Board index ‹ Specific Bible verses, texts, and passages ‹ Genesis

[Ma Penn]

What's going on in Genesis 3:22?

First of all, I want to say I'm not an atheist, more of a skeptic. I've always been confused by this verse where God says that Adam and Eve had become as them to know good and evil. He also commands that they be cast out of the garden and not eat from the tree of life so they can't live forever. It implies that the serpent was right about God.

[jimwalton]

"The knowledge of good and evil" in the ancient world was a legal idiom for wisdom, and corresponds to the ability to decide. It represented the capability to formulate and articulate a judicial decision. What is being forbidden to humanity is the power to decide for himself what is in his best interests and what is not. Certainly there's nothing wrong with them acquiring wisdom, but it must be acquired in appropriate ways at appropriate times. The idea behind the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is that it represented a decision the humans had to make: would they recognize God as the center of order, with the ability to create and discern order, or would they displace God with themselves as the center of wisdom, to be self-made finding their knowledge, satisfactions, and values outside a relationship with God in defiance to what they knew to be true? A proper relationship with God is the beginning of wisdom.

So in Genesis 3.22 God says that man has indeed made his choice and has "become wise," though he chose wrongly: self instead of God. He has made his judicial decision and made his own perceptions and wisdom as the standard of truth.

"He has become like us." The man and woman acquired "wisdom" illegitimately, taking God's role for themselves rather than joining in relationship with God, to be taught His wisdom and become fully functioning co-regents of God in the process of bringing order (Gn. 1.27-28). If humans are to work alongside God in extending order, they need to attain wisdom as an endowment from God, not by seizing it for their own selfish and misguided use.

So in one sense, but in only one sense, what the serpent said was true. Man has become "like God"—the sovereign over his own life. But the serpent implied that being like God would bring unlimited privileges and other benefits. Rather than experiencing bliss and divinity, however, they feel shame. Rather than sitting on a throne, they are expelled. Rather than new prerogatives, everything goes south. They not only failed to gain what the serpent promised, they instead lost what they had: the presence of God and unspoiled fellowship with him. As Hamilton says, "They found nothing and lost everything."

Walton says, "It's not so much that paradise was lost, but that it was unguided. We didn't lose paradise, we forfeited sacred space and the relationship it offered, thereby damaging our ability to be in relationship with God and marring his creation with our own under-developed ability to bring order on our own in our own wisdom. As Yoda said, 'Reckless is he … now things are worse.' "

Then they are expelled from the garden. If they were able to continue to eat from the tree of life and continue to live, they would live a life of endless misery. Here is where the promise of the death penalty is carried out: without the antidote to aging, death is now inevitable. God has no desire that they live forever in a sinful state, compounding misunderstandings, false wisdom, misguided knowledge, and sin upon sin. So he cut them off from the tree of life. The overwhelming loss wasn't paradise, it was God. Throughout the rest of the Bible, the object is not to regain Eden but to regain access to God's presence.

[Grimace]

I never understood the whole learning knowledge of good and evil is bad thing in this verse. It's kind of a baffling story.

[jimwalton]

It's because our culture is so far removed from theirs. In their culture, God was associated with wisdom (as we read in places like Proverbs 2-4. If you spend 5 minutes reading those 3 chapters, you'll get the idea). Wisdom was considered a moral as well as an intellectual quality. In our culture we think wisdom is being really smart and being able to apply it to real life. And while that was also true in the ancient world, wisdom was also moral, the right, the good, and being able to choose the best and highest goal. Wisdom was considered to be the essence of God (Prov. 1.7; 2.6; et al.) and the route to a relationship with God. Obviously, this is not how we in our modern western world perceive wisdom.

Add to that that in the ancient world, "good and evil" was a legal idiom meaning for formulate and articulate a judicial decision (Gn. 31.24,29; Dt. 1.39; 1 Ki. 3.9; 22.18). So the knowledge of good and evil doesn't mean that Adam & Eve knew nothing about evil (and therefore the temptation was really unfair); instead it means that Adam and Eve were morally capable individuals who had the ability to decide between right and wrong, good and bad.

