And Jehovah Elohim said, Behold, Man is become as one of us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he stretch out his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever ...!
God's last words in Eden are not a sentence of doom but a strange observation: man now knows good and evil, and so he must not reach the tree of life. Why is that new likeness to God a danger, and why call it mercy to drive him out of the garden?
Some readers hear the line as sarcasm — God mocking a creature who reached too high. Commentators reject that reading and take the words at face value.
Philosophy, or fear of philosophers, has misled many. They think the words spoken here were a taunt at man's groundless claim, and a way of exposing Satan's cheat. But Scripture is plain, and the truth is important... He was innocent and upright, but he is never said then to be righteous or holy. Nor could he be so called; for both suppose knowledge of good and evil, which he did not yet have and only got through transgression.
Another writer takes that plural "Us" as pointing to the Trinity, and marks how narrow the likeness is.
Verse 22 bears further witness to the truth of the Trinity: the Lord God speaks of Himself as "Us."... Now he knew good and evil, and only in this way was he like God. Yet, unlike God, he had the inclination to choose the evil rather than the good.
Before he disobeyed, Adam had no way of weighing right against wrong from the inside — and did not need one.
By the fall man got the knowledge of good and evil — an inner sense of right and wrong apart from any command... In Adam fresh from God's hand the knowledge of good and evil would have been a defect, a moral inconsistency, and therefore an impossibility. Before the fall he had conscience only in the sense of responsibility to obey, not at all in the way of accusing or excusing himself. Only when he sinned, and so lost his innocence, did he gain the moral power to know good and evil for himself. From then on it was his sad, painful, but most useful monitor.
God's words here repeat the serpent's promise almost word for word. The quote below uses an older wording of that promise: "You shall be as gods."
Satan does not deceive the saints, or those who look like saints, with an open and simple lie... Satan said, "You shall be as gods." Then One far above all created beings repeated, "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil." But oh, what a store of evils and ruin came in through the act of disobedience built on this truth that the devil used! Using it out of place, and hiding what went with it when man acted on it, was the foundation of the ruin that came on the world.
Barring the tree of life looks like the harshest stroke of the chapter. Commentators read it the other way round.
Man had gained the knowledge of good (and God was its source), without power to act on it or to please Him. He had also gained the knowledge of evil, and with it a nature always prone to follow it... But to eat and live for ever in the garden, knowing good and evil, would be misery — good he could never reach, evil he was always prone to. God could not allow it... This was grace, not judgment; the judgment was pronounced before, on Adam and his wife, and on the serpent too.
Why would endless life now be a curse and not a gift?
To take of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever in our present condition would be unmixed misery. The tree of life can only be tasted in resurrection. To live for ever in a frail tent, in a body of sin and death, would be unbearable.
The "lest" of this verse has a counterpart in John 3.
Adam's act was a groundless assumption that he knew better than God. God's act in driving him out of Eden was one of mercy to His rebellious creatures. In John 3, however, we get something more than mercy — we get grace, God showing favour to sinners by giving them what no one would have dreamed of... It was necessary to banish Adam from Eden, so that he would not perpetuate his sinful condition for ever by eating of the tree of life. It was necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up, so that any who have sinned might live for ever.
- Real, not mocking. The likeness God names is genuine as far as it goes: man now knows good and evil, a knowledge innocence never had.
- Real, but ruined. He knows the difference and leans to the wrong side — a likeness to God without the power to please Him.
- Real, so fatal. Endless life in that state would have locked misery in for ever. So God stopped the hand before it reached the tree.
- Shut out in mercy. God had already passed sentence. Driving man out was grace, guarding him from a state he could never escape.
- Opened in Christ. Eden's gate shut so man would not live for ever in sin. The Son of Man was lifted up so that sinners might live for ever.
Therefore Jehovah Elohim sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken.
God sends Adam out of Eden, and the ground he must now work is the ground he came from. Two questions follow: was this only punishment, and what did the man lose besides a place to live?
Two departures stand behind this verse: Adam's own flight from God, and God's judicial sentence on him.
It was the first divine utterance to fallen man. What a volume of truth! On the face of things, past all denial, man was gone from God. He had morally doomed himself before he received the dread sentence. "He drove out the man," we are told later in the chapter; but man hid from His presence at first, and thus drew out the words, "Where are you?"
God cast out the man; yet Adam ran away from God before God turned him out. But when God turned him out, it was a judicial act. God put cherubim there, and a flaming sword turning every way, to guard the way to the tree of life. That is, Adam was not only going to dust, but could not get at life again. It would have been horrible if he could. He was an outcast from God altogether, and this is everlasting misery.
Shutting the way to the tree of life was mercy as well as justice. To fix Adam forever in his fallen state would have been the real disaster.
Suppose Adam had been able to put out his hand and eat of the tree of life, what would have been the result? He would have made his own condition of sin and misery permanent. He would have become a deathless creature in a hell of his own making. That would have been bad enough. But it would have been far worse in another way. Even by becoming Man, Christ could not have died. His death has become to us the door into life. In eating of the tree of life Adam would have closed and barred that door. We may well thank God for the cherubim and the flaming sword!
The garden held a tree that tested obedience and a separate tree that gave life. The test and the gift were never the same thing.
The tree of life was distinct from that of knowing good and evil. The test of responsible obedience was one thing; the means of life was quite another. So from the very first they are shown to be separate. In fact, when man disobeyed by eating from the one tree, God drove him out so that he would not also take from the other and make his fallen sinful state everlasting. The tree of life was for one who did not eat of the forbidden tree. It was marked so clearly here that responsibility and life are completely separate.
"To work the ground from which he was taken" describes a demotion.
But Adam transgressed and lost the garden, and became a drudge in the earth, instead of being the happy lord of it. He was now to get a bare existence out of it, until he was laid down in death upon it.
Everyday labour became a standing witness to what had happened. Later, Cain would try to bring God an offering out of that very labour:
How did man come to be toiling there in the sweat of his brow? Their very toil told the tale of the curse. They had been driven out of Eden for sin. But in Cain we see utter recklessness toward the judgment of God. He had forgotten the very nature of that God who had set man perfectly happy in the garden at the first, to keep it and enjoy its fruits — fruits that came to his hand without toil or labour. He supposed that by toil and labour, the judicial consequences of sin, he could produce something that God would accept.
This raises a fair question: did work itself begin as a punishment?
Man placed in the garden "to work it and keep it" shows that it was not God's will that His creature should be idle. But there was no "toil" or "sorrow" connected with such occupation. Now thorns and thistles were to appear, and in the sweat of his face man was to eat bread... Labour here is good for all, and in it there is profit. For out of evil God can and does bring good.
The gate stayed shut, but there is still a way to paradise, and it is a Person.
There is no way back to the lost paradise. Christ is the way... He is the way for the believer to the Father and the paradise that shall never pass away. So there is no tree of knowing good and evil there, no tree of responsibility. The cross of Christ settled that for everlasting righteousness, in favour of all who believe, to God's glory. There is but one tree, the tree of life.
- Sent — Adam ran from God before God removed him. The expulsion made official a separation he had already chosen.
- Spared — the barred tree of life kept a sinner from living forever in his misery. Judgment and mercy travel together here.
- Separated — the tree of testing and the tree of life were never the same thing. Failing the test did not decide how God gives life.
- Sweat — the lord of the garden became a drudge on the ground. Work was his before the fall; toil and thorns now tell the story of sin.
- Saviour — no one gets back into Eden. Christ is the way to a paradise that never passes away, and it has only one tree.