Читать книгу Stories from the Bible онлайн

31 страница из 35

Adam bowed his head yet lower, hiding his face, his eyes fixed upon the ground.

'The woman,' he said, 'whom thou thyself gavest to be with me, she gave me of the Tree, and I did eat.'

And the Lord God said unto the woman: 'What is this that thou hast done?'

And the woman said, weeping: 'The serpent beguiled me—and I did eat.'

Then said the Lord God to the serpent: 'Because thou hast done this thing, thou art from henceforth accursed among all living things upon the earth. Upon thy belly shalt thou crawl, both thou and thy kind, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life, and all that come after thee. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed, and all that shall spring out of thee, and her seed. And it shall bruise and crush thee, and thou shalt lie in wait to bruise her heel.'

The serpent, the all-subtle one, the sower of mischief, sorrow and malice, looked stonily upon the Lord God, hearing his doom, in evil cold and corrupt. And this Satan went forth from out of his presence, eternal foe of man, though in the loving-kindness of the Lord God there should arise one to defeat his evil and to redeem man's sin, and paradise shall be restored to him again.