Coats of skin

Short description: The coats provided for Adam and Eve by the God

The Fall of Adam and Eve as depicted on the Sistine Chapel ceiling

In the biblical story of Adam and Eve, coats of skin (Hebrew: כתנות עור‎, romanized: kāṯənōṯ ‘ōr, Template:Singular coat of skin) were the aprons provided to Adam and Eve by God when they fell from a state of innocent obedience under Him to a state of guilty disobedience.^[1]^[2]

Genesis 3:21

As per the biblical interpretation of Genesis 3:21, God produced coats of skin for the first man and woman Adam and Eve and clothed them when they were found naked in the garden after eating the forbidden fruit.^[3]

Material

The material of coats is not clear; instead, it is dubious. The Bible translates "coats" of skin and "garments" of skin as our mortal skin and animal' skin.^[4]

Symbolic

If clothes were of animal skin, the question arises, who killed the animal and what was that? These ''garments'' of skin are resolved as a symbol of salvation.^[5]

Wisdom

The first man and woman didn't even know how to dress properly. Their fig-leaf aprons served no purpose. In their "shame" the first couple always found it necessary to hide themselves from God (Gen.3.8).

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

God's creation of the "coats of skins" can thus be seen as a sign of his superior wisdom, his recognition of his people' true needs in light of their impending expulsion from the Garden.

And the LORD God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins and clothed them

Gallery

The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Pieter Paul Rubens, c. 1615, depicting both domestic and exotic wild animals such as tigers, parrots and ostriches co-existing in the garden
The Fall of Man by Peter Paul Rubens, 1628–29
Early Christian depiction of Adam and Eve in the Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter
Detail of a stained glass window (12th century) in Saint-Julien cathedral - Le Mans, France
Depiction of the Fall in Kunsthalle Hamburg, by Master Bertram, 1375-1383
Adam and Eve, engraving by Albrecht Dürer, 1504 (National Gallery of Art)
Adam and Eve by Albrecht Dürer, 1507
Adam and Eve in paradise (The Fall), Eve gives Adam the forbidden fruit, by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1533
Adam and Eve from a copy of the Falnama (Book of Omens) ascribed to Ja'far al-Sadiq, c. 1550, Safavid dynasty, Iran
Adam and Eve by Titian, c. 1550
Adam and Eve by Maarten van Heemskerck, 1550
Adam and Eve Driven From Paradise by James Tissot, c. 1896-1902
Adam and Eve depicted in a mural in Abreha wa Atsbeha Church, Ethiopia
1896 illustration of Eve handing Adam the forbidden fruit
Adam, Eve, and the (female) serpent (often identified as Lilith) at the entrance to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris
Adam and Eve by Frank Eugene, taken 1898, published in Camera Work no. 30, 1910
The Woman, the Man, and the Serpent by Byam Shaw, 1911
Adam and Eve in an illuminated manuscript (c. 950)
Adam and Eve by Franz Stuck, 1920
God Judging Adam by William Blake, 1795, Tate Collection