Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Scott McAliley" <scottanderin1 AT hotmail.com>]

Harold,
Thanks for getting a quick response out!
You said that they had no other command, and it is true that they had no 
other negative command, but were they not positively commanded to eat of 
every tree in the garden?  When they were told to eat of every tree in the 
garden(which includes the tree of life), most translations seem to render it 
something like, "Of any of the trees, you may freely eat", but if the two 
tenses of die are an emphatic statement about death, are the two "eat"s not 
an emphatic command to eat from ALL of the trees, not simply a license to 
eat from ANY? And if so, by violating the negative command of not eating 
from the more enticing tree of knowledge, did they not jeopardize their 
ability to follow the positive command to eat from every other tree, 
including the one that, according to Scripture, would have given them 
eternal life?  Can you clarify the Hebrew for me, as it regards the phrase 
containing the two "eat"s?  I apologize for my ignorance, and that my only 
knowledge of Hebrew comes from the Strong's, what I've gained from  and 
e-sword, but it seems from what I've been told about two tenses of the same 
verb increasing the intensity of the verb, and from the Strong's definition 
of  kôl, which is "every" and "all", that they disobeyed two commands, 
the positive and the negative.

Thanks for your help,
Scott McAliley


> From: Harold Holmyard <hholmyard3 AT earthlink.net>
> To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Dying, you will die Gen 2:17
> Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2007 14:09:41 -0500
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> Scott McAliley wrote:
> >  But from a theological (or at least logical) standpoint, I'm not sure
> > that my theory that Adam and Eve were already dying before sin doesn't
> > still have a little life in it, even if the "dying,die" phrase doesn't
> > add anything to it.  If eating from the tree of life after rebelling
> > would have caused them to go on living forever, then eating of it
> > before sin would have as well.  But it seems apparent that they had
> > not eaten of it, since barring them from it was part of their
> > punishment for sin, and we are told specifically that this was done so
> > they would not reach out their hands, take, eat, and live forever.
> > And what is something that will not live forever, but something that
> > is dying?
>
> HH: The logic does not sway me. Adam and Eve were created very good.
> They were not immortal, but neither were they dying. They were simply
> alive and would continue that way unless they sinned. If they ate from
> the forbidden fruit, they would die. If they didn't eat the forbidden
> fruit, there might be other ways that they could sin and die, but there
> was no other direct commandment given to them. So that command about the
> fruit was their point of testing. As long as they obeyed it, presumably
> they would live, yet with no guarantee of immortality. Apparently they
> needed to seek out immortality through the tree of life, something they
> never did. Perhaps God did not even explain to them the function of the
> tree of life to prior to their disobedience. So they were alive and not
> dying until they broke the commandment, but they could die and so were
> not immortal.
>
> Yours,
> Harold Holmyard
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