17 except from the Tree of Sorting, from which you must not eat.
וּמֵעֵ֗ץ הַדַּ֙עַת֙ ט֣וֹב וָרָ֔ע לֹ֥א תֹאכַ֖ל מִמֶּ֑נּוּ
We learned last time that the earthling was totally permitted to eat from any of the trees in the garden. Now we learn that that verse, which sounded like a complete sentence, was not complete. There is one exception to the permission: the Tree of Sorting.
Interesting, no? And it makes me stop — which has always been the purpose of this column — to wonder about many other things in this story.
Let’s start with the other special tree in the garden, the Tree of Life. Is the earthling allowed to eat from it? He has not, and will not ever be, told that he is not permitted to eat from that tree.
Why isn’t the earthling allowed to eat from the Tree of Sorting? I should add here that not eating from it is more than just a serving suggestion. As I pointed out last time, an imperfect verb like תֹאכַ֖ל tokhal might mean “you may eat” or “you should eat” or any other possible meaning that can be associated with an action that has not yet been completed. (That’s why this form is called the “imperfect.”) לֹ֥א lo is simply the “no” or “not” particle.
Readers who have some familiarity with the Bible in Hebrew, however, will immediately recognize that these two words together have precisely the same grammatical form as the “thou shalt nots” of the Ten Commandments. The King James Version translates our verse exactly that way: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it.” This may not be a commandment, but it is certainly a command.
Porphyry, the 3rd-c. CE philosopher, writes in Against the Christians, “Why did God forbid the knowledge of good and evil? He forbade the evil, rightly so, but why also the good?” Taking the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” to really be a Tree of Sorting, as we have, eliminates this question. Nonetheless, certain other questions obviously arise:
What is the purpose of this tree?
Why was it planted in the garden?
Why can’t the earthling eat from it?
I’m still convinced that this tree is a MacGuffin — an element introduced into the plot, like (say) the Maltese Falcon — simply to drive the story forward. This particular MacGuffin, though it may have been invented to do narrative work, is also serving a thematic purpose. This is the Bible’s version of the Pandora or Prometheus story, the story in which a human being somehow comes into possession of knowledge that belongs to the gods alone.
There will be much more to say later in the story about wisdom, knowledge, and thought. It seems obvious that YHWH himself does not eat from this tree, or need to. That is what makes this command a MacGuffin. Nonetheless, the perception that humans have a kind of intelligence and self-awareness that other living things (supposedly) do not have, and that this comes to them from the gods, has a long history.
Was there an earlier Israelite version of the story in which YHWH (or Elohim) did eat from this tree, created earthlings to take care of the dirty garden work, and then found that his employees were lifting the merchandise? I can’t say “no” for sure, but there certainly did not have to be. It’s clear what this tree is doing whether or not there was an actual story from which it was adapted.
Once you eat from it … כִּ֗י בְּי֛וֹם אֲכָלְךָ֥ מִמֶּ֖נּוּ
More literally, “for on the day of your eating from it.” Leaving יום yom ‘day’ out of it for a moment, this construction with ב־ b- ‘in, at’ and the infinitive construct (used here more or less as a gerund) is the normal way in Biblical Hebrew to say “when.” We saw two of these phrases at the center of 2:4, the “hinge” verse: בְּהִבָּֽרְאָ֑ם ‘at their being created’ and בְּי֗וֹם עֲשׂ֛וֹת ‘at the time of making’.
I did not make much of the “day” aspect of the phrase in that post, though the creation of sky and earth certainly took at least two days, and one might say six or seven. Now, I feel obligated to call attention to the fact that I’m deliberately avoiding the translation, “on the day when you eat of it.” You know why; they ate it one day and did not die.
Here are some of the translations of this idiom I’ve found in the New JPS translation:
when
as
as soon as
having [done]
that [something be done]
on [having done]
while
[does]
I stopped looked at the end of Genesis, so there may be a few others. The NJPS is a translation into idiomatic English, so the variation is no surprise. My point is that “on the day” of something can be used to indicate a much longer and fuzzier period of time than 24 hours. Readers of Biblical Hebrew would not necessarily understand this word to mean that if the earthling ate the fruit, he would die before sunset.
But they might have. It’s easy to imagine a situation in which this particular fruit had some useful purpose but was poisonous to humans. That would mean the same words we just read as a command were really a warning on the label. It’s the situation that follows — not the language here — that tells us this is a command and not a warning (or, I suppose, a bit of information from the owner of the garden that the new gardener would need to know).
… you are totally going to die. מ֥וֹת תָּמֽוּת׃
We talked about this idiom last time. Look there if you are surprised to see the word “totally” in this translation. What I want to ask now is what YHWH is actually telling him. The two most reasonable explanations would seem to be these:
The earthling is being cautioned that eating from that tree causes death.
The earthling is being put on notice that if he eats from that tree, YHWH will punish him with death.
Looking at what eventually happens, it’s quite clear that the fruit of this tree is not poisonous. Nor does YHWH punish the earthlings with death for eating from it. The punishment he does inflict is quite different. Yet the tree that is missing here — the Tree of Life — is most certainly involved in the aftermath. We’ll talk more about that when we get there. For now, there is a surprising plot twist in store for us next time.