Temptation and Fall. Gen
2:25-3:7
When we get into the story of the
temptation and the fall in Genesis chapter three there is clearly a human
viewpoint approach to the study of this section. Human viewpoint approaches
usually want to relegate this to some form of myth and that it was written
simply to explain how certain things came to be in history, how animals came to
be a certain way, perhaps why people wear clothes. It is basically thought of
as just a story and there is no real history here. However, if we take the time
to compare what is said here in just seven short verses with, for example, a
myth such as Pandora’s Box, which was a Greek myth used to teach about the
origin of evil, we see that there are certain elements in myths that are
similar to all the different myths, whether and ancient near eastern myth, an
Asian myth or Greek myth. There is a certain amount of fantastic information
there that just goes beyond credibility, whereas when we look at the biblical
story of the fall and the introduction of evil into the human race it is a very
concise episode. The Holy Spirit always uses an economy of words and doesn’t
get into a lot of extraneous detail that would satisfy the curiosity of most of
us. Another attempt is to sort of spiritualize the story, once again rejecting
the fact that it would be a literal historical event, and thinking that is was
merely representational. At this point all kinds of odd explanations come to
play. For example, one writer would say that there is no real serpent and that
this is a literary device to explain what is going on inside of Eve’s head.
Also the allegorical approach is predominant, especially in Roman Catholic
theology where it really isn’t literal, it just represents sexual knowledge.
Embedded in that is the idea that somehow sex is inherently evil, and then once
they discovered sex then everything went downhill from there. All of that
refuses to take the Scriptures as a literal, historical event that took place
approximately four of five thousand years before Christ.
In chapter two there is really a
shift that takes place between verse 24 and verse 25. The chapter break should
come in verse 25. There we read that the man and his wife were naked and not
ashamed. The reason we make the paragraph break between v. 24 and v. 25 is one
the basis of vocabulary. We have the word “naked” which in the Hebrew simply
means to be naked, but the word is repeated in chapter three verse seven. There
we discover that the word is not only repeated but now is a source of disgrace
and shame and exposure and guilt. This forms what is called an inclusio,
the Latin term, or the Greek term epanadiposis. They both have the
same idea, i.e. the repetition of a word or a phrase at the beginning of a
section and at the end of a section. That is what would be called in the army,
bracketing, and that basically circles the topic, and by repeating material at
the beginning and at the end it emphasizes the material that comes in between.
So it forms an inclusio here from Genesis 2:25 to 3:7,
and that becomes the main section.
The emphasis in chapter two as we
have seen is on the perfect environment created by God. Thus when we come to chapter
three and we see the fall we realize that it can’t be blamed on insufficient
information. That is a sub-theme in this whole section: the sufficiency of God
and the rejection of God’s sufficiency. The fall can only be blamed on the
personal choice of the individuals involved. And thus even though it is not
written as an explanation of evil it does give an answer as to how evil entered
into the world. God created everything good; it was man who mucked everything
up by making a disobedient and rebellious decision. At the beginning there is a
complete openness, and innocency, and in a sense
almost naivety when it comes to evil. There is no awareness of the evil that
can come from sexual manipulation and sexual distortion. So they are naked and
not ashamed. The word “ashamed” is the Hebrew word bosh, and it means to fall into disgrace
through failure. It has the idea of a sense of guilt over failure as well as
the ideas of confusion, dismay and embarrassment. So none of these things are
present here, there is nothing but pure optimism and hope. Everything is
positively good. The man and the woman are not created neutral; they are
created with the positive righteousness of God because they are created in His
image. However, it is an untested righteousness. The test is whether or not
they will follow God’s instructions related to the prohibition of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil. When we look at this beginning we see in 2:25
that they are both “naked,” arummim, which is a plural form
of a cognate noun as the word we run into in 3:1 describing the
serpent. The serpent is the craftiest or wiliest creature of the beasts of the
field that God created. The words “craftiest” or “wiliest” is the Hebrew word arum, so
obviously writer is making a point here, he has a pun going here to draw our
attention to the fact that man as created is unashamed, there is integrity in
both the man and the woman, and yet the serpent, when he comes along, by this
play on words the author is indicating that it is this very integrity of the
creature that is going to be the target of the serpent. What we see in this
section is that man moves from the innocent, uncorrupted nakedness to
vulnerable shameful nakedness. He moves from integrity as one created in the
untarnished image of God to guilt and the corruption of that image of God. This
is one of the most dramatic stories in all of Scripture and it is covered in
such sparseness that we have to take some time to develop what happens. It is
great drama and it is told with tremendous finesse.
