Genesis 3:20 - Exposition

Arraigned, convicted, judged, the guilty but pardoned pair prepare to leave their garden home—the woman to begin her experience of sorrow, dependence, and subjection; the man to enter upon his life career of hardship and toil, and both to meet their doom of certain, though it might be of long-delayed, death. The impression made upon their hearts by the Divine Clemency, though not directly stated by the historian, may be inferred from what is next recorded as having happened within the precincts of Eden ere they entered on their exile. And Adam called (not prior to the fall, reading the verb as a pluperfect (Calvin), nor after the birth of Cain, transferring the present verse to Genesis 4:2 (Knobel), but subsequent to the promise of the woman's seed, and preceding their ejection from the garden) his wife's name Eve . Chavvah , from chavvah = chayyah , to live (cf. with the organic root chvi the Sanscrit, giv ; Gothic, quiv ; Latin, rive , gigno , vigeo ; Greek, ζα ì ω , &c; the fundamental idea being to breathe, to respire—Furst), is correctly rendered life—Work) by the LXX ; Josephus, Philo, Gesenins, Delitzsch, Macdonald, &c.; Lange, regarding it as an abbreviated form of the participle mechavvah , understands it to signify "the sustenance, i.e. the propagation of life; while Knobel, viewing it as an adjective, hints at woman's peculiar function— חִיָּה וֶדַע —to quicken seed ( Genesis 19:1-38 :82) as supplying the explanation. Whether appended by the narrator (Delitzsch, Lange) or uttered by Adam (Kalisch, Macdonald), the words which follow give its true import and exegesis. Because she was the mother (am—Greek, μαμμα ; Welsh, mani ; Copt; man ; German and English, mama ;—Gesenius) of all living.