The Tree in the Garden

The Mystery of The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

What was it?

Many teachers have speculated over the years as to what that first sin really was. Some have said that it was an apple that Eve ate, and others have said it must have been some special type of fruit that is nonexistent today. Then there was also some that taught that the first sin was that the serpent in the garden seduced Eve, and they came together in an adulterous act. Any of these interpretations could be true, but the scriptures do not specifically support them. The scriptures do say that there was a tree in the midst of the garden that God forbade Adam to eat the fruit of, and it was the fruit of this tree that both Adam and Eve did eat of, in violation of God’s commandment.

As we begin our exposition of these first few chapters of the book of Genesis, it is important for us to pay particular attention to the sequence of events as they are described. For it is the chronological order of the happenings during this period of time that helps to clear up what that first sin was or was not.

The order of Creation is most important to look at. First of all, it was the third day of Creation when God made the grass, the herbs, and the trees to grow. Then it was the fifth day of Creation when God made the different fish in the sea and fowl in the air. After that, in the sixth day of Creation, God made the land animals, man, and woman.

The first chapter of Genesis gives us this order of Creation in general terms, even though it specifically says that certain things were created on certain days. But the actual order of the Creation and the events that occurred on the sixth day itself are what we shou­ld concentrate on in this study, and they are described in more detail in the second and third chapters.

According to the scriptures, when God began to create and do work on the sixth day, the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the grass, the herbs, and the trees were already in existence. They were created on the third and the fifth day of Creation. But at the end of the fifth day of Creation, there were no land animals or human beings in existence. These were all created on the sixth day.

Gen 1:11 “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. (1:12) And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. (1:13) and the evening and the morning were the third day.”

Gen 1:21 “And God created great whales, and every living creature that moves, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. (1:22) And God blessed them, saying, be fruit­ful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. (1:23) And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.”

Beginning in chapter 2, a summation of the creation week is made in verses 1 through 6. Then in verse seven, it begins to describe in detail what occurred during the 6th day of that week. The 6th day of creation week began with the creation of man. God’s first creation on the 6th day was the man called Adam. Not as it stated in chapter 1, verse 27, where it says that both male and female were created. The man and woman were both created on the sixth day, but Adam was created before Eve.

Gen 2:7 “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

Then in verse 8, it tells about God planting a garden in Eden to put the man in to live. Now it really doesn’t make any difference whether God created man first, or planted the garden first, verse 8 could mean either one. The important thing to understand is that Adam had been created before Eve and before the beasts and other cattle of the earth.

So at this point, God had created the man called Adam and had put him in the Garden of Eden to dress it and keep it. Verse 9 tells us that when God planted the garden, He made every tree to grow in it that was good for food, including the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Note very specifically that the tree of knowledge of good and evil was in the garden at the time Adam was put there, before the woman Eve was ever created.

Gen 2:8 “And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man who he had formed. (2:9) And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. (2:15) And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.”

Then just after God put the man Adam in the garden, He gave him a commandment. God commanded the man, not the man and the woman. He told the man that he could eat the fruit of every tree except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that was in the garden. The point needs to be made here that at that time, it was possible for Adam to commit the first sin by disobeying God and eating the fruit of that tree. This temptation existed before the woman was created and before God had created the beasts of the field.

Gen 2:15 “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. (2:16) And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat: (2:17) But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it: for in the day that you eat there­of you shall surely die.”

I need to emphasize this just one more time. The tree that was not supposed to be eaten of by Adam existed in the garden before the woman or the beasts were created. The temptation already existed for Adam when he was first put in the garden and had nothing at all to do with the woman or the beasts, since they had not yet been created.

Then after the garden had been planted and the man, Adam, had been put there to take care of it, God determined that it was not good for the man to be alone. So He decided to make him a companion, someone to help him. So then God created every kind of beast, cattle, and fowl of the air and brought them to Adam to be his companion. But it turned out that they did not provide the companionship that Adam needed.

Gen 2:18 “And the LORD God said, it is not good that the man sh­ould be alone; I will make a helper for him. (2:19) And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living crea­ture, that was the name thereof. (2:20) And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found a helper for him.”

Since the animals had not provided Adam with the companionship that he needed, God then proceeded to create a woman for Adam, to be his helper and companion.

Gen 2:21 “And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; (2:22) And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.”

This ended the last day of creation. God had planted a garden in Eden for the man and his wife to live in and take care of it. He had provided them with everything they needed to eat and told them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth (Gen 1:28). So it was God’s purpose for the man and his wife to produce children from the very start. If not so, He would not have created them to be physically prepared to do so and would not have instructed them to “be fruitful and multiply.”

Then satan came, in the form of a serpent, to subvert what God had setup so perfectly. The serpent did not come to Adam to cause him to disobey God, for he knew that God had given the commandment directly to Adam, to not eat of the forbidden tree. He came to Eve, who had probably heard God’s commandment from Adam. Notice also how the Word of God gets changed when it’s passed on from one to another person, like it’s done today from the pulpits of our churches. Eve told the serpent that God had said: “death would come from just touching the forbidden fruit” (Gen 3:3). But nowhere is it recorded that God said that.

The serpent caused Eve to doubt the truth of God’s Word about their dying if they ate the fruit of the forbidden tree, and she did eat of it. Since she did not die, she convinced Adam that it would not cause them to die and Adam also ate the fruit of that tree.

One thing needs to be mentioned here, and that is that the fruit of that tree was good for food; God said so after He had created it. This fruit had been provided for both the man and the woman to sustain them. So Eve ate of the forbidden fruit. Upon seeing that it was good to eat and did her no harm, she gave some to Adam.

Note that this fruit was not something symbolic, to be understood as being something other than the fruit of a tree. It was real fruit that according to God was good to eat.

So what was Adam’s sin? Without a doubt, it was disbelief. Adam saw that Eve ate the fruit of the forbidden tree and did not die, so he disbelieved the truth of what God had said. They did not realize that they had done anything wrong until they were aware of the presence of God in the garden, then they realized they had disobeyed Him and hid themselves. With this understand­ing, they recognized the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, and became aware of the feeling of guilt.

There was nothing special about this particular fruit tree. It did not bear a special kind of fruit to make one know the difference between good and evil; it was the act of disbelieving God and realizing what they had done that caused them to know the difference.

Neither was the fruit of the forbidden tree symbolic in nature, meaning that having a sexual relationship was against the will of God. God had made the man and the woman physically able to do this and had brought them together to purposely be fruitful and fill the earth. Even if this is what happened to Eve and the beast, it was not a sin for Adam to have his wife, for the scripture said that they would become one flesh when they first came together, and that is the reason God brought the woman to the man in the first place.

So it was not Eve’s sin that caused the curse of death to fall upon mankind; it was the sin that Adam committed, disbelieving God’s Word. The same is even true today. If we disbelieve the truth of God’s Word, we will experience spiritual death. That’s why it’s important to take God’s Word just as He gives it to us and not try to understand it by taking it out of context.

Nothing has changed since the beginning. It is still disbelief in God’s Word being the truth that is the sin, which will cause eternal separation from God, and satan is still at work deceiving mankind about the real truth of God’s Word.

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