was a false prophet. It said slanderously that Jehovah God was a liar, not all-powerful, not able to enforce the penalty for the violation of his law. “At this the serpent said to the woman: ‘You [both you and your husband] positively will not die. For God knows that in the very day of your eating from [the forbidden tree] your eyes are bound to be opened and you are bound to be like God, knowing good and bad.’”—Gen. 3:4, 5.

24. What breach of her marriage relationship did Eve now commit, and how did she propose to use her supposed wisdom?

²⁴ Eve felt drawn to the idea of being like her heavenly Father, and so she partook of the forbidden fruit. But what a way to become like her Father, by disobeying Him! In this she committed a breach of her theocratic marriage relationship; she did not consult her husband in his capacity as God’s prophet It became with her like with her descendants, the Israelites in their crisis long after: “They have rejected the very word of Jehovah, and what wisdom do they have?” (Jer. 8:9) Worse—now she would exercise her influence over her husband to follow the wisdom that she thought she had!

25. (a) How did Adam come to face his first marriage problem? (b) Could Adam divorce Eve, and what determined that matter?

²⁵ Later Adam rejoined Eve. He did not face the same woman whom he had known before. He faced a woman who thought more highly of herself than she ought to think. He faced a transgressor, a woman disobedient to their God and Father. She offered him the forbidden fruit, in verification of her own sin. Then Adam faced his first marriage problem! God was not there to ask. Yet Adam knew that his wife had seriously sinned and had come under the death penalty announced by God: “In the day you eat from it you will positively die.” (Gen. 2:17) This penalty of death might dissolve Adam’s marriage to beautiful Eve. Adam had no authority to divorce Eve; she was bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. She was “one flesh” with him, yoked to him by Jehovah God himself.

26, 27. (a) How could Adam have divorced himself from Eve’s transgression, and what responsibility would he thus have exercised? (b) How was the husband’s headship with its power set forth in Israel’s law, and how could Adam have continued to be God’s prophet?

²⁶ However, Adam could have divorced himself from Eve’s transgression then and there by refusing the forbidden fruit at her hand, under her suasion. True, their God and heavenly Father had said: “That is why a man will leave his father and his mother and he must stick to his wife.” But he must not leave his God. Whom did Adam love more, his wife or his God and Life-giver? In order to take the right action toward his wife, Adam did not need to wait till he next “heard the voice of Jehovah God walking in the garden [Paradise] about the breezy part of the day.” He could show theocratic headship in the marriage bond, like an Israelite husband in God’s chosen nation much later. The Israelites came into relationship with God by a formal covenant through the mediator Moses the prophet, whereas Adam and Eve were in direct relationship with God as his own perfect children, needing no mediator.—Gen. 2:24; 3:8.

²⁷ In the case of an Israelite woman God’s law through Moses stated: “In the case of the vow of a widow or a divorced woman, everything that she [without a husband as her head] has bound upon her soul will stand against her. However, if it is in the house of her husband that she has vowed or has bound an abstinence vow upon her soul by an oath, and her husband has heard it and has kept silent toward her, he has not forbidden her and all her vows must stand or any abstinence vow that she has bound upon her soul should stand. But if her husband has totally annulled them on the day of his hearing any expression of her lips as her vows or as an abstinence vow of her soul, they will not stand. Her husband has annulled them and Jehovah will forgive her. Any vow or any oath of an abstinence vow to afflict the soul, her husband should establish it or her husband should annul it. And if he should totally annul them after his hearing them, then he must answer for her iniquity.” (Num. 30:9-13, 15) Had Adam disavowed his wife’s transgression by rejecting the fruit at her lovely hand, he would have continued as Jehovah’s prophet to the human family. He would not have had to feel a guilty conscience and to hide with a loin covering when Jehovah God approached them about the breezy part of the day.

28. Why could Adam not eat with good conscience the fruit offered to him by Eve?

²⁸ In this matter it was not an instance of a wife’s preparing a meal and her husband’s eating what was set before him without asking any questions for conscience’ sake. In Adam conscience began working, because he knew what fruit he was being urged to eat—the fruit forbidden by their God and Maker, the Owner of Paradise.

29. (a) How did Adam fall down respecting his headship? (b) How does Paul show who was the more responsible one in the transgression?

