Page 131 - Foundations

There is a logical link between a woman being more prone to deception than man and her being
charged to restrain herself from attempting to teach or usurp authority over a man. It would not be
prudent to make teachers of those who are the most susceptible to deception. If we interpret this word
to mean sexual seduction, then the passage loses its meaning.

Again, those who teach the serpent seed doctrine have often argued that the act of eating from the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil is a metaphor for having sex. They point to verses such as the
following to support this claim.

Proverbs 30:20
This is the way of an adulterous woman: She eats and wipes her mouth, and says, "I have done no
wrong."

In another place Solomon writes the following about the adulterous woman and those who are enticed
by her.

Proverbs 9:17-18
Stolen water is sweet; And bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he does not know that the dead are
there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

We do see that there are a few instances in the Bible where eating and drinking are used as metaphors
of sexual intercourse. That they are so linked is not unexpected, for even as a man has an appetite for
food, he has an appetite for sex. Both may be abused, being satiated in unrighteous ways. We would
be quite wrong, however, to assume that all Biblical references to eating, or even the majority of
them, are intended as metaphors of sexual gratification. The Hebrew word “akal” that is rendered as
“eats” in Proverbs 30:20 and as “eat” in Genesis chapter 3, is used predominantly throughout the Old
Testament to speak of the consumption of food, the consuming nature of fire, or something similar.
Doing a quick perusal of the occurrences of this Hebrew word, it appears that in less than a dozen of
its 809 occurrences is the word used in a metaphorical sense to speak of sexual intercourse. Therefore,
there can be no argument for its being used in Genesis chapter 3 in this way based upon its most
common meaning. Again, we would do better to look to the context of Genesis to determine its
meaning.

Following is every occurrence of the Hebrew work “akal” up to and including Adam and Eve’s
confession of eating of the forbidden fruit.

Genesis 2:16-17
And Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat
(akal); but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat (akal), for in the day that
you eat (akal) of it you shall surely die.”

Genesis 3:1-6
Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And
he said to the woman, "Has God indeed said, 'You shall not eat (akal) of every tree of the garden'?"
And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat (akal) the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the