6 The woman saw that the tree was good for eating, it was תַֽאֲוָה to the eyes, and the tree was attractive לְהַשְׂכִּ֔יל.
וַתֵּ֣רֶא הָֽאִשָּׁ֡ה כִּ֣י טוֹב֩ הָעֵ֨ץ לְמַאֲכָ֜ל וְכִ֧י תַֽאֲוָה־ה֣וּא לָעֵינַ֗יִם וְנֶחְמָ֤ד הָעֵץ֙ לְהַשְׂכִּ֔יל
We began Gen 3:6 in the previous post, where I left two words untranslated, promising to come back to them this time. We also saw that despite some reassuring similarities between this verse and 2:9, as well as the phrase “saw that it was good” from Genesis 1, the wording of what the woman saw opens up a realm of confusion that we did not finish discussing last time. I’m going to start there now, explaining those untranslated words briefly when that becomes necessary, and saving a more in-depth discussion for later in this post.
When last seen, the woman observed …
that the tree was good for eating
that it was תַֽאֲוָה to the eyes
the tree was attractive לְהַשְׂכִּ֔יל (“that” is not repeated)
We also noticed that one of the two kinds of trees YHWH God created in 2:9 was “attractive for seeing.” Yet “attractive” (neḥmad) in our verse belongs not to the “eyes” but to l’haskil, a word that has to do with intelligence, and what “the eyes” will get from this particular tree is ta’ava, a word that has to do with appetite. I’m going to translate those two words tentatively now as “intelligence” and “appetite,” strictly to be able to look at how surprisingly confused our verse really is. The three qualities this tree has are that it is …
good for eating
appetite to the eyes
attractive for intelligence
Now let’s take a moment to rearrange these phrases in a more intuitive way.
appetite belongs with eating
attractive belongs with eyes, leaving
good with intelligence
That last combination, unlike the other two, is not obvious at all. It’s easy to understand that a tree might look good, and even that one might think its fruit looks tasty — but to look at a tree and “see” that it will change you in some intellectually positive way? Much harder to understand. (More about this at the end of the post.)
The three qualities are phrased unusually too:
that the tree was
that it was
the tree was
So, appropriately, I’m going to take a somewhat bold (or, depending on your perspective, merely somewhat goofy) step and suggest that the surprising repetition of the word העץ ha-etz ‘the tree’ at the end of the sequence is in fact a repetitive resumption. Since it’s missing in the LXX, Ronald Hendel suggests it was added to the Hebrew text later; but hear me out.
I (obviously) don’t mean that the words in between העץ and העץ are an insertion, let alone an insertion by a later writer. I do mean that perhaps, again as a literary technique, the repetition is meant to let us mentally connect tov at the beginning of the string of three qualities with l’haśkil at the end. Our rearrangement of the things that naturally go together left those two as our third pair (“good with intelligence”), and indeed, as we’ll find out, this tree is most certainly good l’haśkil.
Since that’s one of the two words I left over from last time, let’s turn to them next.
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