(GEN. 3: 22-24) 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
When I was growing up, I was told all about "The Fall" of man and how Adam and Eve sinned and that made God so very angry. So, then God blew His top and banished them from Eden and prevented anyone from ever returning by a scary angel who would straight up end them if they got too close. That's how it's usually told.
I've heard several times recently about a very different way to understand this. I wanted to share it with you.
We have already written here about the first part of verse 22. Seems the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil has similarities to the Old Covenant and its laws. Read our post "Two Trees - Two Covenants" for more. But it's the second half of verse 22 that sets the stage for today's idea. "He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."
How we are taught to understand that is, "You sinned, and now because you are a filthy sinner I am going to punish you by banning you from eternal life." Here is where God starts sounding like Bill Burr. "You coulda had it! You coulda had eternal life, Adam and Eve! But no! You had ONE job! One job! And you blew it! Now, no Tree of Life for anybody!"
Is that completely wrong? I donno. The real question is - is that the best way to understand this?
What if ----
God was not banishing mankind from Eden out of anger for our sin, but saving mankind from Eden out of love..?
Here mankind stands, in some condition we were never intended to be in. There was something about that Tree of Knowledge, whatever it was that tree represented, that we were never intended to have.
(GEN. 3: 4-6) 4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.
The word translated wisdom, by the way, is sakal, Strong's H7919, and it can mean any range of ideas from knowledge to skill to intelligence to wisdom. It doesn't necessarily have to mean wisdom. When the serpent explains the results of eating, he doesn't emphasize wisdom but rather knowledge. So, taking this action would result in mankind obtaining some sort of understanding that we had previously lacked. Understanding which definitely revolves around the difference between what is good and what is evil. This is an attribute which, according to verse 5, it seems spirit beings already possessed.
The word translated God is elohim, but elohim can mean any disembodied being. Because of that, you have to pay very close attention to the context to know when elohim applies only to God. The problem in verse 5 is there are no context indicators right there. This could be God, but it could be spirit beings in general. So, it is best to err on the side of generality. It could just as easily have been translated, "you will become like the angels, knowing good and evil." Several versions say, "you will become as gods".
Side note for Ron Weinland fans out there --
Weinland used to go around saying Yahweh was God's first name and Elohim is His last name, a family name. Negative. That is absolutely false. Elohim is not a proper noun. Elohim can mean any disembodied being. It can be as generic as the phrase spirit being. Take II Chronicles 2: 5 just for one example.
(II CHR. 2: 5) The temple I am going to build will be great, because our God is greater than all other gods.
Both of those instances, "God" and "gods", are the same word elohim. Clearly, "all other gods" indicates foreign gods. Is Baal in the family of Elohim?
When Genesis says "Yahweh elohim" it doesn't mean elohim is the family name, it means this particular elohim is Yahweh. The unique Yahweh elohim, as opposed to a generic elohim spirit being.
This is for another day. Back to the point.
As a recap - humanity has taken some action that has imparted upon us our very own ability to discern right from wrong, apparently something spirit beings are capable of. This is the one thing God instructed us not to do. There is something about this which is very, very bad for us. God was clear that this course of action would lead us to our eternal deaths. And then this happens:
(GEN. 3: 22) And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”
"He must not be allowed"? Why not?
What is it about the combination of the knowledge of good and evil and eternal life that God could not allow?
There is no obvious answer, but I think the answer is implied.
Here is the thought I'm on about today, and the different understanding I've heard several times recently:
The reason we had to be prevented from the Tree of Life is because He loves us and desired to save us from what we'd done, and eternal life would prevent that salvation.
It's not so much that God furiously banished us from the Garden and the Tree of Life, but that He protected us from the Garden and the Tree of Life. He protected us from making a terrible situation far worse by making it permanent. It's not that God could not abide, but that God needed to act quickly to stop us from making ourselves unsalvageable. He wasn't furious, per se, He was loving.
The combination of knowledge of good and evil and eternal life would indeed make us just like the spirit beings that perhaps we call demons or devils - who sin but cannot be salvaged. Why can they not be salvaged? Because the elohim cannot die. What does death have to do with it? Well, how did Jesus save us? Through His own death. If we cannot die, then Jesus cannot become one of us and, as one of us, die for all of us. That Tree of Life would prevent God's plan of redemption for mankind by preventing death - the means through which redemption could come. Having no way to redeem us from our own folly would result in us having no other destiny except that which will befall Satan. At this point, we don't like death, but we need it.
