Fall of Man
The fall of man, in the UPDV, runs from a single planted garden to a Pauline argument about the reign of death. Genesis sets the scene: an upright creature placed in Eden, given a single prohibition, and approached by a subtle creature who reframes the prohibition into doubt. The narrative names the consequences in measured language — pain, ground-curse, expulsion — and the rest of the canon traces those consequences forward, returning periodically to the figure of Adam as the type of transgression and to the serpent as the type of beguilement.
Creation Upright
Before the transgression, the UPDV gives a careful sequence of formation. Humanity is made deliberately, in a divine plural: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth" (Gen 1:26). The man is formed of the ground (Gen 2:19), and the woman taken from his side, prompting him to recognize, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she will be called a woman, because she was taken out of a man" (Gen 2:23).
Sirach restates the same starting point in summary form: "It was he who from the beginning created man; And gave him into the hand of his imagination" (Sir 15:14); "God created man out of the earth, And returned him into it again" (Sir 17:1); "As was fitting for them, he clothed them with strength; And in his image he made them" (Sir 17:3); "And all men are from the ground, And Adam was created of earth" (Sir 33:10). Ecclesiastes draws the wisdom-literature inference about humanity's original condition: "God made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions" (Ec 7:29). The condition before the fall, then, is not innocence-as-blank but uprightness deliberately given.
The Garden and the Single Command
Eden is a planted garden, and the man is placed in it: "And [the Speech of] Yahweh God planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed" (Gen 2:8). Within that garden the divine word draws one and only one boundary: "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will not eat of it: for in the day that you eat of it you will surely die" (Gen 2:16-17). The provision is wide; the prohibition is narrow; the penalty is named in advance.
Eden persists in the prophetic vocabulary as a benchmark of fertility and divine presence — the wilderness restored is "like Eden" (Is 51:3); the desolate land becomes "like the garden of Eden" (Eze 36:35); the invading army moves through land that is "as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness" (Joe 2:3). Sirach treats the fear of God itself as "an Eden of blessing" with "all glory" as its canopy (Sir 40:27). Ezekiel can address a foreign king as one who "were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering" (Eze 28:13), and treat trees of Eden as the standard against which other trees compete (Eze 31:9). Eden, in the canon's later language, is what was lost and what restoration is measured against.
The Serpent and the Reframing
The agent of temptation is identified by craft, not by power: "Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which Yahweh God had made. And he said to the woman, has God really said, You⁺ will not eat of any tree of the garden?" (Gen 3:1). The woman corrects him with the actual prohibition: "Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat: but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, You⁺ will not eat of it, neither will you⁺ touch it, or else you⁺ will die" (Gen 3:2-3). The serpent's counter-claim contradicts the stated penalty and supplies a motive: "You⁺ will not surely die: for God knows that in the day you⁺ eat of it, then your⁺ eyes will be opened, and you⁺ will be as God, knowing good and evil" (Gen 3:4-5).
Paul keeps this craft-by-words framing intact when he warns the Corinthians: "But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness, your⁺ minds should be corrupted from the simplicity and the purity that is toward Christ" (2Co 11:3). The pattern of the serpent — speech that reframes the divine word — is what makes Eden's temptation portable into later contexts.
The serpent reappears across the canon as a figure of danger and venom: water turned to a serpent at Moses' hand and at Aaron's rod (Ex 4:3; Ex 7:10); fiery serpents sent in the wilderness (Nu 21:6; De 8:15); the tongue of the wicked compared to a serpent's, with "Adders' poison... under their lips" (Ps 140:3; cf. Ps 58:4); the cup that "at the last... bites like a serpent, And stings like an adder" (Pr 23:32); the wall-breaker whom "a serpent will bite" (Ec 10:8); the lurking danger of Amos 5:19; and the mysterious "way of a serpent on a rock" (Pr 30:19). Sirach moralizes the figure into ethical counsel: "Flee from sin as from the face of a serpent; For if you come near it, it will bite you; Its teeth are lion's teeth, Slaying the souls of men" (Sir 21:2); and "There is no poison above the poison of a serpent, And there is no wrath above the wrath of a woman" (Sir 25:15). In the eschatological reversal, "dust will be the serpent's food" — the curse-ration of Gen 3:14 stays attached to the figure even when the rest of creation is healed (Is 65:25). John's word to the crowds carries the same vocabulary forward: "You⁺ offspring of vipers" (Lu 3:7).
Yielding
The transgression itself is told in a single verse — sight, judgment, desire, action, and shared participation: "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit, and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate" (Gen 3:6). The immediate effect is awareness, not enlightenment: "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons" (Gen 3:7).
Sirach circles back to this sequence to block any attempt to displace the agency of yielding onto God: "Do not say, 'My transgression is from God.' For that which he hates, he does not do" (Sir 15:11); "Beware that you do not say, 'It was he who stumbled me.' For there is no need of violent men" (Sir 15:12); "He did not command common man to sin; And he did not cause liars to dream" (Sir 15:20). The same writer warns against repeating Eve's sequence — sight, desire, snare: "Do not fall through the beauty of a woman, And do not be ensnared by what she possesses" (Sir 25:21).
