# A few Genseis questions... "You will surely die"... Please explain "die"?



## Stope (Jul 21, 2017)

1. When God says that when they eat f the fruit they will "die". He didnt mean immediate physical death, but he meant physical death at a later period of time. Is that right? Did he also mean a spiritual death/hell?

2. When Eve ate of the fruit from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil because it would "make one wise", wasnt that actually true: that it actually did make her more "wise" if we define "wise" as she then had an understanding that she didnt have before of sin and nakedness and shame?

3. Why was it called the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

4. Why did God still pursue Adam and Eve after they sinned, and then he even pursued Cain after he sinned, but eventually he didnt seem to pursue anyone in that sort of direct manner but ended up limiting himself to the Tabernacle/Temple?


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## Contra_Mundum (Jul 21, 2017)

If you think of physical death as a process, not an event, then physical death began to take its toll the day they ate. Spiritually, they died the very hour they consummated their rebellion in the eating.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. You don't grow in wisdom by sinning, but folly. Accumulating facts is neither true knowledge nor wisdom. As for knowing Good and Evil like God knows, the serpent could not have uttered a more false invitation. God does not know Evil by experience, so why would man's experience of Evil (by disobedience) give him God-like awareness? It wouldn't.

Man would become most God-like in his knowledge of Good and Evil by his not-eating of the Forbidden Fruit.

He did pursue them, which was mercy. No one should doubt divine mercy, given God's actions upon the first rebellion. As for why God prosecuted his plan of redemption as he did, that is part of the mystery of election. As well, redemptive history and revelation is a "lesson plan" for the instruction of sinners, illustrating who God is and how he may be related to and approached. It is one story for everyone.

Hope these thoughts are useful.

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## Bill The Baptist (Jul 21, 2017)

This won't entirely answer your question, but it's still great.

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## a mere housewife (Jul 21, 2017)

Additionally, on 4 -- God did pursue His errant people in the ministry of the prophets, perhaps especially? And Christ owns that ministry as His own pursuit through their whole history, when He had personally come down from heaven: 'O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would_* I*_ have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!' (Matthew 23: 37, emphasis mine). In the garden you get a preview of how God does personally pursue sinners all through the redemptive story.

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## a mere housewife (Jul 21, 2017)

(One additional point about the above that I learned in Sunday School -- in the preceding verses in Matthew, Jesus has spoken of the ministry of all the prophets like this:

Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, of whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. ​Abel would have been from the first book in the organisation of the Hebrew OT canon, and Zechariah from the last: so Christ really is compassing the whole of OT redemptive history according to their Scriptures, owning it as His own pursuit of His people.)

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## greenbaggins (Jul 21, 2017)

My take on these matters is a tad different than the normal Reformed reading, at least on some of them. First point: physical death was pronounced, and Adam and Eve's bodies started dying. Spiritual death was instantaneous, though their belief in the immediately succeeding gospel promise of Gen 3:15 involved the Holy Spirit regenerating their souls. 

Second point: eating of the fruit of the tree did NOT make them wise, nor did it give them experiential knowledge. Instead, it made them much _less_ like God than they were previously. Satan completely lied when he said, "You _will_ be like God." The lie was in the implied current negative: "You are not currently like God." Genesis 3:22, in other words, should be translated, "Behold, man _had been_ (or "_was_") like one of us, knowing good and evil..." (the implication being that they no longer are like God), almost the exact opposite of every English translation I've ever seen. 

Third point: the tree is so-called not because eating it would make them wise. Knowledge can be equivalent in certain contexts to "determinate." So the temptation was for Adam and Eve to determine good and evil for themselves. In this way, they desired a moral autonomy from God. 

Fourth point: the church was rather limited in those days of Adam and Cain. In the days of the tabernacle, God's plan was to reveal gradually what the Immanuel principle was to look like: the place where God and man meet.

