THE FOURTH IN A SERIES OF FOUR ARTICLES BY PIERRE GILBERT. BASED ON GOD NEVER MEANT FOR US TO DIE: THE EMERGENCE OF EVIL IN THE LIGHT OF THE CREATION ACCOUNT (EUGENE, OR: WIPF & STOCK , 2020).
rom all eternity, God planned the emergence of a creature that would have the ability to relate to him and be his representative on earth. By necessity, this creature would need to be endowed with free will. But as I explained in my previous article, because God is both the originator and the primary object of human free will, a primordial choice of infinite significance was needed for the full implementation of this attribute. The test is described in Genesis 2:16-17: “And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden’; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”1 It was in the actual experience of this critical choice that the process would be completed. We know, of course, that Adam and Eve ended up disobeying God. If the rest is history, there are nevertheless several questions that need to be considered. In this article, I will address two. The first asks why God would set up a test that, according to many readers, Adam and Eve were condemned to fail. The second explores why such a seemingly innocuous act as eating from a fruit tree entailed such dire and far-reaching consequences for Adam and Eve and the rest of humanity. That Adam and Eve (or one of their descendants for that matter) were fated to fail the test is a common view. While I cannot fully develop the argument here, a careful reading of the text reveals an entirely different picture. The key to capturing what the significance of the text is found in a careful consideration of God’s injunction to Adam and Eve. The command to refrain from eating the fruit is best described as a curse and blessing formula. While the blessing is implicit, the curse is signaled by the death threat that follows the injunction.
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1 Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the New International Version c 2011.
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M B H E R A L D.C O M
Curses were widely used throughout the ancient Near East from at least the second half of the third millennium BC. Their primary function was to warn against committing specific actions such as disfiguring a monument, moving a border stone, or rebelling against a suzerain. While some of the inscriptions include a blessing for those who obey the terms of the inscription, most simply declare the destruction of the violator. The curse formula always assumes the reader’s freedom to respect the terms of the inscription or violate them. Another reason for reading this passage as a curse and blessing formula derives from the precise language that is used in the expression: “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” The Hebrew noun, daat, “knowledge,” is derived from the verb yada, “to know,” which is often used to refer to experiential knowledge. When, for instance, the text states that the “man knew (yada) his wife Eve” (4:1), the implication is that Adam gained a personal and intimate knowledge of Eve. This is the tree of the experience of good and evil. Similarly, “good and evil” does not refer, as is often believed, to some ethical abstraction. The purpose of this expression is to offer Adam and Eve the opportunity to determine their destiny: life if they obey (implicit) and death if they disobey (explicit). “Good” (tob)
