Genesis - Chapter 03 - Line 00066

Contemplative Summary

And he said, “Your voice I heard in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

The first human words to the Divine are not defiance, but confession. The voice that once called creation into being is now the sound that stirs fear. The Hebrew qol’kha shamati — “your voice I heard” — carries both intimacy and trembling; hearing has become exposure. The word va’ira — “and I was afraid” — introduces emotion into the human vocabulary, born from awareness of separation. Eirom anokhi — “I am naked” — reveals not merely the body uncovered, but the self unveiled before its Source. Hiding follows as reflex, not rebellion — a movement inward, away from presence that feels too bright to bear.

Here, consciousness speaks for the first time from within its own distance. The voice of God and the voice of humanity now meet across the echo of concealment. Fear becomes the new interpreter of sound; shame, the shadow of awareness. Yet within this confession lies the beginning of honesty — the willingness to answer, even from hiding.

To contemplate this line is to sense the tenderness of that exchange — the human trembling before the vastness of being known. Every time we hear the voice that calls and feel both drawn and afraid, we stand again in this garden. And still, the same presence waits, not to condemn the hiding, but to listen to the heart that dares to speak from within it.