Bereishit 3:24
לִשְׁמֹר אֶת-דֶּרֶךְ עֵץ הַחַיִּים
lishmor et-derech etz hachayim
to guard the path of the Tree of Life
Torah observance is referred to here as "the path of the Tree of Life." We have other verses in Scripture which refer to Torah and the observance of its statues as the "Tree of Life," such as Mishlei 3:18 "she is a Tree of Life for those who take hold of it."
2:16
וַיְצַו הי אלוקים עַל-הָאָדָם לֵאמֹר מִכֹּל עֵץ-הַגָּן אָכֹל תֹּאכֵל
vayetzav HASHEM ELOKIM al-ha'adam lemor mikol etz-hagan achol tochel
HASHEM ELOKIM commanded Adam, "You may surely eat from every tree of the garden"
Adam was commanded two separate commandments here, a positive as well as a negative commandment.
Positive: "You shall eat from every tree of the garden."
Negative: "but from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil you must not eat" (v17)
These verse also contain what are known as the Seven Noachide Laws, i.e. the seven laws applicable to all mankind (enumerated in Sanhedrin 56).
The prohibition of:
1. idolatry
2. bloodshed (murder)
3. incestuous sexual relations of certain categories
4. blasphemy
5. robbery
6. consumption of living tissue from an animal
7. institution of judiciary to deal with violators of these commandments
The laws are derived from the text as follows:
vayetzav refers to idolatry. The word צו (tzav) is synonymous with idolatry, "because he has gone after futility" (Hoshea 5:11)
HASHEM alludes to blasphemy. The Torah states,"and he who curses the Name of HASHEM shall be put to death" (VaYikra 24:16)
ELOKIM refers to the establishment of a judiciary system, אלוקים לֹא תְקַלֵּל (ELOKIM lo tekalel) "you shall not curse a judge."
al ha-adam is an allusion to the prohibition of bloodshed, murder. The parallel verse is found in Bereishit 9:6, שֹׁפֵךְ דַּם הָאָדָם בָּאָדָם דָּמוֹ יִשָּׁפֵך (shofech dam ha-adam ba-adam damo yishafech) "he who spills the blood of a human being shall have his own blood spilled by a human being."
lemor alludes to forbidden sexual relations. The reference is based on Yirmeyahu 3:1,
לֵאמֹר הֵן יְשַׁלַּח אִישׁ אֶת-אִשְׁתּוֹ וְהָלְכָה מֵאִתּוֹ וְהָיְתָה לְאִישׁ-אַחֵר הֲיָשׁוּב אֵלֶיהָ עוֹד-הֲלוֹא חָנוֹף תֶּחֱנַף הָאָרֶץ הַהִיא (lemor hen yeshalach ish et-ishto vehalchah me'ito vehaitah le'ish-acher hayashuv eleihah od halo chanof techenaf ha'aretz hahi) "to say, 'If a man divorces his wife, and she leaves him and marries another man, can he ever go back to her? Would not such land be defiled?'"
mikol etz-hagan achol tochel, "from every tree of the garden you shall surely eat," is an allusion to the prohibition of robbery, i.e. man requires G-d's express permission to partake of matters in this world.
ume'etz hada'at tov vara lo tochal mimenu, "but you must not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil," is an allusion not to eat a living animal's tissue. The lesson derived from the words of this verse is, "from a certain object you must not eat part thereof."
So it is seen that the basic Seven Noachide Laws are all alluded to in some form or other in these two verses.
2:17
וּמֵעֵץ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע לֹא תֹאכַל מִמֶּנּוּ כִּי בְּיוֹם אֲכָלְךָ מִמֶּנּוּ מוֹת תָּמוּת
ume'etz hada'at tov vara lo tochal mimenu ki beyom achalcha mimenu mot tamut
but from the Tree of Knowledge of what is Good and Evil you must not eat, for on the day you eat from it, you will surely die.
The words in this verse do not mean that Adam, or anyone else, would die immediately on the very day he would eat from the tree; rather the meaning is that as soon as he would eat from that tree man would become mortal, would forfeit his right to live on earth indefinitely.
According to Chazal in Shabbat 55, man had been meant to live forever just like the angels.
