| Home | Our Hope | |
| Bible Study |
|
February 5,2017 |
| Knowledge of Good and Evil | ||
We've all heard about Adam and Eve, probably many times. In this lesson we'll look at them a little differently. The focus will be more on Eve's experience of life prior to the sin and how having the Knowledge of Good and Evil changed her and, ultimately, us.
After God had created the universe, the Earth, and everything on it, he created a garden and put Adam in it. Then he gave Adam the One Commandment. It wasn't written one stone like the Ten Commandments would be. It was spoken by God.
16The Lord God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die." (Genesis 2:16-17)
God knew the weaknesses of the people he had created and what was going to happen so we have to ask why God put that tree there. The answer is that God created man to have free will, the ability to choose, even the ability to choose what was wrong. God wanted his creation to choose to obey him. In order to have the freedom to make that choice, there had to be a wrong choice. That was the tree.
It really wasn't about the tree though. The tree was just a way to prove their love. The One Commanment then is "if you love me, keep my commandments" (John 14:15)
God says, "you will surely die", but when they ate the fruit they did not die. In fact Adam lived 930 years. When we see the word "will" we think of something happening very soon if not immediately. God thinks on much larger scales. God could have taken their lives the moment they sinned but he isn't like that. Because he is merciful he provides an opportunity for repentance.
Prior to the sin, Adam would have lived forever. After the sin he had a date with death. But there is another meaning to God's words. The relationship they have with him will die immediately. There is likely an additional meaning in God's words. The sin brought into existence a judgement day and what Jesus called the "Second Death."
We might think of Adam and Eve being like us, but that would be wrong. Their experience of life would have been completely different from ours. We'll focus on Eve here, but the same would have been true of Adam.
Eve had never sinned in her whole life. She would have not been able to understand sin. More importantly, she would not have had any desire to sin. If a person from our time were put in the garden and given that same commandment, immediately he would desire the fruit from that tree, just because he was told he could not have it. It would eat at him and he would hatch a sneaky plan to get it. Eve had no thoughts like that. She was completely content with all the other trees she could eat from.
That doesn't mean she had no desires, only that her desires were right. For example, her body would have desired the food that it needed for growth and maintenance. It would not have always desired the sweet, the salty, etc. as our bodies do. Our bodies desires are for good sensations not for what are good for them.
It would never have occurred to Eve that she should hoard her favorite fruit so Adam wouldn't eat it. She would never have thought of tricking him so she could get her way. She never would have been arrogant, envious, covetous, possessive, etc. She always would have been trusting, loving and kind.
As the Apostle Paul says, we are now at war with the evil desires of our bodies. It wasn't that way for Eve though. But there was another being in the garden and he knew all these things.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which Yahweh God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?" 2 The woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; 3 but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.'"
I changed the verse above to replace "the Lord" with "Yahweh" which is a better translation and it's meaning is going to be important to understanding what happens.
The serpent has quite a challenge here. Eve has no desire to do wrong, yet he must develop that desire within her. His plan is to focus mainly on her ego, her sense of self. He is only going to get one chance. If he fails she will figure out he is trying to deceive her and will never trust him again.
These verses refer to the snake as crafty and immediately he shows his craftiness by the way he forms the question. The verse says the snake is a creation of "Yahweh God". The Bible assigns different attributes to the different titles for God. Yahweh is associated with love, mercy, and forgiveness but also justice (Exodus 34:6-8). God (Elohim) is associated with king and judge, therefore with power and control.
The snake is said to be a creation of Yahweh God, both, but the snake says to Eve, "Has God (your king and judge) said … ." He has dropped Yahweh to get Eve to focus on her lack of power and control. A desire to have power and control will be one of the reasons for her sin.
The serpent is hinting that God is unreasonably restrictive. His words are meant to show that he would not have been surprised if God had not allowed them to eat from any tree. He knows this is a silly question and that Eve will correct him. Because she is able to correct him she will think of herself as knowledgeable. The snake's purpose is to give her a reason to bring her ego forward and with that her desire to take care of herself.
Eve's answer shows us many things. The translation fails us here. A better translation of "or you will die" is "lest you die" which means there is a chance you could die. It is not the same word God used when he told Adam "you will surely die." So Eve is showing she doesn't really understand the commandment. She may think that there is something wrong with the tree and its fruit.
Another aspect of her answer backs that up. She says "or touch [the tree]." God didn't say this. It was added somewhere. She sees the focus of the commandment being on the tree and she has lost sight that the focus is on obedience to God.
We don't know how Eve got to this point. Did Adam not explain the commandment to her very well or has her memory faded? Either way she is now ripe for the picking. 😀
We can do the same things in our lives. Time can cause us to forget exactly what God has said. We battle that by reading the word of God. Eve should have done the same thing and asked God. Instead she is hazy about it.
Perhaps Adam had told her "Don't eat the fruit from that tree; don't even touch the tree." We can also add to God's commandments and sometimes we think that makes them stronger, but if we discover that the part that was added was false it shakes our understanding and makes us unsure what parts are true.
We can also become focused on obeying the commandments and lose focus on obeying God. This makes the commandments into a false idol.
4 The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die! 5 For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
Eve has shown that she isn't clear about whether they would die if they ate the fruit. That's where the serpent strikes. He strikes with a direct contradiction of God.
The serpent is setting himself up as being more knowledgeable than her. He wants her to gain trust in him and lose trust in God. So his next statement portrays God as not being trustworthy, that God has been hiding something from her. He says God is just trying to keep you down, worse, he is doing that out of selfishness.
As mentioned before, the serpent is playing to her ego so it will over power her reason. He wants her to think she must act in her own best interest to protect herself from God. He also offers her a prize, she will be just like God.
The serpent has a bunch of tricks in play here. These are the ones we've seen so far:
6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.
Eve has now turned away from God in her heart and her ego has made her into god. She thinks:
In addition to every angle the serpent has going on, Eve's body wants to eat it, her eyes want to see it, and her ego wants to be in control. She eats it and gives some to Adam. Paul says:
And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and violated the commandment (1 Timothy 2:14)
Eve changes and not the way she expected. She realizes she has done wrong and she doesn't want to be alone in that. She isn't the master of deception that the snake was but she figures out a way to trick Adam. We don't know the details but when she brought the fruit to him it seeks certain he didn't know he was eating from that tree.
7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.
The serpent had spoken a little truth when he said their eyes would be opened. It just wasn't what they expected. The Hebrew word translated as "knowledge" here can also mean "experience." Adam and Eve now experience good and evil within themselves.
Adam and Eve did not have those unGodly desires from the start, therefore there was nothing driving them to sin. It was necessary for the serpent to provide that motivation. He put everything possible into play to get that to happen.
Suddenly they experience what the Apostle Paul describes as a "body sold to sin" as their bodies begin the unrelenting desires that are opposed to God, desires we are all too familiar with.
Their actions haven't only affected themselves. All of the universe now also suffers from this sin. The animals as well begin to do evil.
This is not a punishment for what they have done. It is a consequence. The punishments will come later. From now on death will be part of their experience. The animals will die and they will die. The population of Earth will be kept up by natural reproduction. Every newborn will be born with the consequence of that sin.
It was necessary for Jesus to be born without natural reproduction so that he would not inherit these consequences. As such he was the second Adam. He also was tested by Satan with the difference that he did not fail as the first Adam had failed.
When he returns for those who have believed in him, we will receive new bodies. They will be bodies like those of Adam and Eve in that they will only desire what is right. Also Satan will be locked away and unable to deceive.