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## earl40 (Jul 22, 2017)

greenbaggins said:


> Second point: eating of the fruit of the tree did NOT make them wise, nor did it give them experiential knowledge. Instead, it made them much _less_ like God than they were previously. Satan completely lied when he said, "You _will_ be like God." The lie was in the implied current negative: "You are not currently like God." Genesis 3:22, in other words, should be translated, "Behold, man _had been_ (or "_was_") like one of us, knowing good and evil..." (the implication being that they no longer are like God), almost the exact opposite of every English translation I've ever seen.



Curious what English translation has such?


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## Dachaser (Jul 22, 2017)

Stope said:


> 1. When God says that when they eat f the fruit they will "die". He didnt mean immediate physical death, but he meant physical death at a later period of time. Is that right? Did he also mean a spiritual death/hell?
> 
> 2. When Eve ate of the fruit from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil because it would "make one wise", wasnt that actually true: that it actually did make her more "wise" if we define "wise" as she then had an understanding that she didnt have before of sin and nakedness and shame?
> 
> ...


Wjen they sinned against God, they immendiantly experienced now a sin nature, and were foundto be spiritually disconnected from God, and also were to now taste physical death. It seems that if they would have not sinned, would have lived forever with God.


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## Jack K (Jul 22, 2017)

greenbaggins said:


> Third point: the tree is so-called not because eating it would make them wise. Knowledge can be equivalent in certain contexts to "determinate." So the temptation was for Adam and Eve to determine good and evil for themselves. In this way, they desired a moral autonomy from God.



Wow. That explains so much, if it is correct.

If you have the time, would you mind expanding on this point? is there additional evidence you could put forward to defend this reading? Are there other scholars who agree with it?


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## greenbaggins (Jul 22, 2017)

Earl, every English translation I've read has something like, "Behold, man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil." The problem with this translation is that it makes it sound as though God feels threatened somehow that they are getting too close to his level. The translation I propose "Man had been like one of us" (now no longer) makes the whole verse a statement of grace. It would be terrible for humanity to stay at its fallen level forever. It would therefore be inappropriate for Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of _life_ when they are currently in the state of _death_. I don't know of any English translation that reads the way I propose.

Jack, the article by Andre Lacocque here on page 21 advocates something like what I am proposing. His treatment is marred by post-modernism and Freudianism, but is still very thought-provoking. The _Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament_, volume 5, p. 465 hints at this interpretation: "the ability to make a moral distinction between good and evil is intended to secure for us the power to live autonomously." _Dictionary of Classical Hebrew_ acknowledges that the root _yd'_ can mean "choose" as a possible meaning in 21 possible places in the OT (DCH IV, p. 99).

What is clear is that _yd'_ cannot mean "know for the first time" in terms of the tree. Adam and Eve _already_ knew what is good and evil by virtue of the terms of the covenant of works. Nor am I convinced that it could mean "know experientially," since they already know experientially what is good. It would not be difficult for them (unencumbered by the noetic effects of sin!) to extrapolate from the good they had already experienced to know what the evil would be.

The virtue of the interpretation I propose is that it understands Satan's speeches as lies, doesn't make God out to be some kind of paranoid person, understands the Fall to be a real Fall, not some kind of "marred maturity," as if Adam and Eve gained something. Instead, my interpretation proposes that they lost something, that they became less like God than they were before. It is, in fact, far more consonant with what the rest of Scriptures say about the Fall.

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## Contra_Mundum (Jul 22, 2017)

Lane's proposal on 3:22 seems like it has merit; it's fresh to me, and I like it (but I've long since preached that text, so I won't be back soon to revisit it for a sermon).

I think what he says here is consistent with the interpretation of the tree itself and the devil's lies, which I proposed above, which interpretation comes straight from Keil (K&D commentary, 19th century).