So, we must ask ourselves - did God curse us with death, or is death some sort of backhanded blessing? Or both?
God's hand was forced. He had to boot us from the Garden for our own good. He placed that scary cherub there with the flaming sword to prevent us from ever entering there again.
...or did He?
Now that we see the banishment from Eden in a slightly different light, perhaps we can see that cherub with the flaming sword in a different light.
Maybe that spirit being is not only guarding the Tree of Life from us, but guarding us from it. Clearly, that Tree which should give us life has become our greatest threat. What was once paradise is now the death of hope. (Another "Good Turnabout"?) If the serpent really wanted to end us for all time, he would have rushed Eve to that tree and told her to eat it, too. (Good thing he didn't know the plan of salvation, or he would have.) I bet he thought it was doubly funny when we were banned from the Tree of Life, not knowing it was to our benefit.
And maybe, just maybe, the angel was also preserving that Tree for the time when we are ready for it. In a time after Jesus died for us, and that terrible mistake in the garden was undone. In a time when there was no threat of permanent Fall because we have entered a condition of permanent salvation.
(REV. 22: 1-3) Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be any curse.
Because of death, Jesus' death, we can be made ready for the Tree of Life. There is no angel with a fiery sword anymore. The Tree of Life isn't just there within our reach, it's on Main Street. And the thing bears twelve crops of fruit, one for each month! It invites us in. That is a poetic way of saying EAT IT! Gorge yourself on it. Don't just have life, have A LOT OF LIFE!
Were we banished from Eden, or were we saved from it? Saved until a time when we were ready for it? This kind of question only comes up if you're looking at it from the perspective of the plan of salvation through Jesus Christ.
Hopefully this different way to view "The Fall" gives you something positive to think about today.
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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )
Acts 17:11
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6 comments:
Good article. Haven't really thought of it in that perspective.
I always thought not eating of the Tree of Life was for our own good while banishment from Eden was a punishment and getting on in life would now be more difficult and painful.
But, I didn't think through it as you have here.
One thing though, I am not convinced that God cannot put Satan to death.
Jim - thanks for reading and commenting. Your comments are always good.
Re Satan's death, you're not alone on that. I have speculated that same thing in the past, and I have run across a few unrelated sources who say the same.
We are really in the realm of hypothesis here, so nothing I am saying about spirit being death is even remotely certain. I have no idea how that is going to work. I extra do not know how Adam and Eve eating from the Tree of Life would have effected that.
Interesting conversation. Since my departure from the Worldwide Church back in 1985, my own studies have pushed me to the conclusion that ONLY God has self-sustaining immortality - all other creatures (celestial and terrestrial) exist at "his" pleasure. I believe that Scripture implies that the angelic realm has the ability to exist indefinitely, but that God also has the ability to destroy them.
As you know, Herbert Armstrong had a tendency to carve out prooftexts - ignoring context and passages which were clearly part of the same thought. He certainly did that with Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 - artificially leaving out the portions of those passages which clearly predict Satan's demise. Moreover, when we consider the fact that Satan and his minions are cast into the Lake of Fire (See Revelation 20), and that the continued existence of any being in a perpetual state of torment is not consistent with the New Heaven and New Earth described in the twenty-first chapter of Revelation.
Good points, Miller.
I've been thinking about this a lot since Jim's comment. I wonder if a difference between a human death and an elohim death is that once they die, it's permanent. When we die, our spirit component separates from our physical component. So, when they die, perhaps they just cease to exist.
Again, I want to point out that I am guessing here because this is very speculative.
This post is encouraging and thought provoking.
The tree of life growing on both sides must be a 'tree' as no human has ever seen nor could imagine. Putting Disneyland's tree of life into the far shadow.
The flaming sword in the garden temple that turned every way preventing access ultimately slew Jesus himself and has now been removed by his sacrifice. Jesus himself undertaking to lead believers walking them back to the tree of life. As he was walking in the garden temple whilst the fiasco happened in the first place.
I recall Satan dying/not dying being a huge debating topic in the 1990s. Best remark I ever heard was "God is holy spirit and Satan is not holy. We should be holy".
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