Chapter LXV.

The Forgotten Books of Eden, by Rutherford H. Platt, Jr., [1926], at sacred-texts.com

CHAP. LXV.

Adam and Eve acquire digestive organs. Final hope of returning to the Garden is quenched.

AND when it was day, they rose and prayed, after their custom, and then went out of the cave.

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2 But as they felt great trouble from the food they had eaten, and to which they were not used, they went about in the cave saying to each other:--

3 "What has happened to us through eating, that this pain should have come upon us? Woe be to us, we shall die! Better for us to have died than to have eaten; and to have kept our bodies pure, than to have defiled them with food."

4 Then Adam said to Eve, "This pain did not come to us in the garden, neither did we eat such bad food there. Thinkest thou, O Eve, that God will plague us through the food that is in us, or that our inwards will come out; or that God means to kill us with this pain before He has fulfilled His promise to us?"

5 Then Adam besought the Lord and said, "O Lord, let us not perish through the food we have eaten. O Lord, smite us not; but deal with us according to Thy great mercy, and forsake us not until the day of the promise Thou hast made us."

6 Then God looked upon them, and at once fitted them for eating food; as unto this day; so that they should not perish.

7 Then Adam and Eve came back into the cave sorrowful and weeping because of the alteration in their nature. And they both knew from that hour that they were altered beings, that their hope of returning to the garden was now cut off; and that they could not enter it.

8 For that now their bodies had strange functions; and all flesh that requires food and drink for its existence, cannot be in the garden.

9 Then Adam said to Eve, "Behold, our hope is now cut off; and so is our trust to enter the garden. We no longer belong to the inhabitants of the garden; but henceforth we are earthy and of the dust, and of the inhabitants of the earth, We shall not return to the garden, until the day in which God has promised to save us, and to bring us again into the garden, as He promised us."

10 Then they prayed to God that He would have mercy on them; after which, their mind was quieted, their hearts were broken, and their longing was cooled down; and they were like strangers on earth. That night Adam and Eve spent in the cave, where they slept heavily by reason of the food they had eaten.