NOTES for Gen 3:1-24
When reading the biblical account of the fall, a question arises on its own: why does God forbid the human being knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:16-17)? And what does the serpent mean when he says that, having known good and evil, people "will be like gods" (v. 5)? After all, it would seem that without concepts of good and evil no morality is possible, and therefore no spiritual life is possible either. And the prohibition itself in that case loses its meaning: how could a person understand that violating the prohibition is evil and sin without knowing either good or evil or the difference between them? To find the answer, it is important to keep in mind that "knowledge," in the sense in which the biblical author uses the corresponding Hebrew word, does not mean simply the abstract study of the object being known. To "know" in this case means to come into close contact with what one knows, to penetrate and take possession of the thing known. And this, at a minimum, presupposes the inevitability of direct contact with evil in the world and with those who serve it. It is not hard to foresee what such contact was bound to mean for the human being. But in this "knowledge" there is another and far more serious sin. For to "know" also meant to possess what was known. And to possess "good and evil" meant to possess everything in the world, both good and bad. This is what the serpent means when he says that people will then "be like gods": if the human being really managed to become the ruler of the universe, he would become a kind of little god, possessing the same power over the world as the Creator Himself. It would seem that God had already given the human being such power over the world (Gen. 1:28). But it was given to the human being on one very important condition: that he allow God to determine what is good and what is evil in the world He created, including when the matter concerns the human being himself. The human being only manages the world, like a steward in a house; the owner of the house remains the God who created it. By claiming the right to decide for himself what is good and what is evil in the world, the human being thereby wants to occupy not the place of the steward, but the place of the owner of the house. Of course, this does not mean at all that the human being wanted evil from the beginning, for evil lies not in power as such, but in how it is used by those into whose hands it has fallen. Perhaps at first the human being really thought that, by becoming ruler of the universe, he would be able to make it better. But immediately after tasting from the tree of knowledge, when the human being's "eyes were opened" (v. 7), he becomes convinced that he is not a god at all and cannot do anything good not only for the universe, but even for himself. "Nakedness" here means the helplessness and powerlessness of the human being, who is not at all like the god he had hoped to become after receiving what seemed to him complete freedom and acquiring independence from his Creator. Before this, the human being's "nakedness" had not troubled him (Gen. 2:25), because he was not claiming the place of a god. Thus the human striving for imaginary "freedom" and independence from God leads both the world and the human being himself to a catastrophe whose consequences are felt to this day.