NOTES for Gen 3:4

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.

"If you are what you think you are, prove it. If you are your own master, become like God." Here is the refined simplicity of temptation: do what is proper for you to do according to your position. The loss is not in what we try to do. We lose when we agree that we really are what the devil calls us. When we begin to prove that we are intelligent, kind, generous, great, almighty, independent, or anything else. He demands proof, and we rush to provide it. It always ends the same way: it is impossible to win by providing proof to a liar. What does Jesus do? What does He teach us as He overcomes temptation? He exposes the liar and deceiver not by doing what, of course, He can do. He does not enter into the argument, showing us that He needs no proof at all. He knows us and never offers us a burden we cannot bear. He asks of us love and mercy, and He does not need proof that we can love and show mercy.

The biblical story of the fall has always raised many questions for readers. What does the tree of the knowledge of good and evil mean, and what does it symbolize? Why is knowing good and evil bad? Where did the serpent in the garden of Eden come from? And what, in the end, happened to human beings during the fall? A great deal depends on the answer to the first question. Why was knowing good and evil dangerous for the human being? Why does eating the fruit from this particular tree lead to death, as God warns the human being?

Some people have thought, and still think now, that this concerns what is sometimes called "childlike innocence," whatever that may mean. Sometimes people speak directly of sexual "innocence," and sometimes of spiritual and moral innocence. The first is clear enough: God commanded the human being to be fruitful and multiply even before the fall, and He hardly meant any ways other than the traditional and well-known one. The second is more complicated, but even here it is not hard to see that, even if one considers children "innocent" in the sense of good and evil (which is far from obvious in itself), such ignorance completely excludes any spiritual or moral responsibility: the human being then becomes an amoral creature, to whom it is meaningless to prescribe anything as a commandment or as a moral, or even behavioral, prohibition.

The point is clearly something else. In antiquity, "good and evil" often meant the whole created world, which was then often described by using one or another pair of all-embracing, cosmic-scale opposites, such as, for example, "heaven and earth" in the biblical Poem of Creation. "Good and evil" was also one such pair. Knowledge in the Bible is always something practical, not abstract and contemplative; it involves entering into what is known and mastering it, not simply detached analysis. To know the world, one had to plunge headlong into it, including into all the evil present in it. And evil was already in the world, for the angels had fallen before humanity, and the serpent in the garden of Eden, symbolizing the power of darkness, confirms this.

The serpent appears because in antiquity the serpent was a symbol of various kinds of magical practices, which from the biblical point of view were in any case evil and a challenge to God. This desire to plunge headlong into the world's evil, to try it and then decide for oneself whether it really is evil or not, is what leads the human being astray. It is quite possible that at first the human being did not intend to quarrel with God or challenge Him. He simply wanted to try to create his own world, where everything would be determined by him, including the question of what, for him, for the human being, is good and what is evil.

But the human being plainly did not have the strength to create such a world. As soon as his "eyes were opened," he saw his nakedness, his own inadequacy in light of the task he had set himself. To admit such inadequacy before God is frightening, not because He will punish, but because one will have not only to fall in one's own eyes, but also to give up such a wonderful project (or rather, fantasy project).

And then, unwilling to acknowledge the obvious, the human being begins to shift blame onto those around him, onto circumstances, in short, onto everything and everyone except himself. Yet for God, "the wife whom You gave me" and the tempting serpent are no excuse. Refusing to acknowledge responsibility puts a wall between God and the human being, a wall that from then on will define the whole life of humanity, now fallen humanity.