but of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, God has said, Ye shall not eat of it, and ye shall not touch it, lest ye die.
Eve answers the serpent by repeating God's command. Three small changes have crept into it. She moves the tree to the centre, forbids a touch God never forbade, and softens a certainty into a risk.
Which tree stands at the centre of the garden? One writer weighs Eve's answer:
Notice how plain it is that she has already fallen. She has let in the question about God's ways seeming strange. At once her eyes fasten on the forbidden thing until she can see little else. God had set the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and without any prohibition. For the woman now it is the forbidden tree that occupies that place. Instead of life, she puts death — or what was identified with death for her — as the central thing. The "garden of delight" has faded from her eyes.
Eve adds a clause about touching. One writer sets her handling of God's word beside the Lord Jesus under attack:
Either to add to God's word or to take from it proves very clearly that His word is not living in my heart or governing my conscience... The Lord Jesus, in His conflict with Satan, applied the word accurately, because He lived on it and valued it more than His necessary food. He could not misquote or misapply the word, nor could He be indifferent about it. Not so Eve. She added to what God had said. His command was simple enough: "You shall not eat of it." To this Eve adds her own words, "neither shall you touch it." These were Eve's words, and not God's.
One writer follows where her added clause leads:
A mere touch, as she put it to herself, was death. Why, then, had He put it before them only to forbid it? What was He guarding from them with such jealous care? Must it not be something He valued highly?
Her "lest you die" leaves the outcome open. That change reaches further than wording:
She first adds to the prohibition, then she weakens the penalty. Instead of "you shall surely die," it is for her only "lest" — for fear — "you die." There is no real certainty that death would be the result. So the question of God's love becomes a question of His truth as well. I do not want on the throne a being I cannot trust; that is where the tampering with His word comes from. The heart deceives the head. If I do not want a thing to be true, I soon learn to question whether it is.
Why does the serpent's flat denial in the next verse meet so little resistance?
Even as to the threat, the solemn words, "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die," have shrunk on Eve's lips to "lest you die." Her heart is set on a forbidden pleasure. The threatened punishment is the only barrier left, and she sees even that through a shrinking lens. How easily Satan can silence every remaining fear with the bold contradiction of God's word: "You will not surely die!"
Her answer stretches the command in one direction and shrinks it in the other. Both moves damage the word equally:
She adds to the prohibition and takes from the penalty. The Lord had not said a word about touching the forbidden fruit, but had threatened death in the most certain terms in the day of eating it. Exaggeration of truth is no more the truth than reduction of it; either weakens it, and both are Satan's work. By the truth we are sanctified, and His word is truth.
This scene stands as a caution against quoting God loosely:
So we ought to guard the exact words of God the Holy Spirit. We must not add to His words, as Eve added "neither shall you touch it" to the prohibition. The apostles, too, thought that John was not to die. But "Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but, 'If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?'" Read the warnings against this snare (Proverbs 30:5-6; Revelation 22:18-19).
- Displaced. The forbidden tree takes the place that belonged to the tree of life. Once one restriction fills the view, the garden of delight fades.
- Added. "Neither shall you touch it" is Eve's sentence, not God's — proof that His word was no longer governing her.
- Diluted. "Surely die" becomes "lest you die." Doubt about God's love turns into doubt about His truth.
- Defenceless. The threat has already shrunk in her own mind. So the serpent's flat denial in the next verse meets no resistance.
- Applied. Stretching Scripture and trimming it are the same work. The Lord Jesus met the same enemy by quoting the word exactly, because He lived on it.
And the serpent said to the woman, Ye will not certainly die;
God had warned that eating from one tree brings death. Here God's enemy speaks for the first time and denies it outright — and all human history turns on which voice Eve believed.
The denial did not come first. Answering the serpent's first question, Eve had already turned God's certain warning into a mere possibility. That small change opened the way for an outright denial.
She first adds to the prohibition, then she weakens the penalty. Instead of "you shall surely die," for her it is only "lest you die." There is no real certainty that death would be the result. So the question of God's love becomes a question of His truth as well. I do not want on the throne a being I cannot trust; that is where the tampering with His word comes from. The heart deceives the head. If I do not want it to be true, I soon learn to question whether it is so.
Up to this point the serpent had only hinted. Now he drops the hint and calls God a liar, giving the woman a reason to stop fearing death.
The serpent now takes a bold step and dares to call God a liar. This soon follows, once the heart starts to distrust His love. "You will not surely die." "Fear nothing of the sort. On the contrary, keeping away from the fruit of that tree means giving up hopes that are rightly yours. God does not want you to know good and evil as He does. He wants you to stay children and slaves. Do not fear death. Claim your independence." So the serpent attacked God's truth and His majesty alike.
The lie did not stand on its own. It worked because of the true statement attached to it, and the one thing the serpent left out.
Men do not know how deep Satan's deceit goes. His plan is not to put forward at once a broad, plain falsehood that carries the lie on its face. Not so; he puts it forward under the guise of truth, in the form of truth, and in some sense mixed up with the truth. This is how he deceived Adam… He says, "You will not surely die!" That was an obvious untruth. But he adds, "You will be like God, knowing good and evil." This we know was in part the real truth. At once we hear God saying, "The man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil." So the lie came partly in the form of truth. But he kept back entirely the truth man most needed to know: what would follow from taking his advice. He did not tell him it would end in death.
People repeat the same denial whenever they expect sin to cost less than God has said. One writer says ordinary human happiness depends on it.
Men say in their hearts that sin will not bring the consequences God has said it will — "the wages of sin is death." No man could go on if he believed God's word instead of Satan's. Man's happiness rests on faith in Satan's lie… So all the devil can do is hide the consequences of sin. He could only keep men going by keeping that truth out of their sight: "You shall surely die." Terror of it would not change their hearts. But if they truly believed it, they would not have one happy day here.
The denial changed nothing. The death it dismissed came to every human being.
The serpent approached Eve, as we all know, and challenged God's word about this. He said plainly, "You will not surely die." But the word of God stood anyway, and so it must always be. "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned."
One writer sets the serpent's work in Eden beside the work of the Son of God.
The serpent found in Eden a scene of purity and happiness. He entered it intending to corrupt and ruin it. "He was a murderer from the beginning." And the deadly weapon he used was a lie… He got what he wanted. Through his lie he ruined the creature whom God had just made and blessed. But now, in contrast to all this, the Son of God had begun His work. He came and found a scene nothing like Eden. Misery and death because of sin filled it… But He had come to save. And the instrument of His ministry was the truth: "He who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him."
- Doubt — before the serpent denied anything, Eve had softened God's certain penalty into a maybe. A weakened word invites a denied one.
- Denial — once the heart distrusts God's love, the hint becomes an open charge that God is lying.
- Disguise — the lie travelled inside a half-truth, and the deadly consequence went unmentioned.
- Delusion — men still prefer the serpent's word to God's, because today's happiness depends on keeping death out of sight.
- Death — the word the serpent denied proved true. No argument answers it — only the Son of God, whose instrument is the truth.