Genesis 3:21
And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife, garments of skins, and clothed them.
Open Genesis 3:21 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Fecit quoque Dominus Deus Adæ et uxori ejus tunicas pelliceas, et induit eos :
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ ἐποίησεν Κύριος ὁ θεὸς τῷ Ἀδὰμ καὶ τῇ γυναικὶ αὐτοῦ χιτῶνας δερματίνους, καὶ ἐνέδυσεν αὐτούς.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַיַּעַשׂ֩ יְהוָ֨ה אֱלֹהִ֜ים לְאָדָ֧ם וּלְאִשְׁתּ֛וֹ כָּתְנ֥וֹת ע֖וֹר וַיַּלְבִּשֵֽׁם
Haydock's commentary
Of skins, which Adam took from the beasts which he offered in sacrifice to his merciful Judge, testifying thereby that he had forfeited his life, and uniting himself to that sacrifice of the woman's promised seed, by which alone he believed the sin of the world was to be expiated. (Haydock)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
Clement of Alexandria The Stromata, or Miscellanies, Book III
Jam vero vel invitum cogit Paulam generationem ex deceptione deducere, cure dicit: “Vereor autem, ne sicut serpens Evam decepit, corrupti sint sensus vestri a simplicitate, quæ est in Christo.” Seal certum est, Dominum quoque “venisse” ad ea, “quæ aberraverant.” Aberraverunt autem, non ab alto repetita origine in eam, quæ hic est, generationem (est enim generatio creatura Omnipotentis, qui nunquam ex melioribus ad deteriora deduxerit animam); sed ad eos, qui sensibus seu cogitationibus aberraverant, ad nos, inquam, venit Servator: qui quidem ex nostra in præceptis inobedientia corrupti sunt, dum nimis avide voluptatem persequeremur; cum utique protoplastus noster ternpus prævenisset, et ante debitum tempus matrimonii gratiam appetiisset et aberrasset: quoniam “quicunque aspicit mulierem ad concupiscendum eam, jam mœchatus est eam” ut qui voluntatis tempus non exspectaverit. …
Tertullian On the Apparel of Women, Chapter I
If there dwelt upon earth a faith as great as is the reward of faith which is expected in the heavens, no one of you at all, best beloved sisters, from the time that she had first “known the Lord,” and learned (the truth) concerning her own (that is, woman’s) condition, would have desired too gladsome (not to say too ostentatious) a style of dress; so as not rather to go about in humble garb, and rather to affect meanness of appearance, walking about as Eve mourning and repentant, in order that by every garb of penitence she might the more fully expiate that which she derives from Eve, the ignominy, I mean, of the first sin, and the odium (attaching to her as the cause) of human perdition. …
St Methodius From the Discourse on the Resurrection, Part I
II. Now the question has already been raised, and answered, that the “coats of skins” are not bodies. Nevertheless, let us speak of it again, for it is not enough to have mentioned it once. Before the preparation of these coats of skins, the first man himself acknowledges that he has both bones and flesh; for when he saw the woman brought to him: “This is now,” he cried, “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” And again: She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.” For I cannot endure the trifling of some who shamelessly do violence to Scripture, in order that their opinion, that the resurrection is without flesh, may find support; supposing rational bones and flesh, and in different ways changing it backwards and forwards by allegorizing. …
St Augustine On the Holy Trinity, The Image of the Beast in Man
16. For as a snake does not creep on with open steps, but advances by the very minutest efforts of its several scales; so the slippery motion of falling away [from what is good] takes possession of the negligent only gradually, and beginning from a perverse desire for the likeness of God, arrives in the end at the likeness of beasts. Hence it is that being naked of their first garment, they earned by mortality coats of skins. For the true honor of man is the image and likeness of God, which is not preserved except it be in relation to Him by whom it is impressed. The less therefore that one loves what is one’s own, the more one cleaves to God. But through the desire of making trial of his own power, man by his own bidding falls down to himself as to a sort of intermediate grade. …
St Augustine Reply to Faustus the Manichæan, Faustus states his objections to the morality of the law and the prophets, and Augustin seeks by the application of the type and the allegory to explain away the moral difficulties of the Old Testament
84. In Tamar, then, the daughter-in-law of Judah, we see the people of the kingdom of Judah, whose kings, answering to Tamar’s husbands, were taken from this tribe. Tamar means bitterness; and the meaning is suitable, for this people gave the cup of gall to the Lord. The two sons of Judah represent two classes of kings who governed ill, those who did harm and those who did no good. One of these sons was evil or cruel before the Lord; the other spilled the seed on the ground that Tamar might not become a mother. There are only those two kinds of useless people in the world, the injurious and those who will not give the good they have but lose it or spill it on the ground. And as injury is worse than not doing good, the evil-doer is called the elder and the other the younger. …
St Gregory of Nyssa Funeral Oration on Meletius
Our Bridegroom has not been taken from us. He stands in our midst, though we see him not. The Priest is within the holy place. He is entered into that within the veil, whither our forerunner Christ has entered for us. He has left behind him the curtain of the flesh. No longer does he pray to the type or shadow of the things in heaven, but he looks upon the very embodiment of these realities. No longer through a glass darkly does he intercede with God, but face to face he intercedes with Him: and he intercedes for us, and for the “negligences and ignorances” of the people. He has put away the coats of skin; no need is there now for the dwellers in paradise of such garments as these; but he wears the raiment which the purity of his life has woven into a glorious dress. …
St Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, To Gaudentius
3. What then, I reply? Is youth to run riot that self-indulgence may afterwards be more resolutely rejected? Far from it, they rejoin: “let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide. Is any called being circumcised,”, that is, as a virgin? “let him not become uncircumcised”, that is, let him not seek the coat of marriage given to Adam on his expulsion from the paradise of virginity. “Is any called in uncircumcision,”, that is, having a wife and enveloped in the skin of matrimony? let him not seek the nakedness of virginity and of that eternal chastity which he has lost once for all. No, let him “possess his vessel in sanctification and honour,” let him drink of his own wells not out of the dissolute cisterns of the harlots which cannot hold within them the pure waters of chastity. …
St Gregory Nazianzen In Defence of His Flight to Pontus, and His Return, After His Ordination to the Priesthood, with an Exposition of the Character of the Priestly Office
25. This is why the heathen rage and the peoples imagine vain things; why tree is set over against tree, hands against hand, the one stretched out in self indulgence, the others in generosity; the one unrestrained, the others fixed by nails, the one expelling Adam, the other reconciling the ends of the earth. This is the reason of the lifting up to atone for the fall, and of the gall for the tasting, and of the thorny crown for the dominion of evil, and of death for death, and of darkness for the sake of light, and of burial for the return to the ground, and of resurrection for the sake of resurrection. All these are a training from God for us, and a healing for our weakness, restoring the old Adam to the place whence he fell, and conducting us to the tree of life, from which the tree of knowledge estranged us, when partaken of unseasonably, and improperly.
St Ambrose Concerning Repentance, Chapter XI. The possibility of repentance is a reason why baptism should not be deferred to old age, a practice which is against the will of God in holy Scripture. But it is of no use to practise penance whilst still serving lusts. These must be first subdued
99. And the Lord has given a sufficient warning to those who put off repentance, when He says: “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” We know not at what hour the thief will come, we know not whether our soul may be required of us this next night. God cast Adam out of Paradise immediately after his fault; there was no delay. At once the fallen were severed from all their enjoyments that they might do penance; at once God clothed them with garments of skins, not of silk.