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## KGP (Jul 23, 2017)

As to question 4 Jason; I see no reason to think God did not seek or pursue anyone. As Rev. Buchanan mentioned, we read in the scriptures what is good and perfect and necessary for our instruction, and not anything superfluous concerning God's purpose for us as readers and learners. That said, I think just as it was supposed of Christ in John 21:25 that the world could not contain all the books written of his works, were they ALL to be put to print; we ought to suppose the same of God's works from the beginning of the world. So I think we would do better to assume that God pursued or did strive after all of them than none of them. Genesis 6:3 seems to indicate as much.


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## John P (Jul 23, 2017)

Stope said:


> 1. When God says that when they eat f the fruit they will "die". He didnt mean immediate physical death, but he meant physical death at a later period of time. Is that right? Did he also mean a spiritual death/hell?
> 
> 2. When Eve ate of the fruit from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil because it would "make one wise", wasnt that actually true: that it actually did make her more "wise" if we define "wise" as she then had an understanding that she didnt have before of sin and nakedness and shame?
> 
> ...



1. He meant both. Paul writes numerous times in Romans about the wages of sin being death. This type of death is not only physical (we will all die physically one day) but also spiritual (perpetual punishment in hell). 

2. The fruit did not make her more wise because, the moment she ate the fruit, sin entered into the world, and all of humanity was condemned to being slaves to sin, which "suppresses the truth in unrighteousness," according to the Apostle Paul. So although we now received an understanding of morality, we suppress the truth concerning what is right and what God requires of us due to our naturally sinful state.

3. Because it gave us knowledge of what good and evil are.

4. Because God is loving and it was His plan all along for them to choose to eat that apple of their own volition so that He could show His love and justice through sending Jesus to die for us. God stayed in the temple because He needed to show us that we cannot save ourselves and need a Savior. Paul speaks about this in Romans when he writes about how the purpose of the law is to show sin. Jesus says that all the Scriptures testify about Him, so clearly the Law it to show us how much we need God to save us. However, it is a misnomer to say that God thereafter limited Himself solely to the Tabernacle. There is the conversation that God had with Job that did not involve a tabernacle. Even further, the Holy Spirit fell upon specific people in the Old Testament and they did miraculous things. God merely decided to dwell in the Ark of the Covenant for His own reasons (I think one was to show that we cannot fellowship with God until we are purified, which only came through Jesus' sacrifice, hence the tearing of the temple curtain), but He certainly did not limit Himself solely to that spot. The prophets regularly spoke with God and they were outside of the Tabernacle during many of those times. God also appeared to Abraham in person.


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## Stope (Jul 24, 2017)

Contra_Mundum said:


> If you think of physical death as a process, not an event, then physical death began to take its toll the day they ate. Spiritually, they died the very hour they consummated their rebellion in the eating.


---That makes complete sense! Thank you



greenbaggins said:


> Spiritual death was instantaneous, though their belief in the immediately succeeding gospel promise of Gen 3:15 involved the Holy Spirit regenerating their souls.


---Do you think they knew of a "Spiritual death"? That is, what make syou think they thought there was more than just a physical death? Surely they didnt have a concept of an after life?



greenbaggins said:


> Satan completely lied when he said, "You _will_ be like God." The lie was in the implied current negative: "You are not currently like God." Genesis 3:22, in other words, should be translated, "Behold, man _had been_ (or "_was_") like one of us, knowing good and evil..." (the implication being that they no longer are like God), almost the exact opposite of every English translation I've ever seen.


---If what you are saying is true then it blows my mind and makes complete sense. I wonder though, how come, as you mentioned, all major translations render it the other way?



greenbaggins said:


> So the temptation was for Adam and Eve to determine good and evil for themselves. In this way, they desired a moral autonomy from God.


---What do you mean by this? Was it not simply that the fruit looked good to eat and would "make them wise"? 



greenbaggins said:


> Earl, every English translation I've read has something like, "Behold, man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil."


