Tag-Archive for » Genesis 3:22 «

Once More into the Breach

Friday, June 08th, 2012 | Author:

Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever -“  Genesis 3:22  NASB

Live forever – Before we attempt to understand this tangled verse, we need to listen to Ellul.  “Hebrew thought was sown in a field nourished by Greek thought and Roman law. [in a footnote] A familiar example of the mutation to which revelation was actually subjected is its contamination by the Greek idea of the immortality of the soul.  I will briefly recall it.  In Jewish thought death is total.  There is no immortal soul, no division of body and soul.  Paul’s thinking is Jewish in this regard.  The soul belongs to the ‘psychical’ realm and is part of the flesh.  The body is the whole being.  In death, there is no separation of body and soul.  The soul is as mortal as the body.  But there is a resurrection.  Out of the nothingness that human life becomes, God creates anew the being that was dead.  This is a creation by grace; there is no immortal soul intrinsic to us.  Greek philosophy, however, introduces among theologians the idea of the immortal soul.  The belief was widespread in popular religion and it was integrated into Christianity.  But it is a total perversion.  Everything is not now dependent on the grace of God, and assurance of immortality comes to be evaluated by virtues and works.  All Christian thinking is led astray by this initial mutation that comes through Greek philosophy and Near Eastern cults.   . . .  belief in the soul’s celestial immortality arose in the second half of the fifth century B.C. on the basis of astronomy.  Pythagorean astronomy radically transformed the idea of the destiny of the soul held by Mediterranean peoples.  For the notion of a vital breath that dissipates at death, for belief in a survival of shades wandering about in the subterranean realm of the dead, it substitutes the notion of a soul of celestial substance exiled in this world.  This idea completely contaminates biblical thinking, gradually replaces the affirmation of the resurrection, and transforms the kingdom of the dead into the kingdom of God.”[1]

Were you aware of this Hellenization of Hebrew thinking?  If we separate ourselves (as best we can) from the pervasive Greek idea of the eternal existence of the soul, will that help us understand this knotty verse?  It might.  First we need to correct our idea of va-hay le-olam (live forever).  Remember that these words find their meanings within the context of recently-freed Israel, in other words, within the context of ancient Egyptian mythology.  In Egyptian mythology, unquestionably there is life after death.  But it is not clear if such life is full or worth living.  Eternal punishment is not part of the thinking of Egypt (nor is it part of the thinking of Israel).  In general, the world to come is merely an extension of this world, with all of its consequent difficulties.  Therefore, continued existence without death was especially important.  Postponing entry into a world of eternal unsatisfying existence was the highest priority.  This mythology stands in the background of this complicated verse.  It explains the elaborate funeral embalming processes of the Egyptians, including the interment of food, slaves, wives and utensils.

Remove yourself from concerns with the eternal soul and ask, “What message does this verse send to people who came from a culture that prized staying alive at all costs?”  Sarna provides a clue.  “ . .  the text presupposes a belief that man, created from perishable matter, was mortal from the outset but he had within his grasp the possibility of immortality.”[2] What message does this relay to a people who had just emerged from saturation in Egyptian thinking?  Sarna comments: “Man, having already exceeded the limits of creaturehood, has radically altered the perspective of human existence.  He lives henceforth in the consciousness of his mortality.  He may therefore be tempted to change his condition by artificial means, rather than by restoring the ruptured harmony between divine will and human will,  . . .”[3]

In other words, this passage in Genesis closes the door on the Egyptian idea that men may somehow postpone indefinitely the specter of death without reconciliation with God.  The verse is aimed directly at overturning Egyptian mythology.  It is not a theological proclamation about eternal existence through some magical means.  It is a statement that the Egyptian idea is impossible.  That door is closed and locked shut.  God has insured that no magical rite, no fountain of youth, no priestly incantation, no “holy grail” brings everlasting life.  Ancient near-Eastern expressions of human acquisition of living forever are false.  The only path is the path back to God, teshuvah – repentance.

Does this unknot the passage?  Well, it helps.  It helps us see that the verse is not about some Greek idea of the eternal existence of the soul.  It is about invalidating Egyptian religious beliefs.  Who more than Israel needed to know this?

Topical Index:  live forever, hay le-olam, Egyptian mythology, soul, Genesis 3:22


[1] Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity, p. 25.

[2] Nahum Sarna, Genesis: The JPS Torah Commentary, pp. 18-19.

[3] Ibid., p. 30.

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , , ,  | 46 Comments

The Story Repeats Itself

Wednesday, June 06th, 2012 | Author:

Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever -“  Genesis 3:22  NASB

Might – In Hebrew, you notice that one particular word is repeated, a word that plays an important role in another verse, Genesis 3:3, the verse about God’s single commandment in the Garden.  The repeated word, pen, is a conjunction that negates dependent clauses.  It serves to express a precaution, something that requires attention in order to prevent it from happening.  In Genesis 3:3, this word is glossed in the NASB as “or” in the phrase “or you will die.”  But it doesn’t mean “or” just like it doesn’t mean “might” in Genesis 3:22.  It means “lest,” the conditional alarm for a particular disaster.  This verse should read “and now, lest he stretch out his hand.”  It is not an acknowledgement of potential action.  It is a warning of consequent choice.  Why the NASB translators decided to gloss the word in both occurrences isn’t clear, but what is clear is this:  the gloss removes our ability to see the connection between this verse and the original commandment.