Ecclesiastes' summary judgment supplies the canon's plainest comment on what happened: God made humanity upright, "but they have sought out many inventions" (Ec 7:29).
The Confrontation
The aftermath is described in walking and hiding: "And they heard the voice of [the Speech of] Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God among the trees of the garden" (Gen 3:8). The divine address is interrogative, not yet condemnatory: "Where are you?... Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree, of which I commanded you that you should not eat?" (Gen 3:9, 11).
The man's answer transfers responsibility along the line of relationship: "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate" (Gen 3:12). The woman's answer transfers it onto the serpent: "The serpent beguiled me, and I ate" (Gen 3:13). Job retains this very pattern of hidden transgression as something to be denied under oath: "If like man I have covered my transgressions, By hiding my iniquity in my bosom" (Job 31:33). The canonical phrase "like man" carries the Adamic shape of concealment forward into the wisdom literature.
The Sentences
The judgments are delivered in the order of approach reversed — serpent, then woman, then man — and each is given content rather than a generic curse.
To the serpent: "Because you have done this, cursed are you above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; on your belly you will go, and dust you will eat all the days of your life: and I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed: he will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel" (Gen 3:14-15).
To the woman: "I will greatly multiply your pain and your conception; in pain you will bring forth sons; and your desire will be to your husband, and he will rule over you" (Gen 3:16).
To Adam: "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree, of which I commanded you, saying, You will not eat of it: cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life; thorns also and thistles it will bring forth to you; and you will eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of your face you will eat bread, until you return to the ground; for out of it were you taken: for dust you are, and to dust you will return" (Gen 3:17-19).
The ground-curse is a second instance of the divine curse formula, whose first occurrence is here. The same formula is repeated in Cain's case — "And now cursed are you from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand" (Gen 4:11) — and the Sinai covenant carries it forward into the law's sanctions (De 11:28; De 27:15; De 28:16; Jos 6:26; Jg 5:23; Je 11:3; Mal 3:9). Sirach states the divine prerogative behind the formula: "Some of them he blessed and exalted, And some of them he sanctified and brought near to himself; Some of them he cursed and humbled, And overthrew them from their place" (Sir 33:12). Paul reads the legal version of the curse from Deuteronomy back through the same theological frame: "For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse: for it is written, Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things that are written in the Book of the Law, to do them" (Ga 3:10).
Expulsion
Eden is closed by the same Speech that planted it: "Therefore [the Speech of] Yahweh God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken" (Gen 3:23). The man's life thereafter is given in one number: "And all the days that Adam lived were 930 years: and he died" (Gen 5:5). The penalty of Gen 2:17 — "in the day that you eat of it you will surely die" — runs out, in the canonical accounting, to a measured human lifespan that ends.
The Woman, the Man, and the Order of Forming
Two New Testament passages re-read the Genesis 3 narrative with reference to who was first and who was beguiled. The order of forming is named as a fact: "For Adam was first formed, then Eve" (1Ti 2:13). The order of beguilement is the reverse: "and Adam was not beguiled, but the woman being beguiled has fallen into transgression" (1Ti 2:14). Sirach offers a complementary summary in its own idiom: "From a woman sin originated, And because of her we all must die" (Sir 25:24).
Isaiah lays the same liability on a representative figure of Israel: "Your first father sinned, and your teachers have transgressed against my [Speech]" (Is 43:27). Hosea generalizes the pattern of covenant breach by the same Adamic word: "But they like man have transgressed the covenant: there they have betrayed [my Speech]" (Hos 6:7).
Death Reigning, Adam as Pattern
Paul gives the umbrella's most extended re-reading. The argument starts from Genesis: "Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed to all men, for that all sinned" (Ro 5:12). It draws a line through the period before the law was given: "for until the law sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression, who is a pattern of him who was to come" (Ro 5:13-14). And it sets up a counter-figure who undoes what Adam's transgression introduced: "But not as the trespass, so also [is] the gift. For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God, and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many" (Ro 5:15).
The argument keeps that contrast in view through the rest of the chapter: "For if, by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one; much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, [even] Jesus Christ" (Ro 5:17); "So then as through one trespass [the judgment came] to all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness [the gift came] to all men to justification of life" (Ro 5:18); "For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one will the many be made righteous" (Ro 5:19); and finally, "that, as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Ro 5:21).
The 1 Corinthians 15 form of the argument is shorter and parallel: "For since by man [came] death, by man [came] also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ will all be made alive" (1Co 15:21-22). Adam is the index of one column; Christ is the index of the other. The Pauline texts treat the fall not as an isolated narrative episode but as the head of a long sequence that the gospel addresses.
Adam in Israel's Memory
Outside the Pauline argument, Adam keeps a place in the canon's lists of remembered persons. Sirach's encomium of the fathers names him at the climax: "Shem, and Seth, with Enosh were honored; But above every living thing was the glory of Adam" (Sir 49:16) — a statement of the original creation's dignity made after the fall is already in view. The same writer's account of human origin keeps the dust-frame steady: "And all men are from the ground, And Adam was created of earth" (Sir 33:10). The fall, in the UPDV's deuterocanonical material as in its Genesis source, is not the cancellation of the creation it follows; it is the breach the rest of the canon is busy repairing.