GENESIS—NOTE ON Genesis 2:17 The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil has been variously understood as giving (1) sexual awareness, (2) moral discrimination, (3) moral responsibility, and (4) moral experience. Of these possibilities, the last is the most likely. If Adam disobeys God and eats the fruit of this tree, he will come to know evil by experience. you shall surely die. What kind of death does this threaten: physical, spiritual, or some combination of the two? The Hebrew word can be used for any of these ideas, and the only way to discover what “surely die” means in this case is to see what happens as the story unfolds (see note on 3:4–5). In the day that you eat of it does not mean that death will come on that very day. It means that once the forbidden fruit is eaten, death will become a certainty.

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