---As mentioned above, how can such a powerful translation not be rendered elsewhere? 



greenbaggins said:


> It would be terrible for humanity to stay at its fallen level forever. It would therefore be inappropriate for Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of _life_ when they are currently in the state of _death_.


---Whoa thats an amazing thought. Are you saying it was necessarily a "punishment" as such that they would physically die, rather he cut their days short for their own good?



greenbaggins said:


> The virtue of the interpretation I propose is that it understands Satan's speeches as lies, doesn't make God out to be some kind of paranoid person, understands the Fall to be a real Fall, not some kind of "marred maturity,"


---This is such a huge concept, I very much thank you for sharing. Very well stated here indeed.


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## a mere housewife (Jul 24, 2017)

One possible way to understand the other interpretation (rather than God being paranoid or threatened) is that there is a sort of wry irony in God's restatement of what the serpent promised in light of what has actually come to pass -- especially in conjunction with the reiterated surrounding statements of man's origin in dust? (This is how Matthew Henry takes it, for instance.) In Genesis 11:6,7 God consults with Himself in a similar sounding manner as to what the humans have achieved, and what action should be taken in light of the 'threat' -- 

And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.”


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## Dachaser (Jul 25, 2017)

John P said:


> 1. He meant both. Paul writes numerous times in Romans about the wages of sin being death. This type of death is not only physical (we will all die physically one day) but also spiritual (perpetual punishment in hell).
> 
> 2. The fruit did not make her more wise because, the moment she ate the fruit, sin entered into the world, and all of humanity was condemned to being slaves to sin, which "suppresses the truth in unrighteousness," according to the Apostle Paul. So although we now received an understanding of morality, we suppress the truth concerning what is right and what God requires of us due to our naturally sinful state.
> 
> ...


They had no real need to discern and know what was good/evil, for they had God, who was guiding them to always do the right moral thing.


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## Bill The Baptist (Jul 25, 2017)

greenbaggins said:


> Second point: eating of the fruit of the tree did NOT make them wise, nor did it give them experiential knowledge. Instead, it made them much _less_ like God than they were previously. Satan completely lied when he said, "You _will_ be like God." The lie was in the implied current negative: "You are not currently like God." Genesis 3:22, in other words, should be translated, "Behold, man _had been_ (or "_was_") like one of us, knowing good and evil..." (the implication being that they no longer are like God), almost the exact opposite of every English translation I've ever seen.



I'm not doubting you, Lane, and what you suggest certainly makes sense, but are you really suggesting that every English translation has it wrong and you have it right? Again, I am not trying to question you, but it seems that if what you are suggesting had sufficient linguistic support, then at least one translation would render as you have suggested.


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## greenbaggins (Jul 25, 2017)

Jason, to answer your questions, a few thoughts. 

Firstly, it is a tad speculative to ask whether they would have known about x,y, or z when we have no biblical data one way or the other. However, given the fact that there were no noetic effects of the Fall before the Fall, their intelligence probably far outstripped what ours is after the Fall. I would not be surprised to learn in heaven that they knew far more than we would ever have thought. 

Secondly, as to the translation issues, various explanations have been given in history on the understanding that "hayah" simply means "they have become like one of us." The possibility of a pluperfect understanding simply hadn't occurred to most expositors, and later translations depend heavily on earlier ones. I do take this interpretation with a certain bit of trepidation precisely because of this fact that all translations say something else. It is the only place in the whole of Scripture where I personally buck the entirety of the translation body. 

You say, "Are you saying it was necessarily a "punishment" as such that they would physically die, rather he cut their days short for their own good?" I am not sure what you mean by this question. What I mean is that 3:22, properly understood, becomes a statement of grace, instead of paranoid jealousy. God did not want them to partake of the tree of life while they were in the state of death, so He provides a way of salvation for them.


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## greenbaggins (Jul 25, 2017)

Bill, see my answer to Jason.


