February 11th : First Reading
The expulsion from the Garden of Eden
A Reading from the Book of Genesis 3:9-24
The Lord God called to the man. ‘Where are you?’ he asked.
‘I heard the sound of you in the garden;’ he replied ‘I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.’
‘Who told you that you were naked?’ he asked ‘Have you been eating of the tree I forbade you to eat?’
The man replied, ‘It was the woman you put with me; she gave me the fruit, and I ate it.’
Then the Lord God asked the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’
The woman replied, ‘The serpent tempted me and I ate.’
Then the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this,
‘Be accursed beyond all cattle,
all wild beasts.
You shall crawl on your belly and eat dust
every day of your life.
I will make you enemies of each other:
you and the woman,
your offspring and her offspring.
It will crush your head
and you will strike its heel.’
To the woman he said:
‘I will multiply your pains in childbearing,
you shall give birth to your children in pain.
Your yearning shall be for your husband,
yet he will lord it over you.’
To the man he said, ‘Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat,
‘Accursed be the soil because of you.
With suffering shall you get your food from it
every day of your life.
It shall yield you brambles and thistles,
and you shall eat wild plants.
With sweat on your brow
shall you eat your bread,
until you return to the soil,
as you were taken from it.
For dust you are
and to dust you shall return.’
The man named his wife ‘Eve’ because she was the mother of all those who live. The Lord God made clothes out of skins for the man and his wife, and they put them on. Then the Lord God said, ‘See, the man has become like one of us, with his knowledge of good and evil. He must not be allowed to stretch his hand out next and pick from the tree of life also, and eat some and live for ever.’ So the Lord God expelled him from the garden of Eden, to till the soil from which he had been taken. He banished the man, and in front of the garden of Eden he posted the cherubs, and the flame of a flashing sword, to guard the way to the tree of life.
The Word of the Lord.
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