Verse 1, “Now the serpent.” The
structure of the grammar here at the beginning uses the Hebrew conjunction waw
plus a noun, which is always a disjunctive idea. So it is bringing out a
contrast, and the contrast is with that which is before: the naked man and
woman who have integrity and were unashamed are contrasted with the serpent who is more cunning. The word there for serpent is the
Hebrew word nachash, the normal word for serpent or snake but it also
has some other interesting uses. For example, Isaiah 27:1, “In that day the LORD with his
severe and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the fleeing serpent,
even leviathan that twisted serpent; and he shall slay the reptile that is in
the sea.” This isn’t the normal serpent, so when we think of nachash
and the serpent or the snake in the garden there are a couple of things we need
to pay attention to. First, this is used to describe a mighty sea creature that
in many passages in the KJV was translated as a dragon. This is a huge dinosaur
type of creature, so it is a huge reptilian creature that is pictured also in
Revelation 12:9, “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called
the Devil, and Satan”—the judgment on the devil and Satan who is pictured
as a dragon is the fulfillment of Isaiah 27:1. In Hebrew imagery they reach
back into their past and pick up this early Israelite myth that did not have
anything to do with Scripture and used that imagery of Leviathan in his
struggle and revolt against God, and so the Leviathan becomes a picture of
Satan. All of the ancient peoples had a mythology where they have in their
creation mythology a revolt of the sea against their god or gods. This revolt
of the sea—this is why the sea was always pictured as uncontrolled. Back
in Genesis 1:2 when we talked about the Spirit of God hovering over the depths.
That word always has this negative connotation of uncontrolled, rebellious sea,
the salt sea. And there is no salt sea in the future creation. Mythology always
has some sort of remnant memory of what truly happened. It doesn’t tell us what
happened, but these ancient mythologies are corrupt, corroded versions of what
had actually happened. So embedded in these ancient legends is the idea that
there is this primeval revolt among the gods, which is comparable to the
angels, and this revolt is led by a creature called Leviathan. This Leviathan
is not a simple snake but more like a dragon type of creature. So when we look
at this we think about what kind of creature this is in the garden and we think
that it is nachash, but it is not just a simple serpent, it is much
more than that because there are other references to this creature that have
him as a much larger creature and more dynamic role. But whether he is small or
large we can’t tell, nevertheless the serpent is the symbol and the picture of
the one that led the revolt against God in eternity past.
This creature is said to be arum, more
cunning, crafty or subtle. That indicates that the knowledge that the serpent
had was insightful when it came to watching the woman. So he doesn’t just show
up on creation day plus one, he sits back and observes. He has been observing
the relationship between the woman and the man and has decided on the most
effective course of action. Their weakness is their naivety, their ignorance of
good and evil—remember that good and evil here is not a contrast between
good versus evil. The word here is not talking about righteousness but good in
terms of human good and evil in terms of sin. The word “evil” can also be
applied in some places in Scripture to that which appears to be good but is
really destructive. In many places in the Old Testament the word “evil” relates
to that which is sinful—and their unawareness of their vulnerability and
how they can be taken advantage of, and they are unaware of the consequences of
sin, evil and rebellion. So the use of the cognate here is to focus the mind of
the reader on the target: the integrity of the man. And the serpent decides
that the woman is the most likely target of success.
