Shabbat Parashat Bereishit - 5782

Shabbat Parashat Bereishit - 5782

Rabbi Hal Miller

But of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil you must not eat thereof for on

the day you eat of it you shall surely die. [Bereishit 2:17]

Ours is one of the most confusing verses in the Torah, and heavily commented

upon by almost every commentator. Chava, and then later Adam as well ate

from this tree, but they did not die that day. So what is our verse referring to?

In 2:9, God "caused to grow from the ground every tree that was pleasing to the

sight and good for food, also the Tree of Life in the midst of the garden and the

Tree of Knowledge of good and evil." Then, just before our verse, in 2:16, God

said, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat" followed by the exception

for the Tree of Knowledge. Interestingly, there is no prohibition on the Tree of

Life! Chava in verse 3:1 tells the serpent "Of the fruit of the tree which is in the

center of the garden God has said" and we know the issues stemming from how

she related the commandment. The inference is that she was referring to the

Tree of Life, not the Tree of Knowledge. It seems the serpent is the one who

directs our thoughts to the latter tree and that God never prohibited the Tree of

Life.

So what is it about the Tree of Knowledge that would cause death? Given that

they did not die in the sense we think of "on the day", what did God mean by

the word death?

Ramban gives us a simple answer. Death is death. Man was originally meant

to die from a natural deterioration, but because of this sin, man will now die a

death at the hands of heaven, presumably earlier than the natural version.

Rav Hirsch explains the two-tree issue. Man was designed to deteriorate, but

God was going to feed him from time to time from the Tree of Life, which would

regenerate man's physical well being. Further, the death penalty is sometimes

expressed in driving someone out from his home, as we see with the murderer,

with Kayin, etc. We could then understand 'death' here as being driven out on

that day from the Garden of Eden.

Abarbanel asks, what about repentance? If Adam (and presumably Chava too)

had done teshuvah, would that not have removed any punishments? Why was

this option not offered? This seems to prove that a fundamental change had

occurred with their eating of the fruit, one which was one-way. Thus death is

not the cessation of life as we know it, and perhaps Rav Hirsch is right.

Rambam explores this topic in Moreh Nevuchim. Man was created to be much

like the other animals, with the addition of understanding the difference between

truth and falsehood, not between good and evil. He defines these as "Truth and

falsehood are eternal and Divine values, while good and evil are transient values

whose source stems from man's evaluation." Given this, he asks that before the

sin, man could not be held accountable to punishment for this, but that from this

point on, man would be subject to punishment for violating of commandments.

This explains much, but we still must ask, why did they apparently get punished

here? Rambam answers that no facts changed here, only man's understanding

of them. The example he gives is that the Torah did not say that Adam 'saw' that

he was naked, rather that he 'knew'. Man was no longer more or less equivalent

to the other animals. Because of this understanding, man now had to live with

his new knowledge, which he could not do in the Garden, so he was forced to go

out into the world where good and evil were applicable. This was the fundamental

change to which Abarbanel and Rav Hirsch alluded.