Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats (cathnoth, from cathan, to cover; cf. χιτωì ν; Sanscrit, katam; English, cotton) of skin (or, the skin of a man, from ur, to be naked, hence a hide). Neither their bodies (Origen), nor garments of the bark of trees (Gregory Nazianzen), nor miraculously-fashioned apparel (Grotius), nor clothing made from the serpent's skin (R. Jonathan), but tunics prepared from the skins of animals, slaughtered possibly for food, as it is not certain that the Edenie man was a vegetarian (Genesis 1:29), though more probably slain in sacrifice. Though said to have been made by God, "it is not proper so to understand the words, as if God had been a furrier, or a servant to sew clothes" (Calvin). God being said to make or do what he gives orders or instructions to be made or done. Willet and Macdonald, however, prefer to think that the garments were actually fashioned by God. Bush finds in the mention of Adam and his wife an intimation that they were furnished with different kinds of apparel, and suggests that on this fact is based the prohibition in Deuteronomy 22:5 against the interchange of raiment between the sexes. And clothed them.
1. To show them how their mortal bodies might be defended from cold and other injuries.
2. To cover their nakedness for comeliness' sake; vestimenta honoris (Chaldee Paraphrase).
3. To teach them the lawfulness of using the beasts of the field, as for food, so for clothing.
4. To give a rule that modest and decent, not costly or sumptuous, apparel should be used.
5. That they might know the difference between God's works and man's invention—between coats of leather and aprons of leaves; and,
6. To put them in mind of their mortality by their raiment of dead beasts' skins—talibus indici oportebat peccatorem ut essent mortalitatis indi-cium: Origen" (Wilier).
7. "That they might feel their degradation—quia vestes ex ca materia confectae, belluinum quiddam magis saperent, quam lineae vel laneae—and be reminded of their sin" (Calvin). "As the prisoner, looking on his irons, thinketh on his theft, so we, looking on our garments, should think on our sins" (Trapp).
8. A foreshadowing of the robe of Christ's righteousness (Delitzsch, Macdonald, Murphy, Wordsworth, Candlish; cf. Psalms 132:9, Psalms 132:16; Isaiah 61:10; Romans 13:14; Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10). Bonar recognizes in Jehovah Elohim at the gate of Eden, clothing the first transgressors, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, as the High Priest of our salvation, had a right to the skins of the burnt offerings (Le Deuteronomy 7:8), and who, to prefigure his own work, appropriated them for covering the pardoned pair.