Chapter 2 Chapter 1 God Menaces—and Withdraws
God commanded men: "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, because the day you eat of it you will surely die!"
Genesis Chapter 2 Verses 16-17
Of all the creatures God made, only the serpent is more cunning than any other creature of the field.
The serpent said to the woman, "Even though God says, You shall not eat from all the trees in the garden..."
The woman said to the snake: "We can eat the fruit of the tree in the garden, but the fruit of the naked tree in the garden, God said: 'You must not eat it, and you must not touch it, lest you die.'" The snake told the woman Said: "You will not necessarily die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
Then the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was edible and pleasant to the eyes, and it was lovely, and it gave wisdom.She plucked the fruit, ate it, and gave it to her husband, who also ate it.
The eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together for themselves.
It is the hour of the day when the cool wind blows, and God walks in the garden.
When the man and his wife heard the voice of God, they hid themselves among the trees in the garden from the presence of God.
God called to man and said to him, "Where are you?"
He said, "I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid; because I was naked, I hid myself."
God said, "Who told you to be naked? Did you not eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat?"
The man said, "The woman you gave me to live with me, she gave me fruit from that tree, and I ate it."
God said to the woman, "What have you done?"
The woman said, "The snake tempted me, so I ate it."
God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, you will be cursed more than all livestock and wild beasts; you will walk on your stomach, and you will eat dust all your days. And I will make enmity between you and the woman, and your descendants and And the offspring of the woman are against each other. The offspring of the woman will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel."
God said to the woman again: "I will increase your pains in conception, and you will suffer more in giving birth to children. You will love your husband, and your husband will rule over you."
God said to Adam again: "Since you obeyed your wife's words and ate the fruit of the tree that I commanded you not to eat, the earth will be cursed for your sake, and you will have to work hard all your life to get food from the earth. Briars and thistles will grow for you; and you will eat the vegetables of the field. You will eat by the sweat of your brow, until you return to the ground, for from the ground you were born. Dust you are, and you will return to dust ..."
God said: "Man has become like us and knows good and evil. Now I am afraid that he will stretch out his hand and eat the fruit of the tree of life, and live forever."
God sent him out of the Garden of Eden. He was dust, but now he was going to plow the field and sow the soil, so he drove him out.God placed cherubim and a flaming sword on the east side of the Garden of Eden, asking him to keep the way to the tree of life.
"Genesis" chapter three verses one to twenty-four
The Bible was originally meant to be a code of conduct, but at the very beginning, there was a clearly stated rule that was violated, and a clear punishment was not implemented. This is really intriguing.God's first threat to mankind was unambiguous: He told Adam of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, "Thou shalt not eat, for in the day you eat of it you shall surely die."
In the original version the Hebrew word mot tamut means "death" and is repeated several times, so there is no possibility of misinterpretation of the punishment to be imposed. "Doomed to die" is perhaps the most appropriate translation.It is also unique in the Bible that the time of punishment is so specific (that is, the day of eating).God usually says "you're going to die" or "you're going to die" without specifying when.However, Adam and Eve violated God's first definite prohibition, and God did not carry out His stated prior punishment.Indeed, the Bible also records that Adam lived to be nine hundred and thirty years old.After all, the punishment was still imposed on the unruly man and woman and their descendants, but it was very different from the punishment God threatened in the first place.
What should we learn from God who can’t even do what he says when he punishes him for the first time?Interpreters throughout the ages have come up with many answers to this question.Some apologists play tricks on words to avoid tricky implications.They said that if God's day is a thousand years, then Adam's life span will be seventy "years" shorter than this "day". Speak so seriously.Others put forward another theory: God did not mean that Adam would die on the day he ate the fruit of that tree, but that he would sentence him to die on that day; in other words, Adam became a mortal .