The next thing we see here is that
the serpent is more cunning than any beast of the field. If we go back to
Genesis 1:24, 25 it talks about God creating the beasts of the earth. Then in
chapter two when on the sixth day when God created Adam and then brought forth
the beasts of the field there is a contrast. The "beasts of the
field" is a term that relates to the domesticatable
animals that exist in the garden. For example, there are sheep in the garden.
The beasts of the field indicates that this serpent lived in the garden, and
that this was a domesticatable animal and had some
sort of regular concourse with Adam and Isha. This
suggests that this is why there was no real surprise when it started talking.
We know that certain changes took place after the fall. One of those obvious
physiological changes was that the serpent was to crawl on its scuts. Furthermore, it seems that the serpent had some
vocal ability in some sense, or maybe this happens rather early and caught the
woman off guard, we don’t know; that is just one of the enigmas in the passage.
But the serpent speaks because it is indwelt by Satan.
As for the identification of the
serpent, God does give us a clue as to how this started in two chapters in the
Old Testament: Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14. Ezekiel 28:1ff, “The word of the LORD came again
unto me, saying, Son of man, say unto the prince of Tyrus,” and
the first part of this funeral dirge is in reference to the prince of Tyre. But there is a change in verse 12, which is a second
part of this dirge: “Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus.” We know for extra-biblical data that there was a
leader in Tyre, but the king of Tyre
is really the power behind the throne, because the things that are said of the
king of Tyre could never be said of any human king,
especially any human king in Tyre. This passage is
coming under a tremendous amount of attack today by all kinds of liberals and
it is beginning to influence a number of evangelicals. Unfortunately, several
of the more recent study Bibles argue that this cannot
and does not refer to the fall of Satan. The problem is that even though
various scholars make the contention that this is basically a borrowing of some
basic Canaanite or near eastern myth no ancient Canaanite or near eastern myth
has ever been discovered that even comes close to what is mentioned in this
passage. In other words, it is just a rejection of what the Word indicates. And
if you take this out of the Scriptures it has damaging theological consequences
because it opens the Bible up to an eternal dualism, because if this doesn’t
tell us about the origin of sin in the universe then nowhere do we have
anything telling us about the origin of sin or evil in the universe and so
there is nothing to indicate that it had a beginning anywhere.
We see here that this king of Tyre was the seal of perfection. That was never said
anywhere of any human being. “…full of wisdom, and
perfect in beauty.” The adjectives here just mount up, describing the
perfection of this creature. Verse 13, “Thou hast been in Eden the garden of
God.” This is not talking about the Eden of Genesis chapter two, this is
talking about the Eden that existed on the earth prior to Genesis 1:2, because
the description of Eden here doesn’t match the Eden of Genesis two. “…every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and
the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the
workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was
prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.”
If we were a Jew reading this the imagery that would come into our head would
be a picture of the high priest and the breastplate, the ephod of the high
priest, which had the precious and semi-precious stones on it. The Jewish high
priest had twelve stones on the ephod for each of the twelve tribes and there
are only nine stones mentioned here. Furthermore, there is a reference to the
musical ability of this creature in the last part of v. 13. Verses 14, 15, “Thou
art the anointed cherub that covereth [covers the
throne of God]; and I have set thee so: thou wast
upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the
stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from
the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was
found in thee.” It repeats this idea of sunless perfection, that this cannot be
a human king. Verse 16, “By the abundance of thy trading they have filled the
midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee
as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering
cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.” Tye
was a major center for commerce and trade and so this uses that imagery that
apparently this creature (Lucifer before the fall) traded on his influence. And
the idea that he was the anointed cherub indicates something about a priestly
role, and apparently we derive from this text (we can’t be dogmatic) he had
some sort of priestly function in relationship to the angels. And instead of
receiving the worship for God he wanted all of that worship for himself. And so
verse 17, “Thine heart was lifted up because of thy
beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast
thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee.”
That relates to his judgment.
