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37 the Serpent Eve and What really happened in the Garden? What really happened in the Garden of Eden? Why did Eve state, when Cain was born, "I have gotten a man from (or with) the Lord"? There may be much more to the story of Cain and Abel than modern men have remotely begun to realize! Consider the following: We read in the Tanakh in concise, cryptic, mysterious words, "Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, 'I have gained a male child with the help of the LORD. She then bore his brother Abel. Abel became a keeper of sheep, and Cain became a tiller of the soil" (Gen.4:1-2). The Hebrew word for "knew" in this verse is yada and often means to know or experience in a sexual sense. The Hebrew word for "gained" is ganithi, which is connected with "Cain." The King James Version here has, "And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD." The Hebrew word for "man" is ish, and means "a man as an individual or a male person" (Strong's Concordance, #376). The same word is used in Genesis 2:23-24 where we read that Adam said, speaking of Eve, "She shall be called Woman [Heb., [sha], because she was taken out of Man [Heb., Ish]. Therefore shall a man [ish] leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." Notice that the word "man" literally refers to a "man" or "manly" person, generally to +. 1 This comment by Eve concerning her first-born son has stirred commentary from scholars and early Biblical exegetes, and Jewish scribes and commentators, as being very strange. A straight-forward reading of the text would seem to suggest that Adam had sexual congress with his wife Eve, and the logical assumption is that this led to the conception and birth of Cain, her first-born son. But why did Eve refer to Cain, as a swaddling baby, as a "man"? Chapter Three an adult male person.