Introducing Disobedience Gen 2:16-17

Introducing Disobedience.Part 1

“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16–17).

 

Obviously disobedience did not exist until Adam and Eve disobeyed this commandment of God. The snake succeeded in tempting Eve to be disobedient by telling her she wouldn’t die from eating the fruit, and he was correct in that, because she knew which fruit was poisonous and which not and apparently the fruit she saw was not poisonous, as the verse says: “and she saw that it was good to eat” Gen 3:6.

She possessed that kind of knowledge. She didn’t have to be disobedient to learn that eating poisonous fruit could kill her. But she obviously didn’t know that there was another kind of death, namely death as a punishment for carrying out a morally evil act.

Depiction of the original sin by Jan Brueghel de Oude and Peter Paul Rubens

When God told Adam “for on the day you eat of it you shall surely die” he didn’t understand that it referred to a morally bad act. He thought it referred to the fruit being bad, meaning poisonous, that’s why he would die if he ate it. But God meant that if he ate from the fruit he would be disobeying God’s commandment, which is a morally evil act and warrants punishment, perhaps even the punishment of death..

The snake’s crime is that he led Eve into carrying out a moral crime, the crime of disobedience. This was a crime which never existed. Eve brought it into existence by falling into the trap of the snake.

This therefore is the sin of Adam and Eve. They brought disobedience into the world. Now it was necessary to make laws regarding the various punishments for various crimes, hence the creation of Torah, the book in which God tells us what we may and what we may not do and the various punishments for disobeying His word.

The words “for on the day you eat of it you shall surely die” aren’t a threat, they are meant to teach Adam that moral evils are punishable by death. Disobedience to the word of God is a morally evil action, although not so severe to be punishable by death. That is why they don’t die after eating the fruit. That’s why after Adam and Eve eat the fruit God doesn’t carry out the death penalty and gives them lighter punishments instead.

So Adam learns, the hard way, something he didn’t know before, namely that a morally evil action, like disobedience, can lead to death as surely as a physically bad action, like eating poison fruit.

It’s not the fruit which carries the death penalty. The snake isn’t lying when he says that Eve won’t die from eating the fruit. He and Adam and Eve all possess knowledge that the fruit wasn’t poisonous. It’s disobedience to the word of God which is liable to be punished by death.

The punishment for disobedience isn’t death but expulsion from the Garden of Eden because that is the place for obedient people. It is the place of perfection where perfectly obedient people have access to the tree of life.

But it’s difficult because now the inclination to disobedience has become part of our nature and it’s become impossible to be perfectly obedient. That is why God gave us the Torah, which is the tree of life outside the Garden of Eden.

God gave us His Torah so that we can learn knowledge of good and evil and by doing the good and rejecting the evil we have life. God wanted Adam and Eve to have life and to have knowledge of moral goodness and moral evil.

The two things, life and knowledge go together as is made clear from this verse, hereunder and many others like it in the Torah.

“Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments: which if a man do, he shall live in them: I am the LORD.” (Lev 18:5)

 I don’t think that Adam and Eve saw their act of eating the fruit as an act of disobedience. They were also confused by the crafty snake who told them that God’s warning that they would die didn’t apply to eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. He was referring to the physical qualities of the fruit, but he was aware that eating that fruit as healthy as it was, constituted an act of disobedience of the word of God. He tricked them into being disobedient.

It would be wrong to assume from our verse above that God doesn’t want Adam and Eve to acquire knowledge. Had this been His intention He would not have created a tree of knowledge and planted it in the Garden of Eden. Neither, for that matter, would he have planted a tree of life in the Garden. The fact that He planted these trees in the Garden is a clear sign that He wants Adam and Eve to have life and to have knowledge of Good and Evil; knowledge is a moral good not a moral evil.

The verse isn’t talking about knowledge as such, on the contrary, God wants them to acquire knowledge and the most important knowledge of all is to know that moral evil is punishable by death.

