What I'm Studying: A Tale of Two Trees
Hello again,
In the last post we talked about right and wrong, and good verses evil. In this post I want to actually talk about the 2 trees that we find in the Garden of Eden.
It seems that the tree that gets all the air time is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but there was another tree, and it was called, the Tree of Life.
In Genesis 2:9 it says…
9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Now, when you read the text in English it makes it sound like both of these trees were in the middle of the garden. But when you read it in Hebrew, the modifier “in the middle of the garden” modifies the first tree and not the second.
So, basically what that means is that the Tree of Life is in the middle of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is somewhere else.
If you were to just read that verse without knowing the rest of the story, you would conclude that the Tree of Life is the much more important tree.
What’s weird, when reading the text is, it doesn’t even seem like God tells them about the tree of life.
Look at Genesis 2:16…
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Interesting!
Here is another interesting point. What was the first command given to mankind?
Look at verse 16 again. God is not suggesting but actually commanding that they eat from all the trees in the garden. It is a positive command.
Now, let’s do the math. If God told you to eat from all the trees in the garden except for one, it would only be a matter of time before you ate from the Tree of Life.
It seems like God eventually wanted them to eat from the tree of life. This is what makes the end of the story kind of strange.
Genesis 3:22…
22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”
Why doesn’t he want them to live forever? Is that a bad thing?
It seems that God hurriedly banishes them from the garden because he is afraid they are going to eat from the tree of life. Interesting. I wonder why?
At the beginning, God wants them to eat from the tree. At the end of the story, God doesn’t want them to eat from the tree. What are we to make of that?
So, what did eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil do? What would have happened if they ate from the tree of life and had the ability to live forever and then ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?
What or who is God protecting or concealing? What does he know that we don’t know? What are we to make of this?
Let’s keep studying!
Paul