Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? … And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? … And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. … Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them. And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
The first thing Adam and Eve do with their new “wisdom” is sew fig leaves. The fruit is pitched as a grown-up kind of insight, the ability to see like God sees, and the story immediately shows what that seeing feels like. Their eyes open and “they knew that they were naked.” That is the first fact their new awareness produces: exposure. Then comes the first project of this new moral life, a quick patch job. They make aprons and try to cover what suddenly feels unsafe to show. Genesis 3 treats knowing good and evil as a grim kind of adulthood. It is real awareness, and it instantly comes out as shame and self-protection, not calm clarity or stronger goodness.
The serpent, though, is not simply wrong about everything. He says their eyes will be opened, and that happens. He says they will be “as gods,” and later God himself says, “as one of us,” in this narrow sense: they now know good and evil. The tragedy is that the gain is real, and the use of it is bent from the start. They reach for wisdom by distrusting the One who told them the truth, and that choice shapes the kind of knowledge they get. It is a warped version of becoming like God: a grab for maturity that skips communion and goes straight to control. Instead of making them steady, this knowledge makes them defensive. It gives them new instincts for hiding and new words for self-justification. The story shows it in the sequence of events. After the fruit, they cover. Then they hide when they hear God in the garden. Their first moral life together is already built around managing risk, protecting the self, and staying out of sight.