²⁹ It was a time for Adam to exercise theocratic headship in the marriage union. Instead, he let himself be ensnared because of fear at the thought of losing his wife when God enforced the penalty of death. He let his wife teach him disobedience to the supreme law of God. He followed the lead of his sinful wife misled by the crafty, false argument of the serpent. He confirmed her sin by his own eating of the forbidden fruit. He did not live up to his marriage obligation as head of the house for the protection of the family with which he was authorized to fill the earth. Consequently, of the now sinful married couple he, as head of the house, was most responsible. In harmony with this, the apostle Paul wrote: “I do not permit a woman to teach, or to exercise authority over a man, but to be in silence. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. Also Adam was not deceived, but the woman was thoroughly deceived and came to be in transgression.”—1 Tim. 2:12-14.

30. Upon whom did God lay the chief responsibility for ruining this marriage, and with what penalty?

³⁰ When God rendered judgment upon the sinful couple, he laid the chief responsibility for the ruining of this marriage in Paradise upon the invisible, spiritual rebel behind the serpent. God said to the serpent: “You have done this thing.” Then God proceeded to sentence Satan the Devil to future destruction under the heel of the Seed of God’s heavenly “woman” or “wife.”—Gen. 3:14, 15.

31, 32. (a) How is it shown upon whom God laid the heavier responsibility as regards the married couple? (b) How had Eve not shone as “man’s glory,” and what stated penalty did God lay upon her?

³¹ However, as regards the human married couple, Jehovah God put the heavier responsibility upon the husband. It was the husband, Adam, whom God sentenced to eat the fruit of cursed ground outside Paradise until he died and decomposed to dust of the cursed ground.

³² God’s judgment upon the wife, Eve, merely foretold her pains of childbearing and also her subordination. She had not shone as “man’s glory,” her perfect husband’s glory. She had disregarded the headship of her prophet husband and had ignored his warning from God and had taken the lead into sin under the false inducement of a stranger, a slanderer both of God and of His prophet. Hence now she must be made to know the headship of her husband. In His judgment God said to the wife, Eve: “And your longing will be for your husband, and he will dominate you.” (Gen. 3:16) From then on she endured the domination of a deliberately sinful, imperfect husband who was out of relationship with God, until she died, that is, if Adam overlived her by his dying first when 930 years old.

33. By God’s now taking what measures did married life in Paradise come to an end, and all for what cause?

³³ So married life in that peaceful Paradise of Eden came to an end. It was all because of sin, which is the breaking of the sacred law of God. Now God did not want any further eating of the Edenic fruitage to which the now sinful Adam and Eve were not entitled and of which Adam, possibly under the influence and suggestion of his wife, might seek to eat. “And Jehovah God went on to say: ‘Here the man has become like one of us in knowing good and bad, and now in order that he may not put his hand out and actually take fruit also of the tree of life and eat and live forever,—’ With that Jehovah God put him out of the garden [Paradise] of Eden to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken. And so he drove the man out and posted at the east of the garden of Eden the cherubs and the flaming blade of a sword that was turning itself continually to guard the way to the tree of life.”—Gen. 3:22-24.

34. How will marriage in Paradise shortly be realized, and what privilege will married couples then have toward the Originator of marriage?

³⁴ Married life in Paradise ceased thus in such a calamitous way because husband and wife did not maintain the God-ordained relationship between each other. Yet the ideal of marriage in Paradise will shortly be marvelously enjoyed to the praise of the great Originator of marriage. No, this will not be by lovers’ dying and going to heaven to be with each other in celestial wedlock. It will be by surviving the war of Armageddon not far ahead. After that universal war will have destroyed all those who are today ruining the earth, God’s kingdom by means of Christ the Seed of His “woman” will restore Paradise to this earth and extend it all around the planet. Faithful surviving couples will continue their married life after Armageddon directly into the restored Paradise. Single survivors will enjoy the privilege of entering into married life with theocratic partners and will have the happiness of raising children under Paradise conditions, with Satan the Devil bound. All these will have the privilege of vindicating Jehovah God by proving that married life in Paradise can be a blessed success.

Marriage Outside Paradise

1. Outside of Eden what did the continuation of marriage result in, and the descendants of which son of Adam survived the Flood?

THE expelled couple, Adam and Eve, kept up their marriage outside of the Paradise of Eden. We can be sure that, from then on, it was not a peaceful marriage. Out there on the cursed ground they began bringing forth their sin-infected children in a dying condition from birth onward. Adam “became father to sons and daughters.” (Gen. 4:1; 5:4) In course of time new marriages were transacted. The mature sons of Adam were married to the mature daughters of Adam. So it is recorded that afterward their first-born son Cain “had intercourse with his wife