So, therefore, in my opinion we must consider God’s prohibition here anew, and we should consider this in the light of Torah. Because God tells us in the Torah that the Torah is life and the Torah is the way to acquiring knowledge of good and evil.

Introducing Disobedience Gen 2:16:17 Morality is the important thing in life

Introducing Disobedience.

“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16–17).

You don't get morality by eating fruit, neither do you get it by acquiring knowledge. You get it by being obedient to God's laws.

The message of Torah is "Study Torah" that's where you can find God's laws, which you need to know so that you can be obedient to them. 

The Torah, however could not be given to mankind untill mankind had learned that a morally evil act causes death as surely as poison.

The only way to teach mankind this lesson was to give him a law and punish him by death if he broke it. So God gave Adam and Eve the law not to eat from the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. But since Adam and Eve disobeyed this law the inclination to disobedience became part of human nature and it’s become impossible to be perfectly obedient. This created the need for morality and the way how to become moral.

God wants Adam and Eve to acquire knowledge. That is why He created a tree of knowledge and a tree of life and planted them in the Garden of Eden. It's a clear sign that He wants Adam and Eve to have life and to have knowledge of Good and Evil; knowledge is a moral good which can lead to life, which is also a moral good.

The two things, life and knowledge go together as is made clear from this verse, hereunder and many others like it in the Torah.

“Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments: which if a man do, he shall live in them: I am the LORD.” (Lev 18:5)

Adam and Eve and all mankind learn that the essence of knowledge is to know that moral evil is punishable by death.

Obviously disobedience did not exist until Adam and Eve disobeyed the commandment of God not to eat from the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. The snake succeeded in tempting Eve to be disobedient because he told her she wouldn’t die from eating the fruit, and he was correct in that, namely she wouldn't die from any physical, tangible poison in the fruit, and she knew that, as well as he did. She obviously knew which fruit was poisonous and which not and clearly the fruit she saw was not poisonous, as the verse says: “and she saw that it was good to eat” Gen 3:6.

She didn’t have to be disobedient to learn that eating poisonous fruit could kill her. She knew that already. But she obviously didn’t know that there was another kind of poison, namely the unseen poison of carrying out a morally evil act.

When God told Adam “for on the day you eat of it you shall surely die” he didn’t mean that he would die from poison in the fruit and Adam, like Eve was confused. He didn't understand that God was referring to a morally bad act, the act of disobedience to God. He thought it referred to the fruit being bad, meaning poisonous, and he could plainly see that the fruit was not poisonous. But God meant that if he ate from the fruit he would be disobeying God’s commandment, which is a morally evil act and that warrants the punishment of death just as surely as physical poison that one can see.

I doubt if we could accuse the snake of a crime, because he also couldn't have known about moral crimes that could cause death.

The sin of Adam and Eve is disobedience. They brought disobedience into the world. 
Now, once the evil of commiting a moral crime had been established it became necessary to make laws regarding the various punishments for various crimes, hence the creation of Torah, the book in which God tells us what we may and what we may not do and the various punishments for disobeying His word.

The words “for on the day you eat of it you shall surely die” aren’t a threat, they are information, the statement of a fact, namely moral evils cause death as surely as physical poison causes death by being punishable by death. Disobedience to the word of God is a morally evil action, punishable by death. Adam and Eve are no longer immortal and mankind, their offspring are mortal. Now everybody lives under the shadow of the sword of death.Death is certain and there's no escape from it since Adam and Eve's disobedience. 

It’s not the fruit which carries the death penalty. The snake isn’t lying when he says that Eve won’t die from eating the fruit. He and Adam and Eve all possess knowledge that the fruit wasn’t poisonous. It’s disobedience to the word of God which is liable to be punished by death.

Expulsion from the Garden of Eden is necessary because that is the place for absollute obedience to God, the placeof perfection, where perfectly obedient people have access to the tree of life.