The details of that sin, his heart
being lifted up, are in Isaiah chapter fourteen which is a prophecy of the
future fall of the king of Babylon. Think about this. Isaiah 14 is written in
the seventh century BC, but it is looking forward to an event when this king is
going to be judged. This actually takes place at the second coming of Christ.
So the vantage point is looking to the future, but it is looking to a point in
the future that looks back on the immediate judgment that just took place on
this king. Verse 12, “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer…” The word is
not Lucifer in the original, that comes from the
concept of light. The Hebrew word has the idea of bright and morning star. “… son of the morning! how art thou
cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!” When did he weaken the
nations? All through human history, culminating in their
final weakness during the Tribulation period. Notice it is past tense;
it is over with. Verses 13, 14, “For thou hast said in thine
heart.” So it is looking at this time and reflecting back on the original fall.
“I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God [the
angels]: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation [i.e. to rule over
the assembly of the angels], in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the
heights of the clouds [the glory of God]; I will be like the most High.” These
five “I wills” summarize Satan’s arrogance and his fall.
The conclusion: v.15, “Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the lowest
depths of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and
consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the
earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms.” So it is looking forward to the
time of his judgment and realizing that when he is judged people will look at
him and ridicule him and wonder how they could have been
misled by this creature.
So this is the origin of Satan, the
origin of sin in the universe, and man is created to resolve the angelic
conflict. After Satan fell he took one third of the angels with him. Those
angels went with him in revolt against God, and eventually God judged those
angels. In that judgment Satan challenged the integrity of God. We don’t have
specific scripture on that but we infer it from the fact that it is in Genesis
chapter three that the serpent challenges the integrity of God. This seems to
be his modus operandi throughout history: to challenge and attack the integrity
of God and the goodness of God. And along with that Satan wants to prove that
he, the creature, can successfully rule creation apart from the creator. So God
in grace is demonstrating that the creature cannot live independently from the
creator, and that when the creature does that there is always destruction. It
doesn’t matter what the creature does. It may not be a sin of any consequence.
It may be an act that no one would classify as something that is moral or
immoral. Eating a piece of fruit is not on your list of immoral actions, but it
was an act of disobedience to God, the creature exerting his independence from
God that is the source of all the sin, suffering, death, misery, warfare,
horror, famine that we see. It comes from the creature acting independently
from God. We think that it is just a minor thing, and we look at what happened
in Genesis three as if it was some minor thing that they eat this fruit, but
look at what God has to do to reverse the consequences. He has to send His Son
to die on the cross to pay the penalty for sin. He has to go through thousands
of years of earth’s history in order to bring about the resolution of the
consequences of their actions in chapter three. So God has created man in order
to demonstrate His grace, to demonstrate His integrity, to demonstrate through
human history that the creature cannot live independently from the creator. God
works things out and allows things to develop through the course of human
history so that every possible permutation of creaturely independence is going
to be demonstrated to be fallacious. God is going to show that it never works
under any circumstances or under any condition.
He allows Satan to test the creature
and the serpent takes first assault on the woman and he does it in an extremely
subtle manner. He is not going to go for that head-on frontal assault but he is
going to carefully address the subject. The question that he asks is, “Hath God
said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?”
He doesn’t say God is wrong but by the way he forms the question he is
suggesting that somehow God is leaving something out, that somehow there is
something good that God is withholding from the creature. By raising the
question, Has God said? the serpent is challenging the
integrity of God. But there is something that is more insidious about this
approach. By asking the question this way he immediately puts the woman in a
position of judging God. If she falls for the question she puts herself in a
position that is going to predetermine her defeat. God has said one thing, the
absolute value. That absolute value is that if they eat from the fruit of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil there will be certain death. The serpent
is going to come along and say no death. So there are competing truth claims.
