Biblical Hebrew Forum

[eric hirsch <eric.hirsch.jr AT gmail.com>]

16 Then Yahweh 'elohim commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely ; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."

Norman Gottwald, in his The Hebrew Bible: A Socio-Literary Introduction, writes:

It is to be noted that Yahweh lies, or at least equivocates, when he says that "on the day that you eat of it [the forbidden fruit] you shall die," and the serpent exploits this divine "bluff" by claiming "you will not die. . . . your eyes will be opened and you will be like God."  In large measure, the serpent was right: instead of immediate death, human eyes are opened to knowledge that both empowers and debilitates, leading to a constant struggle between life and death."  (pp 330-331).

Instead, I would suggest that Yahweh is not portrayed as lying or bluffing or is the serpent portrayed as telling the truth.  After all, Eve claims later state that the serpent deceived her.  The use of the infinitive absolute with a verb of the same stem can indicate an emphasis upon the verbal idea, and so most translations translate MOT YAMUT as "you will surely die."  But Gesenius in his grammar also states:

The infinitive absolute is employed according to § 45 to emphasize the idea of the verb in the abstract, i.e. it speaks of an action (or state) without any regard to the agent or to the circumstances of time and mood under which it takes place.

This understanding could render the phrase in English as "dying, you will die."

What I think is often overlooked is to ask, is this construction compatible with what happens in the story.  Perhaps its use is not to add emphasis.  As a result of their disobedience, Yahweh curses the ground and identifies Adam with the dust of the ground from which he was taken:  "For dust you are and to dust you shall return."  So I would suggest that because Adam is composed of the ground (and a breath from Yahweh), this identification makes Adam's body cursed..  So the cursed ground is meant to teach that cursing the ground includes cursing Adam's body and thereby makes him mortal.  This interpretation is supported by Qoheleth, where at the close of his allegory on aging and death writes:

12:7 and the dust returns to the earth as it was,

and the life’s breath returns to God who gave it

Here the implicit distinction between Adam's "breath" and his body" is explicitly articulated..

If fact, human mortality is a major and climatic theme in Qoheleth.  The above statement immediately precedes a restatement of his opening and concluding theme that all of life is "vanity of vanities."  Life is "vain" because man is mortal. 

To rephrase Yahweh's warning, we could render it based upon what happens as, "in the day you eat of it, your  ground-made body will begin to return to dust."  Yahweh cursed Adam with mortality by cursing the ground of which his body was made and so explicitly states, "Dust you are . . ."  From this perspective, "dying, you shall die" seems intended to express that his disobedience will lead to a "degeneration (dying) and death (you shall die), a "return to dust." That process and its ultimate result is what Qoheleth contemplates with such relish and  detail in his closing allegory on aging and death.  Such an interpretation avoids the problematic one that Yahweh is portrayed as lying, bluffing or equivocating and that the serpent told the truth yet somehow "deceived" Eve.

Eric Hirsch

Tetragrammaton Software.