This connection raises all kinds of questions.  If Adam is able to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (and he is, of course), doesn’t God’s warning indicate that this action results in death?  Yes, it does.  But Adam eats and he doesn’t die.  Of course, theologians claim that he dies spiritually, and subsequently physically (some 900 years later).  But doesn’t that diminish the intensity of the warning?  Doesn’t it seem odd to you that God doesn’t spell out the consequences more accurately?

And then there is this very strange verse, Genesis 3:22.  If Adam is now a fallen sinner, what could it possibly mean to suggest that he may still eat of the Tree of Life and live forever?  I thought living forever was the exclusive privilege of the righteous.  Doesn’t this verse sound more like magic than theology?  Can a sinful man actually eat from some tree and enable himself to live eternally?  Where is God’s sovereignty over life and death in this suggestion?  Is Man in the Garden after the Fall able to circumvent the consequence of the first commandment?  If this verse really reports the potential of eternal existence independent of God, then why did God leave this tree in the Garden in the first place?  Is there really a way to live eternally in rebellion against God through my own action?  If the warning is real in verse 3, doesn’t it have to be real in verse 22?

This is a story we have read so many times that we no longer question its implications.  But we should.  Frankly, on the surface it doesn’t seem to make any sense.  How can God be God and still be worried about a man fallen from grace finding some nearly magical way of acquiring eternal existence?  The plot is so thick as to be undecipherable.  Maybe Ellul is right.  “[T]he Bible is a book that is full of questions but never gives any answers.”[1]  Can you live with that?  Or does your Greek mind rebel and demand resolution even if it requires glossing the text and inventing the theology?

Topical Index:  lest, pen, Genesis 3:22, Genesis 3:3, Tree of Life, eternal life


[1] Jacques Ellul, The subversion of Christianity, p. 24.

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , , , ,  | 23 Comments

God’s Rival

Tuesday, June 05th, 2012 | Author:

Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever -“  Genesis 3:22  NASB

Knowing – What does it mean to know good and evil as God knows good and evil?  That is apparently the threat involved in God’s concern.  To be like “one of us” somehow involves this kind of knowing.  Why is this any threat at all?  Isn’t God the Almighty, Sovereign, Omnipotent Ruler of all creation?  Why would a puny man knowing good and evil make one molehill of difference to God?

The question is even more complicated by the fact that the verb here is yada’, the completely common verb for “to know.”  Occurring 960 times in the Tanakh, it covers nearly every kind of knowledge associated with sensory data.  It is the way human beings are in the world, before or after the Fall.  We might have expected some other specialized verb here that would distinguish this particular kind of knowing from all the other common ways we gather information.  But, no, the word is the same.  So what makes this such a threat?  What makes this “knowing” like “one of Us”?

Ellul provides the answer.  To know as God knows is not just gathering facts or forming principles.  “To be like God is to be able to declare that this is good and that is bad.  This is what Adam and Eve acquired, and this was the cause of the break, for there is absolutely nothing to guarantee that our declaration will correspond to God’s.  Thus to establish morality is necessarily to do wrong.  This does not mean that a mere suppression of morality (current, banal, social, etc.) will restore the good.  God himself frees us from morality and places us in the only true ethical situation, that of personal choice, of responsibility, of the invention and imagination that we must exercise if we are to find the concrete form of obedience to our Father.  Thus all morality is annulled.  The Old Testament commandments and Paul’s admonitions are not in any sense morality.  On the one side they are the frontier between what brings life and what brings death, on the other side they are examples, metaphors, analogies, or parables that incite us to invention.”[1]

In other words, to know “like one of Us” is to determine for myself what is good and what isn’t.  But this is God’s exclusive prerogative.  It is never Man’s place to determine, to decide, to choose what is good and what is evil.  That action, in any form, is sin because it asserts the independent moral judgment of Man.

When I was a teenager, I lived in a small community in Michigan.  The church that I attended enforced a morality that included no dancing.  They taught that dancing was a sin.  Were they determining a morality independently of God?  How many other examples can you think of where the religious community has “known good and evil” like “one of Us”?  There is but one code of conduct and it is not ours to change as we please.  You might laugh over the “no dancing” rule, but then what do you do about Sabbath?  The “Lord’s Supper”?  Christmas?  Easter?  Circumcision?  The Shema?  The marriage ceremony?  Who “knows” what is good and evil now?  You?  The Church?  Or “Us”?

Topical Index:  know, yada’, good and evil, Genesis 3:22


[1] Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity, p. 15.

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , ,  | 15 Comments