only geographic but moral. Everything in the garden revolves around it as the place where the fundamental choice between trust and self-determination is made. To approach it was already to move toward the decision; to touch it had become, in the woman's telling, forbidden on its own terms.

A marginal expansion of a divine command, however well-intentioned, can become the first step toward either legalism or resentment. When rules are added to rules, the heart grows either burdened or bitter. The New Testament answer is not fewer commands but a transformed heart that loves what God loves. The woman's addition, small as it was, was already preparing her to hear The serpent's next words.