However, this is not what God said; more importantly, Adam or Eve never understood God's word from this perspective.God told Adam, "Because the day you eat of it you will die!" Adam then told Eve that God commanded them not to eat the fruit, or even touch it.From the dialogue between the snake and Eve, it can be clearly seen that Eve believed that God's punishment was immediate death. One of the Midrash states that the serpent pushed Eve against a tree and said to her, look, you can't die if you touch a tree, so you won't die if you eat from it. "
The snake was right.Eve and Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, and both lived for a long time.From the lesson of the serpent, we can deduce a conclusion: It seems that disobedience to God's command can get away with it.God then turned himself into a parent who can yell and beat but not do it, which is really not enough to be a model of discipline.
Although Adam and Eve's final punishment was much milder than the immediate death threatened by God, it extended to their offspring.Therefore, the concept of "original sin" in Christianity makes "the nature of human beings easily tempted by evil" finally need to be redeemed by the Savior.The nature of God's punishment allows Christians, Jews and Muslims to deeply explore the concept of God's justice and axioms.The way he punished Eve was to make all women suffer in childbirth and submit to the feet of men.The way he punished Adam was to make all males work hard for a living.In the end, God also drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden to ensure that his two undisciplined children would no longer eat from the tree of life and then "live forever" all because he ordered not to eat the seductive tree The forbidden fruit on the earth, and Adam and Eve violated the Genesis of this 26 laws: Find the origin of the law from the Bible story Prohibition!
If we measure God by human standards, his first act as a lawgiver is unfair.In any system of threats and promises, the essence of fairness lies in the aptly named warnings: punishments should be written in words with precise meaning, so that those who are regulated can understand them; Unless mitigating circumstances occur; once the punishment should not add anything not expressly stipulated.In addition, punishment should be limited to offenders and not to innocent descendants.Judaic law developed to the later stage, holding that "the punishment of the non-offender for the crime of others is in itself contrary to the true spirit of the legislation." Finally, the punishment should be proportionate to the harm caused.
God, of course, has been violating these principles throughout the entire Bible: he has executed capital sentences without warning, punished innocent children for the sins of their parents, imposed disproportionate punishments, etc., so that his legislative career began with indiscretion, We shouldn't be surprised either.Interpreters volunteered to find reasonable explanations for these behaviors that obviously violated the fairness and normality of human beings, so they interpreted God's clear words in a vague way.For example, many interpreters of later generations have interpreted God's threat to Adam as punishment in the afterlife.Bible commentators often use this phrase to smooth things over whenever God warns of punishment or promises to show mercy but fails to deliver.However, the Jewish Bible never mentioned the afterlife (this point will be discussed in Chapter 13 of this book in detail). God said to Adam straightforwardly, "You are dust, and you will return to dust."
It would be a departure from the text of Genesis if, in the words of the warnings given here and now, there could be attached the implication of a delay in the hereafter.
In light of the Maimonidean spirit of debate described above, such readings are rather uninteresting and make the effort of interpretation superfluous.Accepting that everything warned of punishment or promise of grace will be fulfilled in an unseen life to come (as some commentators see it) is tantamount to getting an answer to all the unjust conundrums of this world.It's interesting to find interpretations that stand the test of time based on what you believe in the present (rather than in the future).In the end, the literal meaning of the "threat" itself is what matters.No one can deny that God first warned Adam of the possible punishment, and then imposed an entirely different punishment on Adam, Eve, and their offspring.
Furthermore, the nature of God's punishment on all women raises central issues of equity.The prohibition against eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was issued directly by God to Adam, not Eve.However, the punishment received by Eve and all future Eves - "You will love your husband, and your husband will rule over you" - is not only extremely severe in itself, but also more severe than the punishment received by Adam and future Adams .Here we find the origin of the shameful double standard between men and women: women must be faithful to their husbands, while men can direct their affections towards other unmarried women, that is, women who do not belong to other men.We also find the psychological source of misogyny in the command that wives must be subject to their husbands.