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## Stope (Jul 25, 2017)

greenbaggins said:


> Jason, to answer your questions, a few thoughts.
> 
> Firstly, it is a tad speculative to ask whether they would have known about x,y, or z when we have no biblical data one way or the other. However, given the fact that there were no noetic effects of the Fall before the Fall, their intelligence probably far outstripped what ours is after the Fall. I would not be surprised to learn in heaven that they knew far more than we would ever have thought.
> 
> ...


Thank you for your thoughtful responses here!


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## Bill The Baptist (Jul 25, 2017)

greenbaggins said:


> Bill, see my answer to Jason.



I figured you had a good reason as you don't strike as the kind of person to indulge in private interpretations. I wonder if any of the forthcoming updates, the NASB for example, will consider this in their translations. It certainly makes better sense.


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## a mere housewife (Jul 25, 2017)

Rev. Keister, I noticed that Young's Literal Translation shares your interpretation of this verse -- but it also translates the serpent's original promise in an alternate way -- 'ye _have been_ as God'? Tenses all through are different than what I'm used to reading -- in the verses just previous to this the woman is called Eve because she 'hath been' the mother of all living. Would a different tense introduced here not reflect possible different tenses in other parts of the chapter? Is it possible to also translate the Serpent's speech in a different tense? If all these other tenses are possible, why would this one place get translated differently while other tenses stay the same? (edit: I meant to mention that in YLT the second half of the statement in v. 22 also gets altered! -- 'and now, lest he send forth his hand, and have taken also of the tree of life, and eaten, and lived to the age.')

I had not heard anyone interpret this as God being paranoid (Calvin also cites irony, and I had it in my head from something else I'd heard previously). But if we were to accept that way of interpreting the standard translation, what do we do with the other places in Genesis that follow similar patterns of God's dealing with a situation, where God sounds paranoid (as in the Tower of Babel)?


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## C. M. Sheffield (Jul 25, 2017)

The phrase _"in the day"_ in Genesis 2:17 may also be taken idiomatically as in 1 Kings 2:37. There, King Solomon warns Shemei, saying, _"For it shall be, that on the day thou goest out, and passest over the brook Kidron, thou shalt know for certain that thou shalt surely die: thy blood shall be upon thine own head."_ Viewed in this way, the words _"in the day"_ are meant to convey death's certainty, rather than the time of its occurrence.

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## greenbaggins (Jul 25, 2017)

Heidi, I'm pretty sure that YLT is simply over-literalizing the perfect tense of Hebrew, which does not correspond precisely to English perfect tense. Hebrew perfect tense means completed action (at what time that action is completed is to be inferred from the context). Hebrew imperfect tense means incompleted action, or a simple historical past tense. There are only these two tenses by form. Context and a host of other factors make interpreting the Hebrew verbal system much less precise than English or Greek tenses would be (although recent studies in Greek tense have thrown some doubt on previously held paradigms there, too).


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## a mere housewife (Jul 25, 2017)

Thank you, Rev. Keister. I don't understand a lot about original languages and can only go by what I see in various translations. I guess I am wondering if it's ultimately a theological rather than literary control that would change the tense of this verb, but not of others in the passage?

Because if both the serpent's and God's speech_ could _be changed in tense (whatever that reflects) -- maybe God is still quoting the serpent regardless. Perhaps if Hebrew can be freighted with more possibilities in all its tenses than English, maybe we are supposed to gather a certain irony _and_ what you said -- that they were really more like God when they were innocent? Maybe irony even serves to emphasise it.

I so appreciate ministers not wanting to present God as paranoid and preaching His grace. Reading through Genesis lately (maybe my questions here should be moved, but I have been reading/rereading chapters and it does raise a lot of questions), I'm just wondering about a general approach to this kind of passage (it crops up a lot). Ie, at Babel God can't see earth from heaven, apparently, and he is threatened by his creation. But set against other aspects in the story -- that God has to 'come down' to see this tower that reaches to heaven -- that He obstructs a purportedly unlimited potential with an almost slapstick measure of comedy -- it seems like paranoia is not likely the best interpretation. It just seems important to my lay mind to be able to maintain that here too, however that verb's tense is taken?