What the serpent is saying to the woman is, You need
to be the one to decide who is true. By buying into the question she is
elevating herself to a position where she, the creature, is going to determine
whether God’s statement has ultimate value or the serpent’s statement has
ultimate value. It’s like answering the question: Have you stopped beating your
wife yet? However she answers this question she is in trouble. The solution is
to turn her back on the serpent and to walk away. But by answering the serpent
she has already put herself into a trap that can go in no other direction other
than to culminate in her eating the fruit, because she is elevating herself
into the position of judging the veracity of God’s statement.
In verse two we see the beginning of
her answer. “And the woman said unto the serpent, 'We may eat of the fruit of
the trees of the garden'.” But notice she is leaving things out. God didn’t say
they could just eat from the trees of the garden, He said they could eat from all
the trees in the garden except one. She is leaving out that qualification of
all. She is beginning to diminish what God has said. She is deluding the Word
of God. “But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God
hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye
touch it, lest ye die.” God didn’t say that. God said, “You shall not eat it,”
but when she quotes God, not only does she add something about not touching it
but she also misstates the severity of the prohibition. When she says, You shall not eat it, she reduces the significance of that,
it is not stated in as strong a prohibition as God originally stated it. She
diminishes it by adding the phrase “lest you die.” By changing the consequences
from You shall certainly die to Lest you die, she
weakens the penalty. Her statement backs off the absoluteness of the penalty
just a little bit. So the changes that she makes dilutes God’s Word and weakens
the mandate. But the serpent gets it right when he responds to her.
Verse 4, “And the serpent said unto
the woman, Ye shall not surely die.” In the Hebrew
there is the negative plus an infinitive construct plus an imperfect tense
verb. The normal way to write this in Hebrew is to put the negative between the
infinitive construct and the imperfect tense verb. God said, “You will
certainly die” and He used that phrase of that infinitive construct plus the
imperfect, and so rather than break that up by putting the negative before that
phrase the serpent is making an extremely strong statement that God is wrong,
that He said you will certainly die and I’m saying you will not certainly die.
So he changes up the grammar in order to make sure that the point is made that
he is 180 degrees opposite the statement of God. He is opposing what God said.
So the serpent accurately states the penalty but he rejects it, he says it is
not real. This is all part of the ongoing lie that man wants to buy into, that
there are no consequences to disobedience, that we are going to get away with
sin, that God is going to wink at sin, is not going to see our sin, and somehow
we are going to get away with it. Furthermore, the serpent goes on from a
simple rejection of what God said to an explanation that impugns the integrity
of God, v. 5: “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.” In other
words, God’s real motive is so you won’t have everything He has, He is being
selfish, He is not good, He doesn’t have your best interests at heart, He has
lied to you about the penalty, the only thing that is going to happen to you is
that you are going to become like God. An so he holds
out the temptation of the promise of divinity. This idea for the creature to be
like God is this same temptation that he fell into. He wanted to be like God,
and the irony here is that the woman who, like the man, is supposed to exercise
dominion over these creatures is now going to be led by this subordinate animal
to get to deity. She has just had the wool pulled over her eyes.
It is furthermore an attack on the
sufficiency of God’s provision. He didn’t tell you everything you needed to
know; He left some really important facts out. That is how Satan has always
attacked the Word of God. There is always an assault on the Word of God. First
there is an assault on its integrity and it is always followed by an assault on
its sufficiency. We have seen that in the 19th and 20th
centuries. There has been a tremendous assault on the integrity of God’s Word.
For example, it’s not infallible, it’s not inerrant, and liberal theology has
made its statements and these have seeped into conservative evangelical
theology. But even when conservatives stood up for the inerrancy and
infallibility of God’s Word where they lost it was on the doctrine of
sufficiency. They lost it because science comes along and says it’s great to
tell us about the origins, the Bible is great to tell us about the cross and
salvation, great to tell us about our spiritual life, but from science we know
all of this information and so we can have a better understanding of origins
from science and we don’t have to pay attention to what the Bible says about
science. So we lost the battle of sufficiency. Then it went to sociology, and
sociology has its roots at the same time period as evolution. And sociology
comes along and says man can understand its social relationships and marriage
and families and cities and countries much better without paying attention to
what the Bible says. The bible is just antiquated information, you don’t need
to pay attention to the Bible, it has nothing to do
with social organization or social structures. Then we have psychology.
