In the hut they had built for themselves, the man and the woman began to repent; for seven days and seven nights they mourned the death of their innocence. Then, unable to bear it any longer, Eve—romantic even in misfortune—turned to her husband with a suggestion that is to her credit: Since I am the one responsible for our shared suffering, since I am the one who made you go astray, kill me and surely God will let you reenter paradise. Adam refused, of course; he knew that no one can undo what has been done; that no one can change the past. And also that it is not by giving death to another that death can be defeated.

The Midrash thus shows us Eve in a new light: lucid and penitent. She knew now that her husband was innocent and she was not; she acknowledged that it would be unjust to make Adam share her punishment.

In fact, one text goes even further and suggests that she herself was a victim of injustice, and not guilty, not really, not entirely. After all, the first couple had to violate the divine commandment to allow mankind to evolve. Had Adam and Eve opted for life and against knowledge, history would have ended with them. There would have been no punishment, no death, no struggle for survival, no nothing, no nobody. Adam and Eve had to defy God so that their descendants might sing His praises. They were not free, hence not responsible.

But then, why the punishment? The Midrash says they were punished not so much for having sinned as for having invented excuses and alibis. Adam placed the blame on Eve, and Eve placed it on the serpent. Their greatest sin was to have shunned their responsibilities.

Another explanation suggests that injustice is inherent in man’s fate. God is omniscient, yet every man is responsible for his own freedom. Man is trapped; even when he opposes God, he is but accomplishing His will—which does not mitigate his punishment.

Could that be the reason why Adam and Eve sinned with such lack of constraint? To rebel against this iniquity? As if to say: You could have prevented us from sinning; You did not. So be it, only now we shall do so freely, consciously, even deliberately. This may have been their chance to cry out against the incomprehensible laws of Him who wishes to be the Father and Judge of man.

They were not the first to rebel; we know there were precedents. When God decided to create man, the earth simply refused to yield her clay. The moon objected to having to share its duties and privileges with the sun. Even the waters rejected the divine decree dividing them into upper and lower waters. Yet man alone was punished severely. Why? Perhaps because his rebellion alone had been conceived and willed by God.

• • •

Adam’s fall, just or not, constitutes the most dramatic chapter of his long life. Outside paradise, he became real. Rejected by God, he drew closer to Eve. Never were the two so united. Suddenly they discovered a purpose to their existence: to perfect the world which until then had been no more than created. To use the experience that had been theirs. To transmit. To communicate by deed and word. To safeguard. To tell the tale, omitting nothing, forgetting nothing. To keep alive the memory of his past, Adam had taken four plants from paradise as proof that his tales, his obsessions were more than dreams. True, he suffered whenever he looked at them; true, the old grief was now deeper and all-pervasive, but never mind, the challenge lay in defeating oblivion, not pain. He could have thrown away the plants, instead he guarded them jealously. To forget would have solved nothing.