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## greenbaggins (Jul 26, 2017)

Heidi, irony is certainly a possibility in Genesis 3. I think that the pluperfect translation of 3:22 would obviate the need for the ironic. There are no absolutely clear markers for either. The question is this: which understanding best helps the overall coherence of the narrative? This question would blur the line between theological and literary concerns, since they are practically the same this early in the Bible. One has to, as it were, take each interpretation for a test drive and see how well it answers the following questions: 1. How does it explain and describe a Fall into sin? 2. How well does it explain the two trees? 3. How well does it explain Satan's actions as lies (since we know from other Scripture that he was a liar from the beginning)? 4. How well does it explain God's words in 3:22? I have thought for many years now that the pluperfect understanding of 3:22 does a greatly superior job at answering all these questions better than any alternative I have found. 

I certainly agree with your take on Babel: it is one of the funniest things in the Bible. The builders want to build all the way up to heaven, and God has to come down even to see what these little pygmy ants are doing (though there has to be a measure of accommodation in this).


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## a mere housewife (Jul 26, 2017)

Yes, I agree about accommodation. I'm sure opinion is somewhat silly coming from a lay-person, but I do cherish the privilege of reading my Bible and I think we're supposed to care a lot to understand it. I think if the text itself leaves us with various possibilities, if some of those possibilities are present elsewhere in the style of the book (irony at Babel), it is better for a translation to reflect that as faithfully as possible, and for the various possibilities to be in notes or commentary. That's my own preference, at least. Thank you for explaining so clearly: I do like to understand more.


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## John P (Jul 31, 2017)

Dachaser said:


> They had no real need to discern and know what was good/evil, for they had God, who was guiding them to always do the right moral thing.


I'm not sure about that. When satan showed up as the snake (that's my personal belief, I'm not saying it says it in Genesis) he appealed to Eve's desires to be like God. So, we had zero knowledge of good and evil before that moment, and we decided to go against God because we were imperfect beings in the garden, but yet sinless until that moment.


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## Dachaser (Aug 1, 2017)

John P said:


> I'm not sure about that. When Satan showed up as the snake (that's my personal belief, I'm not saying it says it in Genesis) he appealed to Eve's desires to be like God. So, we had zero knowledge of good and evil before that moment, and we decided to go against God because we were imperfect beings in the garden, but yet sinless until that moment.


True, but they had no real need/reason to do that, as by just Obeying what the Lord told them was right thing to do would always keep them in right relationship with God and always doing the right thing.


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## greenbaggins (Aug 1, 2017)

John P said:


> I'm not sure about that. When Satan showed up as the snake (that's my personal belief, I'm not saying it says it in Genesis) he appealed to Eve's desires to be like God. So, we had zero knowledge of good and evil before that moment, and we decided to go against God because we were imperfect beings in the garden, but yet sinless until that moment.



Is it necessary to assume that Satan is telling the truth in his insinuation that they were not like God? I believe Satan was lying in said insinuation. When he said, "You will be like God," the lie was in the insinuation that they were not like God, but would be if only they would eat of the tree. How could they be made in the image of God and have zero knowledge of good and evil? This does not make sense to me.


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## Dachaser (Aug 1, 2017)

greenbaggins said:


> Is it necessary to assume that Satan is telling the truth in his insinuation that they were not like God? I believe Satan was lying in said insinuation. When he said, "You will be like God," the lie was in the insinuation that they were not like God, but would be if only they would eat of the tree. How could they be made in the image of God and have zero knowledge of good and evil? This does not make sense to me.


Their real big mistake was not fully trusting in what God had told them to do, as when they opened it up to listening what Satan wasl saying unto them..


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