Famous Last Words (Gen 3:5)

Into and Out of the Garden

⁵ Then you will be like God, knowing how to sort things out. וִהְיִיתֶם֙ כֵּֽאלֹהִ֔ים יֹדְעֵ֖י ט֥וֹב וָרָֽע׃

I’m starting a new sentence here because even though not all English translations make it clear, this is v. 5b, the second half of the verse. The easy part of this half of the verse is the beginning, וִהְיִיתֶם֙ v’h’yitem ‘you will be’. Then things begin to get a bit difficult.

You remember from the third word of the Bible, which we talked about nine (!) months ago, that elohim means “God” — or “a god,” or “gods.” Various clues almost always make clear which of them it is. This time, though, the translators don’t agree:

• “like God” — NRSV,* ASV,* Richard Elliott Friedman, OJPS

• “like gods” —LXX, Targum, KJV, Everett Fox, Vulgate, Robert Alter, NJPS*

* means each of these has a note suggesting the other translation!

Those in the “like gods” category are not all saying it precisely that way, and of course the ancient versions are not writing in English at all. The point is that these all avoid simply repeating “God” the second time through.

I should add a third category: The Samaritan Torah repeats the same word it uses at the beginning of the verse. Though the Samaritan Torah is not always the same as the Masoretic version, in this case it is, so this tells us nothing. Though ancient, it’s equally inscrutable.

Now for the Peshitta and the other Aramaic versions. When I say “Targum” as I did in the list above, I mean Targum Onkelos, the standard Jewish translation of the Torah into Aramaic. We also have the translation called Targum Pseudo-Jonathan as well as fragments of others, plus an Aramaic translation called the Peshitta, written in a dialect of Aramaic called Syriac that uses a non-Hebrew alphabet. I once learned, but have long forgotten, how to read it; fortunately there’s a Chrome plugin that will transliterate it for you. Reminder also that the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon project has a Targum search page accessible to all because our tax dollars paid for a lot of it.

The Aramaic translations of our verse take three different paths:

For the 1^st אלהים … for the 2^nd …

• Onkelos uses יוי [= YHWH] … רַברְבִין = great ones

• Neofiti uses ייי [= YHWH] … מלאכין מן קדם ייי = angels before YHWH

• Peshitta uses אלהא [= elohim] … אלהא

All of this post so far is the long way to say that your Bible’s English translation of our verse is a translation decision, perhaps even a guess, and not the final word. Is the snake saying that they will become …

• like “gods” the way some people refer to certain athletes or musicians?

• “like” God in being semi-divine, not quite at God’s level?

• like God in a way that rivals him?

Unless some remarkably surprising documentary footage surfaces, we will never know what this snake meant or what the woman thought he meant. We can see what happens as the story continues, and that will have to suffice.

Next, the word יֹדְעֵ֖י yod’ei ‘knowing’ — plural, and in a form taking the next two words as its object, but otherwise exactly the same word (the snake says at the beginning of the verse) that God is doing. Presumably this word — a participle, that is, a verbal adjective, as in “Whatcha knowin’?” — is plural because it refers to the humans. If they eat, they will be “knowing” tov va-ra, which is just what God does.

Well, there is certainly a tree that has something to do with דעת da’at ‘knowing / knowledge’ of טוב ‘good’ and רע ‘bad’. We know that the original human was told not to eat from that tree. We’ve already mentioned that this seems not to be “the” tree “in the center of the garden,” yet now more than ever it is quite obviously the tree our two characters are talking about.

We’ll see before too long what actually happens to the humans when they eat. We’ll also see how God reacts. For now, a reminder that I’ve called this tree the Tree of Sorting. This is a story about “wisdom,” that is, about humans thinking for themselves. We don’t know how eating from the tree gives them this ability. In fact, we have seen the man, and we will see the woman, thinking on their own before eating. That’s why I’ve been saying that this tree is a MacGuffin.

And now the time has come for us to say farewell to this remarkable character actor, our friend the snake. Once Gen 3:5 is over, he can fold up his tent and slip silently away — or at least head back to the commissary and grab some lunch. His role in this little playlet is over.

It’s true that the woman is going to try to arrange (in v. 13) for this snake to take the fall. And the snake will take the fall, literally, according to what God tells it in v. 14. But that is most definitely a non-speaking part, perhaps one played by a body-double while our hard-working (and successful!) talking snake is enjoying a sandwich.

If we sit down and offer to buy him a cup of coffee and a piece of pie, do you think he’ll agree to tell us why he told the woman that she and her man should eat from that tree? I really think he would say, “That’s what it says in the script.” Far from being evil incarnate, this snake was just another animal trying to make a living.

His interlocutor, the woman, may or may not be convinced. Next time, we’ll see her begin to evaluate the situation on her own.