And the eyes of them both were opened, &c.— They found what the serpent had asserted to be true, Genesis 3:5 but in a manner far different from expectation. Their eyes were opened, but not to a view of higher happiness: they were opened only to a sense of their sin, and consequently of their guilty shame. The phrase of their eyes being opened, in scripture, not only refers to the actual opening of the eyes, but also to men's observing or knowing any thing of which they before were ignorant. See Isaiah 42:7 comp. Acts 26:18. The eyes of them both were opened, i.e.. light and knowledge came into their minds, discovering to them what they were utter strangers to before. Le Clerc observes, that it is an elegance no less in the sacred than in profane writings, to make use of the figure, which rhetoricians call antonaclasis, whereby they continue the same word or phrase which went before, though in a quite different sense: and for this reason he supposes that Moses repeats that their eyes were opened, words which the serpent had used before, though he meant them in a sense quite different from the former.
They knew that they were naked— See note on Acts 26:25. of chap. 2: Shame followed hard upon sin: without the latter, the former could never have had being in the human mind. But no sooner were their minds opened to a consciousness of their guilt, than they felt all that uneasy anxiety which naturally attends this knowledge. Though this nakedness more peculiarly concerns the guilt and shame of their minds, yet as the body is the seat of the mind, and the index of its affections, therefore the shame is transferred to the body also, which, while the mind was pure, was unaffected by any natural appearances; but which, as soon as the mind became sinful and subject to the dominion of criminal affections, gave, by its nakedness, a continual admonition of guilt; and therefore, no wonder our first parents were immediately incited to cover it.
They sewed fig-leaves, &c.— This might be rendered, with more propriety, "and they joined or folded together the leaves or branches of the fig-tree, and made themselves girdles; חגרת chegoroth." Some think the Indian fig-tree is here meant, whose leaves are exceedingly large.