Biblical Hebrew Forum

[John Ronning <ronning AT xsinet.co.za>]

Liz,

It's been hard keeping up with all the errors in your
serpentine revisionist history of Genesis 3 (disobeying God
is not sin, murder is not sin, etc. etc.).  You wrote, 

>Exodus 21:15: "Anyone who strikes his father or his mother
>shall be killed, but only after 900 years." Etc.

The Lawgiver who is also Judge has the right to delay the
carrying out of his sentence or even to cancel it (as he did
with David, for example).

The delay in carrying out the sentence of death against Adam
and Eve was not a vindication of the serpent, whose whole
plan was to get them to eat in order that they would die, as
he knew they would (thus worse than a liar, he is also a
murderer).  He could only have been chagrined to find out
that they weren't going to die immediately, but instead he
would be destroyed through the woman whom he deceived (v.
15).

The most successful liars mix some truth (your eyes will be
opened, you'll be like God) in with their deceptions, or
even lie in the form of questions, so they can't be accused
of stating something false ("did God really say you can't
eat of any tree in the garden?").  But "You won't die" is a
bald face lie, unchanged by the fact that they didn't die
immediately.

The accusation that God is a liar, lying in order to keep A
& E from becoming like him, is another lie, the full extent
of which is revealed in the "rest of the story;" far from
lying to man to keep him from becoming like him, "he did not
regard equality with God something to be clung to, but
emptied himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and
being made in the likeness of men. ... Being found in
appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient
to the point of death, even death on a cross." - all so that
humans who had become morally like the serpent, could be
morally like God.


Regards,

John Ronning