‘Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked, and they joined fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.'
What a dreadful moment. Having eaten they suddenly became aware of their puniness, and their inadequacy, and that they could no longer face God because they were defiled. ‘They knew that they were naked'. It was true that they had indeed received a form of knowledge, but it was a knowledge of what they had lost, a knowledge that they could no longer be His representatives, a knowledge that they no longer enjoyed the approval of God, a knowledge that they lay bare before Him, a knowledge that they could no longer face Him. They had become aware that they had forfeited their position totally, aware that all that awaited them was death.
Their response to their nakedness is not said to have had anything to do with sexual awareness, and the fig leaves were not said to be placed delicately over their private parts. Rather what they wanted to do was to hide themselves, to cover themselves totally, for they were afraid of God. ‘They joined fig leaves together'. They had never had clothes and now they had to make a pathetic attempt to find something which would cover them. They could not, of course, sew. All they could do was take the feeble fig leaves and try somehow to join them together into coverings, something for which the fig leaves were really not suitable.
What a pass this couple have now come to. From proudly walking with God and having dominion over their world, they have come to scrabbling around trying pathetically to tie fig leaves together to make some kind of covering so that they could hide themselves from God. Truly they have received knowledge, the knowledge of what good was, and what evil is, the knowledge of the consequences of sin and disobedience. And what has it produced? Panic and fear.
The idea of nakedness here is that of inadequacy before God, of being seen for what they are. ‘All things are naked and open before the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do' (Hebrews 4:13). We can compare with this how Paul does not want to be found ‘naked' before God when he goes to meet Him (2 Corinthians 5:3). Nakedness was now a thing of shame (compare Isaiah 20:2-4; Ezekiel 16:7; Revelation 3:17). There is no reason at this stage to equate it with sexual awareness. That will come later.