So in the ancient world, if someone were wanting to decide for the good, they would make a decision favoring the will of the gods, because that was where wisdom dwelled.

When God is commanding them not to eat from the tree, he is telling them that following Him and his will is the way of wisdom. God reserves for himself the consummate knowledge of all things. In Genesis 1.27-28, God sets up the man and woman as co-regents with Him, ruling the earth as vassals, running things as He Himself would. Here is another aspect of that: for them to find wisdom, they must follow His will as His priest and priestess (the terms "work" and "Care for" of Gn. 2.15 are priestly terms, not agricultural ones) and relate to God on His own terms (wisdom), renouncing all conspiracy against his sovereignty. In other words, they have to choose God rather than self. They must trust God's wisdom more than their own. It's not that God doesn't want them to be wise, it's that He wants them to be wise in the right things at the right time and going about it in the right way. If they just want to usurp all prerogative to themselves, they will eat the fruit. But God warns them that pursuing their own path to wisdom will have devastating results, not because God is egotistical or because he doesn't want them to learn anything, but because the way of self is the way of limited sight, limited knowledge, limited perspective, warped priorities, and distorted values. The existence of the tree would have reminded Adam he was not his own god and that he was responsible to his maker. God is interested in an unhindered relationship with them based on truth and freedom.

People in their culture would have understood these things. To us they are baffling. That's why we need the cultural background to get it. That's why we need scholars and teachers. Not everything about the Bible is right there on the surface since it's from a different time, a different language, and a different culture.

From the onset man had the power to decide for himself. In the image of God he was created with free will, with every expectation that he would use it. What was being offered by the tree was whether he would use his free will to be self-oriented, or use his free will to be God-oriented—whether he would find his moral ground in self or in the character of God. In order to be what he was created to be, humankind must continue to orient himself to the unwavering reference point rather than to an undependable one (himself). Much like sailing across the ocean, a sailor has a choice to orient to the stars or, say, to the clouds.

The choice presented by the tree is not "Are you going to be a person who thinks for himself, or an empty-headed slave of God," but rather "Are you going to act as if you made yourself and you know how best to govern yourself, or are you going to act as if God made you and you refer to him as the one who knows you and loves you."

Since "the knowledge of good and evil" is a judicial idiom, humankind was being presented with a choice to judge the legitimacy of God's claim upon him as his creator and moral ground. To decide against that was to cut his ties to God and stand alone as his own Master of the Universe.

[Grimace]

I can see how that is the defense you would need to defend the bible.

It's still not logical. They literally learned what is good and bad (somehow learning nudity is bad?). Before that they didn't have the knowledge.

Also the fact the tree is there at all is pretty f***ing stupid.

[jimwalton]

Why do you bother to ask a Christian if you have no desire for dialogue?

> They literally learned what is good and bad

They didn't. You just can't make up what you wish and consider that to be the meaning of the text.

> somehow learning nudity is bad?

This isn't the meaning at all. Again, you can't just make up what you want. We have to understand the mindset and the cultural context of the ancients. After all, one of them wrote it, in his cultural context, and to his audience of ancient peers. We must learn the language of his context.

They lived in an honor/shame culture, and nakedness pertained to shame. Conquered kings would be stripped naked to shame them; criminals would be stripped as a token of their crime. What we are seeing in Genesis 3.10 is a moral awareness of sin and the accompanying shame. Prior to this they knew good and bad, but now they knew moral shame. God's question in v. 11 ("Who told you that you were naked?") is for moral conviction—and an opportunity for repentance. Notice that in Gen. 2.25 they were naked an not ashamed, and this was OK with God, too. So it's totally incorrect that they were learning that nudity was somehow bad.

> that the tree is there at all

Because the Middle East is a lot of arid wilderness, trees in the ancient world were considered a blessing from God and even sometimes where the deity met with men. In the ancient world people are often seen sitting under trees to pray and meditate (considering they were in the presence of the gods), and trees (a garden) were often planted around temples. Trees were thought to be sacred places. It makes perfect sense that in Genesis trees symbolized the presence of God, the garden of God, life and wisdom.

[Grimace]

Here is the story.

God creates human that are perfect. He tells them there is a tree in there, if they eat from it bad things will happen.