An anthropological explanation for Eve's punishment might use the "cause for effect" story.These myths begin with obvious phenomena, such as leopards with spots and elephants with long ears, and then make up explanations for the phenomena.Just like leopards have always had stripes, and elephant ears have always been long, so the double standard and obedience to men that women have endured has also been a visible reality for a long time.Eve's punishment can be regarded as the basis for "putting cause for effect" to explain these visible phenomena.However, there is one significant difference, that is, spots and long ears are biological phenomena without moral meaning, while the double standards and obedience to men that women suffer in marriage are not caused by biological factors, and they are definitely moral.Old habits are not only inherited from the previous generation, but also directly learned from the present, and there is still the possibility of change; the laws established by heaven are not.
The unequal treatment of women—a feature common to most religions and cultures—offends modern sensibilities.Therefore, the contemporary religious and legal circles try their best to find a way for God to step down, say that God imposed punishment on Eve, and assign different rather than unequal roles to women in family life.These painstaking efforts remind people of the slogan "separate and equal", which was used as an excuse for the racial segregation policy between blacks and whites during the era of discrimination against blacks in American history.Just as blacks are indeed segregated but never treated equally, the role of the wife is also different from that of the husband but never equal to him.God's Word has made the inequality of the two very clear. Your husband will rule over you, leaving no room for doubt.There is no ambiguity in the relative status of husband and wife. Not only does rule in the English translation have the same meaning, but so does yimshol in the original Hebrew.Men are rulers, women are ruled.All because Eve obeyed the serpent's urging to eat the forbidden fruit, and then urged Adam to eat it.
This series of facts cannot serve as a logical or moral basis for a husband to rule over his wife.Eve has a more convincing case for defending herself than Adam.She had never heard God warn her about the prohibition with her own ears, and Adam's report was also somewhat inaccurate. In Adam's statement, God not only forbids eating the forbidden fruit, but even touches it.This misrepresentation allowed the serpent to lure Eve into breaking the precepts, and it is true that the serpent is "the most cunning creature on earth." An article in the Midas warns: "Do not build walls (around the law) higher than fundamental principles , lest it fall over and kill the flowers and plants."
In other words, if the prohibition is too broad to be enforced, the law itself loses authority, as it did with Eve.
Moreover, Adam, who had received God's admonition directly, did not need to be coaxed at all.When people give him fruit, he accepts it.Eve did not force or command Adam to eat it.She did not assume the role of ruler, and Adam did not assume the role of subject.So why can Adam and all the Adams in the future rule over Eve and all the Eves in the future?The Bible doesn't give us the answer.No matter by any standard of law, justice, or fairness, it is not fair for all women to sit together for Eve's sin.And the punishment is also out of proportion to the wrong done.What have the pains of labor, lust, and obedience have to do with Eve's sin?
We can't help but wonder, if Eve ate the forbidden fruit and didn't give it to Adam, or if Adam refused to eat it, what would be God's punishment? [In order to alleviate Adam's guilt, there is an article in the "Midash" that speculates that he fell asleep just after he finished his human life (that is, the affairs of men and women).Therefore, he was not present when the serpent spoke with Eve. It is conceivable that he did not know that the fruit Eve gave him was from the forbidden tree. ] If Eve ate it by herself, she would have the ability to distinguish between good and evil, while Adam lived an eternal life of chaos and uncertainty.Who would govern whom then?We never know.
Until the twentieth century, in almost every country in the world, women belonged to men.In those bygone days, women did not sue their husbands and had no independent right to act.Even in 1998, the largest Protestant church in the United States, the Southern Baptist Church, still advocated that wives should "respectfully submit" to the leadership of their husbands.In such a subordination relationship, the wife also has some advantages.Until the nineteenth century, when a wife committed a crime in the presence of her husband, the general law held that it was done by her husband, and that she was instigated by him, so it was the husband, not the wife, who was punished.God did not give Eve this benefit.Obviously God thought she should be punished more, she was punished before Adam, and punished more severely.Adam even showed less remorse in his defense.He blamed his sins on Eve and God. He said: "The woman you gave me to live with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree..."