Psychology comes along and says you ought to understand behavior problems and
why you do the things they way you do them, and you don’t need to pay attention
to the Bible. The Bible isn’t sufficient, it just tells you about spiritual
things, not about the soul. And if you want to know about the soul then you
come to psychology. All of this is evil; all of this is deceptive; all of this
is an attack on the sufficiency of Scripture, which is an indirect attack on
the integrity of God. When people buy into Darwinistic
evolution or any compromise on the literal six-day, twenty-four-hour creation
of Genesis chapter one, when they buy into sociology, and into psychology, then
they are completely immersed in the devil’s thinking and they are under the
control of the cosmic system. They are operating in the field of good and evil.
In verse 6 we see the woman’s response.
She begins to really look on this fruit; it is attractive. “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.”
We need to pay attention to a couple
of words here. The first word is the word “pleasant.” This is a word in the Hebrew which has a basic meaning of that which is pleasing
or pleasant, to have a longing for something, something that is desirous, and
something that one would lust after. This word is used in the context of the
Mosaic law in Deuteronomy 5:21, “Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour's wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour's house, his field, or his manservant, or his
maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbour's.”
The second word is the word “desirable” which is translated “covet” in
Deuteronomy 5, which joins both of these words together. And if you were a Jew
reading this account that the woman looks on the tree and she sees it pleasant
and desirable, the words that you would hear in Hebrew are words that speak of
being covetous and lustful in the Mosaic law. We miss
so much in the English! The writer is using these words in such a sophisticated
manner as he writes the episode in Genesis chapter three. The second word is
the word desirable. This is the Hebrew word chamad, which means
to lust, to covet or to desire. This word is also used in Exodus 20:17, “Thou shalt
not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet
thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his
maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.” So as she looks on the tree she begins to
lust and covert, and this automatically culminates in eating the fruit. Now
this whole action really is viewed as one action. Nothing is a sin yet, but
once she starts down the road it’s an irreversible process and once she begins
to think that she can evaluate God it’s going to automatically culminate in her
disobedience to the divine prohibition.
Notice how the writer ends this. It
is very rapid. She took, the fruit, she ate, she gave her husband, and he ate. He
wraps it up very quickly and very succinctly; there is no drawing out of the
details. Many people look at this and try to interpret it in some sort of
allegorical manner. But we should observe how the New Testament handles it. The
New Testament does not look at this in an allegorical manner. We see how Paul
handles it in many places but one in particular is 1 Timothy 2:12-14, “But I
suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in
silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but
the woman being deceived was in the transgression.” Paul is giving instructions
on how the church should conduct itself in the first century and his
explanation isn’t grounded in 1st century attitudes towards the
sexes. He goes back to creation. Paul in the New Testament builds sex
relationships, the relationships between the two sexes on a literal
understanding of Genesis chapters two and three.
Then verse 7 gives us the
consequences of the disobedience. “And the eyes of them both were opened.” This
is spiritual death. They were to die immediately. They didn’t die physically
but they died spiritually. “… and they knew that they
were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”
Now there is exposure, there is guilt, there is disgrace, there is shame, and
they have to cover it up. Notice that God hasn’t shown up yet and they are already having to cover up the problem. They are
immediately exposed and they try to solve it on their own terms. This is man’s
problem; he doesn’t understand the ultimate issue is always spiritual. The
human solution is always a failure. Adam and Eve tried to solve their problem
by sewing fig leaves together and covering themselves. That never works. This
is the picture of human good. There is nothing sinful in what they are doing
but it is an inadequate, farcical solution to the problem. The human solution
is never a solution; the only solution is the divine solution. The only
solution is a complete and accurate understanding of the Word of God and an
unshakeable trust in the integrity of God. It is only on this basis that man,
the creature, can live as God intended.