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Click here for a pdf of Genesis 1–3 in Redemptive History: 8.5×11″; A4 paper

For one of Women and Marriage Throughout Redemptive History click here: 8.5×11″; A4 paper

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5) Gen 2:25: The final verse of this creation account announces, “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and [they were] not ashamed (bosh) before one another.”[1]

No barrier had yet driven a wedge between Adam and Eve.[2]

Israel’s culture emphasized the avoidance of shame, unlike our guilt-based Western society.[3]

Apart from this verse, nudity in the Old Testament always connotes humiliation, whether due to poverty or oppression (Job 24:7–10), as a circumstance of birth (Ezek 16:4–5), or—most often—as a symbol of disgrace (Ezek 16:35–39).[4]

Prior to the fall, Adam and Eve gloried in their nakedness, unaware of any sense of impropriety (Gen 3:6–7).[5]

Image via Wikimedia Commons

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Read Gen 2:25. Why did Adam and Eve feel this way?

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Go to An Overview of Creation (Ps 104)

[Related posts include Succumbing to Temptation (Gen 3:6); Their Eyes Are Opened (Gen 3:7); Hiding from God (Gen 3:8); and A Day of Reckoning (Gen 3:9–13)]

[Click here to go to Women and Marriage Throughout Redemptive History; or to Chapter 5: A View from the Ground (Genesis 2:4–25)]

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[1] Brown, Driver, and Briggs, “בּוֹשׁ” (bosh), BDB, 101–2, https://archive.org/stream/hebrewenglishlex00browuoft#page/100/mode/2up.

[2] Hamilton, Genesis, Chapters 1–17, 181.

[3]Timothy C. Tennant, Theology in the Context of World Christianity: How the Global Church Is Influencing the Way We Think About and Discuss Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 83.

[4] Hamilton, Genesis, Chapters 1–17, 181.

[5] Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 71.