God also created a serpent. That serpent tells one of the humans that eating from the tree is not bad. She does, she convinces the other one to as well.

God punishes all humans forever.

That is the story. Is it not?

You know what you are going to do a long post justifying and changing the meaning of everything to what makes sense to you. There is probably no point of debating this.

[jimwalton]

> God creates human that are perfect.

Hmm. The text never says this and never implies it. Perfection is never mentioned. It's not part of the story. If you can find it, I'll be glad to read about it.

> He tells them there is a tree in there, if they eat from it bad things will happen. God also created a serpent. That serpent tells one of the humans that eating from the tree is not bad. She does, she convinces the other one to as well.

This is true, but I bet you are misunderstanding the serpent.

The Hebrew word for serpent is nahash, which is indeed the common word for snake, but it also possibly means "able to stand upright." There are all kinds of verbal possibilities here. For instance, nahash is the same root as nehoset, which means "bronze." So the shiny, upright snake in Number 21.9 is the same root: it was a literal thing, but a spiritual symbol. "Snake" could also be a word play, because the Hebrew word for "deceive" is very close to it, and is the same root as for magic and divination. Snakes in the ancient world were very much associated with spiritual powers, magic, and cultic rituals. So what if this "thing" (the nhs) was a spiritual power, represented to the woman as a bright creature, speaking "spiritual wisdom", and yet was deceiving her—the word for snake? Just a little bit of research changes the whole picture.

> God punishes all humans forever.

Hmm. No. Humans withdrew from God, knowing that the natural consequences of their withdrawal would be destruction. If you separate yourself from life, you can't blame someone or something else that you die. It was a choice you made. What we see God doing (rather than punishing all humans forever) is doing everything possible to bring them back to himself, offering to forgive, willingness to redeem, and holding out life as a gift if they will only just take it.

That's closer to the story.

[Grimace]

> Hmm. The text never says this and never implies it. Perfection is never mentioned. It's not part of the story. If you can find it, I'll be glad to read about it.

God's image. Man became fallen after the apple. His kingdom of heaven, that kind of stuff.

> but I bet you are misunderstanding the serpent.

How AT ALL is that relevant?

> Hmm. No. Humans withdrew from God, knowing that the natural consequences of their withdrawal would be destruction. If you separate yourself from life, you can't blame someone or something else that you die. It was a choice you made. What we see God doing (rather than punishing all humans forever) is doing everything possible to bring them back to himself, offering to forgive, willingness to redeem, and holding out life as a gift if they will only just take it.

Humans didn't know the consequences. How would they have known them?

[jimwalton]

> God's image

The text is clear that being in the image of God means functioning as co-ruler of the earth (see also Ps. 8.5-8). There is no notion of perfection.

> Man became fallen after the ~~apple~~ fruit

Sure. The fallenness pertains to his separation from God, not to any loss of perfection. Perfection isn't in the text.

> the kingdom of heaven.

How is that relevant? I don't get it.

> serpent

Just that most people deride the story of the serpent because they think it's silly fiction or senseless mythology: snakes don't talk. But that's not what the text is about (a talking snake), so I tossed it in since you seemed to think the text was about perfection, nudity, and that they didn't have knowledge—other elements that aren't part of the text.

> Humans didn't know the consequences. How would they have known them?

God had said to them explicitly, "When you eat of it you will be doomed to death (they would fall under a death sentence)." First of all, they knew it was a moral and spiritual choice, not a dietary one. God and the humans have already interacted about the roles God has established for them (co-regent in 1.28; priest and priestess in 2.15 [the words "work" and "care for" are priestly words, not agricultural ones]). Secondly, God has introduced them to the tree of life and this tree, so they have been informed about morality and spirituality.

Now, let's examine Gn. 2.17 more closely. For God to command them presupposes a few things: (1) They know who God is (some relationship between them is assumable, (2) They know him as an authority over them, (3) They have an understanding of right and wrong, and (4) They know what death is (or God is warning them about a completely unknown and unknowable entity, which doesn't make sense. Death was already in the system.). Their freedoms are affirmed, their right to choose is affirmed, and the consequence of disobedience is clear.