Genesis 2:10-17 - You shall not eat of it

2:10-14

The garden was watered by a river flowing from Eden. This river divided into four. The Euphrates and Tigris are known, the other two are not known with any certainty. There are also precious metals and stones. Identifying precious stones in the Bible is problematic.

2:15-17

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” It doesn’t say where God took the man from. The key point is that the garden had been created specifically with man in mind. And man’s purpose was to work and keep the garden. God then gives explicit commands to the man. He could eat from every tree in the garden but one. It is useful to note that the extent of this command was to give enormous freedom to the man. He could eat from any tree, but one. The one tree he was not allowed to eat from was the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. Here I think the metaphorical interpretation makes the most sense, and enables us to get the most out of the Scriptures. So what is the “knowledge of good and evil”? Knowing can be much deeper than simply knowing a fact. A man and woman having sexual relations was referred to as “knowing” each other. It is one thing to know something is right or wrong. If one then does the thing that is known to be wrong one knows that it is wrong in a whole different way. Someone may know that adultery is wrong, but if that person commits adultery then it will have a very deep effect on them. Likewise, one may know that it is wrong to take drugs, but if one actually does take drugs it can have a profound effect. Sin kills us! So I would take “eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” as actually sinning, doing something that God has forbidden. And God warns the man that if he does sin he will die. This does not necessarily imply immediate physical death, Adam lived many years after the fall, but spiritual death comes at once.