Looking at the Bible, we often see that although women stand in a subordinate position in law, they are psychologically dominant and manipulators, especially when this When this view favors a patriarchal society.This duplicity is not limited to biblical times.Even in the 1950s, Ethel Rosenberg, despite her minor role in the espionage of her husband Julius Rosenberg, was executed for being deemed the stronger of the couple in character.In the face of the positioning of women's roles, male-dominated societies often allow both to coexist. This has been the same from biblical times to recent times, and in some places it is still the same today.Many double standards cite the story of Adam and Eve as proof.Instead of carrying out the punishment He threatened, God imposed misogynistic punishments on innocent women in future generations, resulting in an inequality between men and women that persisted for thousands of years.
Even if God did carry out the punishment He warned Adam about, whether that would be just is debatable.If Adam and Eve could not distinguish between good and evil before they ate the forbidden fruit, then if they were to overstep God's prohibition because they were tempted by the snake, wouldn't they be killed without teaching?In many societies, the basic basis for judging whether a person who breaks the law should be held criminally responsible is whether the person has the ability to distinguish right from wrong.If a schizophrenic patient with delusional problems really thinks (actually, he is delusional) that someone else is going to kill him and kills someone else, then we cannot hold that patient responsible.As Maimonides stated in the language of his day: "If man has no free will, by what right or justice does God punish?"
Since a certain degree of understanding of right and wrong is necessary for a crime—animals do not commit crimes—the eating of the forbidden fruit is a prerequisite for all future crimes.This can explain the meaning of "primitive" in eating the forbidden fruit, but it still does not clearly explain "sin" because Adam and Eve did not have the prerequisite for the ability to distinguish right from wrong before eating the forbidden fruit.They are at best like smart dogs who disobey their trainers, rather than human beings who can tell right from wrong and make willful mistakes.
Maimonides directly cut the mess with a sharp knife.He believed that Adam and Eve had basic intelligence before God forbade them to eat the forbidden fruit, because "commands are not given...to objects without intelligence" Maimonides believed that their knowledge was only about sex and shame That's all.However, even if Maimonides was right, and they had enough judgment to understand the command, what's wrong with them eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, even though God's prohibition still rings in their ears?It is the history and destiny of human beings that knowledge inevitably creates a desire for more knowledge.The desire for knowledge is never satisfied.Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it is the driving force behind human progress.
It is said that at the end of the nineteenth century an official suggested that the patent office be closed because he believed that everything that should be invented had already been invented; such a person did not understand that innovation would create an endless demand for innovation.As stated in Ecclesiastes (chapter 7, verse 29): "God created man uprightly, but they found many ingenious devices." The omniscient God really expected that the man created in his image Human beings, if they have the ability to acquire more knowledge, will they be satisfied with the existing knowledge?Was there no reason for Adam and Eve to disobey God's prohibition religiously?Is not a finite life richer in knowledge more valuable than an eternal life in ignorance?Wouldn't most wise people prefer to live an endless "understanding life" as Socrates said, instead of living endlessly in a muddle?
On a more fundamental level, we can say that knowing the difference between good and evil makes sense just because life is finite.Immortals know that they will never die, and there is no need to make difficult choices.Anything wrong has a chance to be corrected.It is knowing that life is limited and knowing that people may die at any time, so that every step can not be wrong.A Buddhist motto goes: "Death is the best teacher." And novelist Franz Kafka believed: "The meaning of life is that it has an end."
From this point of view, God's threat is just to make his own meaning clearer. It is a prophecy rather than a threat: after eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve knew that their lives had come to an end, while the animals Don't know this.This event is the knowledge gained by eating the forbidden fruit.Knowing that they will die forces them to choose between good and evil.As rabbis, priests, priests, or monks of all religions have taught us at funerals—especially at the funerals of young people who have died suddenly—we must always have a surplus of good in the books of good and evil, because who knows when we will go.Without death, moral decisions can be postponed indefinitely.Therefore, in this act of bold defiance, human beings know that they are mortals, and understand that the short and painful life they face is full of difficult choices.
