Adam and Eve therefore, as soon as their consciences are convinced by the law and they are brought to feel their turpitude in the sight of God, and of themselves having lost their faith and confidence in God, are so filled with fear and alarm that when they hear a breeze or breath of wind, immediately imagine that God is at hand as an avenger, and hide themselves from him. I believe therefore that by the voice of the Lord walking in the garden, Moses really means a breath or sound of wind which preceded the appearance of God before them. Hence Christ says in the gospel, when speaking of the wind, "Thou hearest the sound or voice thereof," John 3:8. For when Adam and Eve heard the rustling of the leaves as if shaken by the wind, they thought on a sudden within themselves, Hark! there is the Lord coming to take vengeance upon us! When therefore Moses adds "in the breeze of the day" to the words "the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden," he seems to me to do so by way of particular explanation of the meaning he intended to convey. As if he had said by way of comment, This voice was like a breezy blast of the day; and as if he wished the emphasis of his expression to rest on the word day. For he does not speak concerning a wind in the night, in order to exaggerate the greatness of the terror which follows upon sin; as if he had said in further explanation they were so stricken with fear that they were alarmed at the sound of a leaf, even in the clear light of day. What therefore, he seems to intend to intimate, would have been the result if God had come to them in the night and in the solemn darkness? Then the terror must have been more dreadful still. For as the light gives animation, so the darkness increases dread. This terror therefore, with which Adam and Eve after their sin were struck in the very broad light of day, is indeed a manifest proof that they had fallen utterly from the confidence of faith. This I believe to be the true sense of the present passage, and it fully agrees with that threatening of Moses, Lev. 26, where he is speaking of the punishments which should assuredly follow the commission of sin, that the sinners should be chased by the sound of a shaking leaf and that they should flee from it as from a sword, Lev. 26:36. For when the conscience is truly alarmed on account of sin, the man is so oppressed by it that he not only cannot do anything, but cannot even direct his thought to any purpose. And just as they say is sometimes the case in an army when the soldiers, overpowered by fear, cannot move a hand, but give themselves up in entire helplessness to be slaughtered by the enemy; in the same manner so horrible is the punishment which follows sin that the conscience of the sinner is struck with alarm at the sound of a leaf. Nay, that he cannot endure that all-beautiful creature, the light of day, by which all nature besides is enlivened and refreshed.