And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking. "The voice of God" is frequently used in Scripture to denote a storm-a war of the elements (Psalms 18:13; Psalms 29:5), and some think that, in addition to the moral tempest of conflicting thoughts that was raging in the breasts of the fallen, they were exposed to a new and sudden convulsion of the elements-some peals of rolling thunder-in which their guilty imaginations recognized the tokens of divine wrath. But such a use of the phrase occurs only in poetry; and to take it in this sense here would lead into those grave errors as to the effects of man's first disobedience in deranging the whole system of the natural world with which the poetry of Milton has so deeply infected the popular theology of this country. The Hebrew participle "walking" agrees in construction with "voice;" and the interpretation commonly given to it is, that the human pair heard "the voice" or Word of God walking in the garden. But the verb х haalak (H3212)], to walk, when associated with х qowl (H6963)] voice, frequently bears the meaning of to sound, to resound (cf. Exodus 19:19, where the verb is so rendered), so that the clause before us may be, according to Scriptural usage, rendered, and they heard the voice of the Lord God sounding in the garden.' At the same time, we prefer the translation adopted in our own version of this passage, which is, moreover, sanctioned by the approval of the best and most influential commentators, both ancient and modern. 'This,' says Faber ('Eight Prophetical Dissertations') 'is the sense in which the passage is explained by the Targumists, because they agree to render it, "They heard the Word of the Lord God walking" (see Isaiah 30:27). The prophet, also, in the precise phraseology of Moses, calls this Being "the voice of the Lord," in Isaiah 30:30-31. Hence, "the voice of the Lord" must be considered as the proper designation of the Being who appeared to our first parents (cf. John 1:18).
In the cool of the day - literally, the breeze of the day. Onkelos renders it "in the rest (silence) of the day" -
i.e. the evening, when in hot countries the cool breeze springs up. It seems to have been the usual time for paying such visits to his new-formed creatures. The Divine Being appeared, as formerly, uttering the well-known tones of kindness, walking in some visible form, not running hastily, as one impelled by the influence of angry feelings. How beautifully expressive are these words of the familiar and condescending manner in which He had hitherto been in a relationship with the first pair!
Hid themselves amongst the trees of the garden. The Hebrew word tree may be either singular or plural. It is taken in the latter number (Genesis 3:2), and we think rightly here also. But some prefer to view it in the singular, and render bªtowk (H8432) `eets (H6086), not "amongst the trees;" but, 'in the midst of the tree'-namely, the tree of life, Believing that He who had been their Heavenly Friend would now be their stern Judge and Enemy, they fled instinctively to hide themselves, and with desperate haste, as it were, plunged themselves into the heart of the tree of life, from the terrors of that death which they fancied was impending. The feelings that dictated this anxious desire to escape "from the presence of the Lord are obvious. The consciousness of sin had placed them in opposition to God. Shame, remorse, fear, a sense of guilt-feelings which they had never experienced until now, disordered their minds, and led them to shun Him whose approach they used to welcome.
How foolish to think of eluding the notice of the Omniscient God! (Psalms 139:1-12.) This was the first effect of sin on the nature of man. Guilty fear produced a disordered state of the mind; and it is one of the most striking circumstances in the history of the fall of our first parents, that while the grand inducement to eating the forbidden fruit was their ambition to be like God in the clearness and extent of their knowledge, the lamentable consequence of their rash act was an experience that was the very reverse, in the cloud of error and ignorance which from that moment darkened and impaired their faculties. What a sudden and complete prostration of intellect Adam and his partner must have undergone when they deluded themselves into the belief that, by hiding themselves anywhere in the garden, they could elude the observation of Him who is a spirit, the Omniscient and Omnipresent Yahweh.' But Adam in this respect was the type of our entire race, because the same blindness, of understanding is traceable in the history of his fallen posterity from the cradle to the grave.