The meaning of Eve’s actions in the Garden of Eden has been misunderstood throughout human history. Thankfully, the restored gospel of Jesus Christ clarifies her essential role in the plan of salvation. As President Dallin H. Oaks has taught, “Informed by revelation, we celebrate Eve’s act and honor her wisdom and courage in the great episode called the Fall.”
Here are six beautiful truths we know about Eve.
1. Eve’s Name Has Symbolic Ties to the Savior
Eve is introduced as Adam’s help meet. “Help” comes from the Hebrew word ezer, which means to rescue or to save. Author Melinda Wheelwright Brown writes:
“Elsewhere in the Old Testament, this term refers almost exclusively to the kind of help the Lord gives—divine help. Likewise, Eve’s Hebrew name, Chavvah, means ‘life,’ symbolic of the Savior, who is ‘the light and the life of the world.’ What a difference these linguistic details make in our understanding of Eve! Just as we would never consider God to be a subordinate assistant, Eve was a crucial counterpart to Adam; only together could they successfully progress and ultimately become like and return to our heavenly parents.”
2. God Didn’t Curse Eve (Nor Adam)
After Eve and Adam ate the fruit, the only things God cursed were the serpent and the ground. In fact, far from cursing Adam and Eve, God tells Adam that the ground is cursed “for thy sake.”
Camille Fronk Olson, author of But If Not, clarifies that the sorrow and hard work that accompany the Fall are blessings. “Hard work is not a curse,” she explains. “It is the catalyst for learning many of life’s greatest lessons.”
3. Eve Made an Informed Choice
While Adam and Eve were in “a state of innocence” in the Garden and didn’t yet have a knowledge of good and evil, this doesn’t mean they had no knowledge. Melinda writes:
“It is critical to our overarching understanding of the gospel plan to comprehend this crucial truth: Adam and Eve were being taught the gospel by Deity while residing in the garden. …
“[In his book Christ and the New Covenant,] Elder Holland speaks to the extent of learning taking place in the garden, to the fact that Eve and Adam were innocent but positively not ignorant. Knowledge is a prerequisite of agency.1 This is straightforward doctrine, reiterated each time an eight-year-old child is baptized: accountability is understanding based. That core tenet, so fundamental to our faith, has been true from the foundations of the world. It applied in the garden just as it applied in premortality and just as it applies to each of us now in mortality. We must have at least a rudimentary, if theoretical, understanding of our options in order to make a choice.”
4. Eve Was an Equal Partner with Adam
Eve and Adam demonstrated equal partnership within Eden. As scholar Dr. Rebekah Call points out:
“The Gospel Topics entry on the ‘Fall of Adam and Eve’ does not separate Eve’s choice to eat the fruit from Adam’s choice. The essay indicates that eating the fruit was a necessary part of God’s plan and opened the door for Christ’s Atonement, allowing it to be active in our lives. This understanding of the events of Eden allows us to view Eve and Adam as equal partners in Eden—both of them made a necessary choice that led to the creation of human life in a mortal sphere.”
5. Eve Made Crucial Choices After the Garden as Well
We often speak about Eve’s choice to partake of the fruit in the Garden of Eden, but we focus less on her choices afterward. Her actions can teach us important lessons about agency, faith, and interdependence. In an Instagram post, Camille N. Johnson shared:
“We often talk of the choice [Eve] made in the garden, but what about the choices she made after the garden?
“Surely she felt overwhelmed with her new reality, with the mortal burdens she had to carry as she bore children and labored with Adam. What did she do? Where did she turn?
“In the scriptures we read:
“‘And Adam and Eve, his wife, called upon the name of the Lord… And he gave unto them commandments, that they should worship the Lord their God, and should offer… an offering unto the Lord.’
“Adam and Eve chose to yoke themselves to the Savior by making covenants and keeping the commandments.
“Because of their choice, they found relief in the complexities and hardships of their mortal lives.”
6. Eve Embraced Hardship with Hope
Eve teaches us that the opportunity to experience trials and make decisions is a gift. When we need courage during our challenges to move forward with faith, we can look to her as a valiant example. Melinda suggests:
“Eve’s choice in the garden may well be the origin of [the feeling] bittersweet, and her subsequent attitude in mortality is certainly the epitome of courage. She understood that the only way she and Adam could be ‘agents unto themselves’ [Moses 6:56; see also 2 Nephi 2:11], able to progress toward godly perfection, was through knowing both the bitter and the sweet, often simultaneously; life requires such a balance. Her faithful desire emboldened her to first partake of the fruit—to welcome hardship while holding firm to hope. That pivotal, representative action would set the standard for the attitude with which she and Adam would choose to embrace life. What bravery to willingly venture into such vast unknown, such frightening uncertainty!”
Read more restored truths about Eve in the new book Seeing Women in the Old Testament.
Study women of courage
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Note
1. Elder L. Lionel Kendrick taught, “Knowledge is essential for agency to exist” (Kendrick, “Our Moral Agency”); and Sister Elaine Cannon taught, “To use our agency wisely we need information to act upon. We need a knowledge of the laws of life, with their accompanying blessings and protective punishments” (Cannon, “Agency and Accountability”). This is basic doctrine taught in the Book of Mormon: “Men are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil” so that they may “act for themselves and not ... be acted upon” (2 Nephi 2:5, 26); “He that knoweth not good from evil is blameless” (Alma 29:5).