Cast out of Paradise, Adam and Eve built a hut for themselves, and for
seven days they sat in it in great distress, mourning and lamenting. At
the end of the seven days, tormented by hunger, they came forth and
sought food. For seven other days, Adam journeyed up and down in the
land, looking for such dainties as he had enjoyed in Paradise. In vain;
he found nothing. Then Eve spoke to her husband: "My lord, if it please
thee, slay me. Mayhap God will then take thee back into Paradise, for
the Lord God became wroth with thee only on account of me." But Adam
rejected her plan with abhorrence, and both went forth again on the
search for food. Nine days passed, and still they found naught
resembling what they had had in Paradise. They saw only food fit for
cattle and beasts. Then Adam proposed: "Let us do penance, mayhap the
Lord God will forgive us and have pity on us, and give us something to
sustain our life." Knowing that Eve was not vigorous enough to undergo
the mortification of the flesh which he purposed to inflict upon
himself, he prescribed a penance for her different from his own. He
said to her: "Arise, and go to the Tigris, take a stone and stand upon
it in the deepest part of the river, where the water will reach as high
as thy neck. And let no speech issue forth from thy mouth, for we are
unworthy to supplicate God, our lips are unclean by reason of the
forbidden fruit of the tree. Remain in the water for thirty-seven
days."
For himself Adam ordained forty days of fasting, while he stood in the
river Jordan in the same way as Eve was to take up her stand in the
waters of the Tigris. After he had adjusted the stone in the middle of
the Jordan, and mounted it, with the waters surging up to his neck, he
said: "I adjure thee, O thou water of the Jordan! Afflict thyself with
me, and gather unto me all swimming creatures that live in thee. Let
them surround me and sorrow with me, and let them not beat their own
breasts with grief, but let them beat me. Not they have sinned, only I
alone!" Very soon they all came, the dwellers in the Jordan, and they
encompassed him, and from that moment the water of the Jordan stood
still and ceased from flowing.
The penance which Adam and Eve laid upon themselves awakened misgivings
in Satan. He feared God might forgive their sin, and therefore essayed
to hinder Eve in her purpose. After a lapse of eighteen days he
appeared unto her in the guise of an angel. As though in distress on
account of her, he began to cry, saying: "Step up out of the river, and
weep no longer. The Lord God hath heard your mourning, and your
penitence hath been accepted by Him. All the angels supplicated the
Lord in your behalf, and He hath sent me to fetch you out of the water
and give you the sustenance that you enjoyed in Paradise, and for which
you have been mourning." Enfeebled as she was by her penances and
mortifications, Eve yielded to the solicitations of Satan, and he led
her to where her husband was. Adam recognized him at once, and amid
tears he cried out: "O Eve, Eve, where now is thy penitence? How
couldst thou let our adversary seduce thee again—him who robbed us of
our sojourn in Paradise and all spiritual joy?" Thereupon Eve, too,
began to weep and cry out: "Woe unto thee, O Satan! Why strivest thou
against us without any reason? What have we done unto thee that thou
shouldst pursue us so craftily?" With a deep-fetched sigh, Satan told
them how that Adam, of whom he had been jealous, had been the real
reason of his fall. Having lost his glory through him, he had intrigued
to have him driven from Paradise.
When Adam heard the confession of Satan, he prayed to God: "O Lord my
God! In Thy hands is my life. Remove from me this adversary, who seeks
to deliver my soul to destruction, and grant me the glory he has
forfeited." Satan disappeared forthwith, but Adam continued his
penance, standing in the waters of the Jordan for forty days.[106]
While Adam stood in the river, he noticed that the days were growing
shorter, and he feared the world might be darkened on account of his
sin, and go under soon. To avert the doom, he spent eight days in
prayer and fasting. But after the winter solstice, when he saw that the
days grew longer again, he spent eight days in rejoicing, and in the
following year he celebrated both periods, the one before and the one
after the solstice. This is why the heathen celebrate the calends and
the saturnalia in honor of their gods, though Adam had consecrated
those days to the honor of God.[107]
The first time Adam witnessed the sinking of the sun be was also seized
with anxious fears. It happened at the conclusion of the Sabbath, and
Adam said, "Woe is me! For my sake, because I sinned, the world is
darkened, and it will again become void and without form. Thus will be
executed the punishment of death which God has pronounced against me!"
All the night he spent in tears, and Eve, too, wept as she sat opposite
to him. When day began to dawn, he understood that what he had deplored
was but the course of nature, and he brought an offering unto God, a
unicorn whose horn was created before his hoofs,[108] and he sacrificed
it on the spot on which later the altar was to stand in Jerusalem.[109]