Knowledge also lets humans know that life is not the Garden of Eden, that there is pain and toil in it, and that it will go beyond your life and extend to your children and your children's children.Anything worth having, children, livelihood, wisdom, all cost you dearly.This is the burden of knowledge.Innocence was much simpler in Eden, where ignorance was indeed bliss.As the book of Ecclesiastes recognizes the fact: "Whoever increases knowledge, increases sorrow." Mid-twentieth-century theologians took this argument a step further.He believes that God's decision to end human life is an act of love.He said: "Now that human beings have discovered the innate stress in their lives, God decided to do something to stop the endless torment for millennia caused by eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of life. Death is the answer.
My personal preferred interpretation of God's failure to carry out his threats is that God himself is still learning what justice is and what wrong is. The content of Genesis proves that God is still imperfect and still learning.He has created humans, stepped back and admired them, like a human painter looking at his canvas, thinking that the work is not bad, which naturally means that other results may also be possible.If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, there is no need to review what He knows will always be perfect.He later regretted creating humans, only to admit that his work was far from perfect.In the following narrative, we find that this God not only regrets, but also allows humans to persuade him and learn from his own mistakes.Perhaps he understood that he was not right in condemning his desire for knowledge to immediate death.He should understand that the test he gave Adam and Eve was itself a paradoxical problem.If human beings abide by the prohibition, they are no different from animals. How can they be worthy of the image of God?However, by violating God's unreasonable prohibition, they become the perpetrators of original sin, and their punishment will be passed down from generation to generation.The first order of God is a legal case without reason, aka Chok.God never tried to explain to Adam why he forbade him to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.Not only that, but his order was unreasonable at all, because human beings naturally seek knowledge, not to mention that the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is sweet and easy to obtain.
It should come as no surprise that God's first commandment was not obeyed.Perhaps God learned an important lesson from his own mistakes as a first legislator, that human beings are more likely to obey the sound laws that suit their nature than to dictate arbitrary commands, which if When it conflicts with human nature, it dissolves.Perhaps God's first command had to be a chok, since man has not yet possessed the knowledge necessary to obey reasonable instructions.Once Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they were governed by the laws of human reason.Just like treating a child who has not yet understood the reason, the command of the parents in the early years must be chukim. As the child develops the ability to understand and not just obey, dmkim will be reduced to 34. .Parents sometimes have to work hard to understand that their children have grown up and that rationally communicated instructions are more effective than authoritative orders.Some parents even indulge in the power to issue unreasonable orders.
The stern judge never seems to understand the truth of human nature, and is outraged whenever someone disobeys his orders, even when they don't really matter. "Because I forbid" - is a common prohibition.Contempt of court is the penalty imposed for failure to comply with a judge's order, whether large or small.I have seen some judges impose heavy penalties under the guise of "nobility of the law" and "dignity of the court" just because others slightly exceed their instructions.A wise judge sees that the other party has violated the rules, and if that does not interfere with the general situation, he does not need to make a fuss to punish him, and usually has to forgive and forgive.
Perhaps God would have understood Adam and Eve's sin better if he had known that he did not deserve such a severe punishment of immediate death.I am here to offer a contemporary Midas-style interpretation (that is, a story-based interpretation) for this issue. A friend of mine is a federal judge who has to sentence a woman to jail on a Monday. .He must follow the mandatory prison conviction code, regardless of whether she is a first-time offender and was coaxed by her boyfriend to carry his drugs.On Sunday, the judge, who was home with a toddler, inadvertently left the front door locked and let the child wander out into the street, where a truck almost ran him over.The judge found that he had made a mistake, but there was a chance to do it all over again.The next day, he refused to sentence the woman to jail, saying she had also done wrong and was entitled to a chance to reform.Maybe I shouldn't use federal judges as god analogies, but there's a longstanding joke among lawyers about judges: God, when he gets carried away, thinks he's a federal judge.
God, like some parents and judges, finds it easier to punish than to threaten, especially to destroy what He has created.Furthermore, in the case of Adam and Eve, there was a mitigating circumstance: after all, Eve was tempted by the serpent to drag Adam into the water.Here we see the first excuse in the Bible, and many more to come.
In the end, perhaps God discovered that his prohibition was selfish. Although he created human beings in his own image, he did not give human beings the most important quality of God's image, which is the continuous pursuit of greater knowledge. There is an article in "Midash" that the serpent told Eve that God himself "eat the fruit of the tree" and "does not want his intellect to be rivaled." The God who threatened Adam was a God who was still learning. The ability to know everything from the beginning of the world to the present, but this omniscient ability is unstable.Perhaps the command not to eat the forbidden fruit was just to test whether Adam and Eve had enough thirst for knowledge, even if it violated God's will.
Remember when God gave Adam and Eve an opportunity to explain their actions before punishing them by asking, “What have you done?” Justify yourself. An article in "Midash" pointed out that God did not give the snake a chance to explain his behavior, so he came to a conclusion: bad people are not qualified to justify themselves.Since "bad men are eloquent" snakes must argue that you did tell them not to eat it, and I did.Why do they listen to me and not to you? Therefore, God does not allow the snake to argue with himself. This argument is not particularly attractive. How can it imply that God can't win even a snake! I guess, the author of the Midrash His omniscience is also somewhat doubtful.
In conclusion, if Adam and Eve had said they believed they too had a right to knowledge, even against their Creator, God might have reacted differently, and might have dealt with this principled disobedience more gently or more severely Behavior.I am reminded of the case of Harvard University: A student who applied to Harvard University changed his transcript to obtain admission to Harvard University, claiming that he only wanted the knowledge that can be obtained in a Harvard education.However, school authorities did not agree with his argument.
The novelist once wrote that "if you don't break the rules, you can't learn new" to imply that to obtain all true knowledge, you must break the rules.Maybe God just wants to warn human beings that knowledge is like a two-edged sword, which if misused will destroy human beings.Perhaps God wanted to see how Adam and Eve and their descendants used knowledge, and wondered whether they used it for good or evil.Only then can God decide whether Adam and Eve did the right thing; if they did the wrong thing, how badly they were wrong, and whether the punishment he originally warned was enough.We know from contemporary experience that knowledge itself is neither good nor evil, whether it is nuclear physics, genetic engineering, computer science, or any other knowledge.How to use it is the key.
The following story of the Tower of Babel supports this interpretation.God originally saw nothing wrong with all human beings speaking the same language, because human knowledge also increased through communication.Only when humans misused this important tool and worked together to build towers reaching to heaven did God realize that something was wrong. An article in "Midash" said: "This cause (referring to the construction of the Tower of Babel) is a rebellion against God." By this time, God has disrupted human language and reduced human ability to share knowledge.
One thing the people who built the Tower of Babel learned was that humans should not break down the walls that separate humans from God.Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden lest they become like God, endowed with knowledge and eternal life.Their descendants built the Tower of Babel, hoping to use knowledge again to eliminate the distance between humans and God by ascending to heaven.They wanted to circumvent God's prohibition against giving humans access to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life.God's response is to make the sharing of knowledge more difficult.Since then, humans have used different languages, which not only slows down the process of collecting knowledge, but also makes wisdom—it takes more work to obtain it—come along with knowledge.
Thus, the story of the Tower of Babel echoes the story of the forbidden fruit.Both involve the innate human need to know.In both, human beings go beyond what God can accept.The outcome of these two cases can be seen as a self-fulfilling prophecy.Since both Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, humans have the intelligence needed to improve or destroy the world.The same goes for those who built the tower of Babel and their descendants, if they did not use their collective intelligence with foresight, intelligence and moral restraint, they could bring about the end of the world and unite the earth with the kingdom of God.
Whatever the reason for God's decision not to execute the immediate death penalty he had threatened on Adam and Eve, he was sending mixed messages to future sinners.One of the lessons Adam and Eve gained after eating the forbidden fruit was that God may not carry out what he threatened, that is to say, committing a sin (or crime) may not always be punished by the threat in advance.Such thinking is harmful.The serpent told Adam and Eve that God was bluffing; and when they said God was bluffing, God backed down, at least to the point of not executing them right away.No wonder God didn't want them to acquire such knowledge.From now on, it will not be so easy for him to carry out his will.In fact, God's mixed message on the price of sin arguably directly caused the first murder in the Bible.
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