מוֹת תָּמוּת
mot tamut
you will die twice
The Torah repeats the reference to death to tell us that from that moment on man would be subject to two kinds of natural death. 1Shmu'el 26:10 is clearly detailing this, "and HASHEM Himself will strike him down, or his time will come and he will die, or he will go down in battle and will perish." When David spoke of "or his day will come," he referred to natural death.
Chazal state unequivocally that if Adam had not sinned he would have lived forever. This view is supported by Tehillim 82:6, "I (HASHEM) said that you are divine beings and that all of you are sons of the Most High." The remarkable thing in that Psalm is that Assaf did not quote G-d as saying, "you are like a divine being," or "like the sons of the Most High." He referred to an actual divine quality possessed by Man (Adam) i.e. his immortality. Scripture contains many other verses along the same lines.
בְּיוֹם
beyom
on the day
The Torah emphasizes the word beyom to refer to a day in G-d's calendar, i.e. 1000 years in terms of our calendar. In order that G-d's word, when He created Adam, should not have been wasted, He granted Adam a "day" of His own calendar, and Adam lived close to 1000 years. He was only 70 years short of G-d's day when he died, but in terms of our lives nowadays these 70 years represented a whole lifetime, so that he died on the day he ate, i.e. being deprived of a life span.
★ Adam had bequeathed 70 years of his life expectany to David whom G-d had shown him as destined to die at birth (Midrash Yalkut Tehillim 843)
The SOD (Kabbalistic meaning) of this verse concentrates on the repeated appearance of the word "death" when the Torah spoke of mot tamut. It is understood as the warning of two deaths, a physical death of the body and a spiritual death of the soul. We find a repetition of the word "died," when the Torah reported the death of Aharon's two older sons, Nadav and Avihu (VaYikra 16:1). We also find similar repetition (implication) of the word "death" when Moshe prayed for Re'uven in his final blessing (Devarim 33:6), especially when the translation of that verse by Onkelos is translated as follows, "let him not die a second death."
3:5
כִּי יֹדֵעַ אלוקים כִּי בְּיוֹם אֲכָלְכֶם מִמֶּנּוּ וְנִפְקְחוּ עֵינֵיכֶם וִהְיִיתֶם כֵּאלֹהִים יֹדְעֵי טוֹב וָרָע
Ki yode'a ELOKIM ki beyom acholchem mimenu venifkechu eineichem viheyitem ke'Elokim yod'ei tov vara
For Elokim knows that on the day you will eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like Elokim, knowing good and evil.
From this it would appear that prior to his sin Adam did not possess the ability to distinguish good from evil. If that were true, then what happened here would violate a Talmudic principle, i.e. that a sinner should not be allowed to benefit by his sin. It is clear that one must not understand the verse to mean that Adam did not know the difference between right and wrong prior to his sin any more than do the animals. The meaning of the words, "you will be like Elokim," is appropriately translated by Onkelos who render these words as "you will become possessed of superior wisdom knowing what is good and what is evil." There can be no question that at the time G-d created man He had equipped him with a superior intelligence, "He created him in the image of Elokim." The word tzelem (image) in that verse is a reference to intelligence.
If G-d commanded man not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, the reason He did so was precisely because man was intelligent enough to distinguish between truth and untruth. G-d is not on record as commanding animals what to do as they have no intelligence.
The problem is that knowledge of good and evil is not something within the realm of intelligence. Prior to his sin, Adam's intellect was totally spiritually oriented; it was not concerned with matters of the body. He was not even familiar with such matters. He was completely unaware of the carnal implications of nudity, etc. He considered his genitals as organs no different from all his other organs. Once he had sinned, and suddenly experienced the sex drive as an instrument of physical gratification, i.e, "he saw that the Tree was good to eat and a pleasurable experience for the eyes," he was immediately punished by being stripped of his ability to use his intellect objectively; from that moment on, considerations such as physical desire, appreciation of physical beauty or ugliness clouded his previous pure intellect. This is why the nachash (serpent) spoke of "you will become intimate (an alternate meaning of yode'a) with good and evil." The nachash had been careful not to say, "you will know truth and falsehood," or words to that effect.
★ Pay special attention to the wording of verse 7, וַתִּפָּקַחְנָה עֵינֵי שְׁנֵיהֶם וַיֵּדְעוּ (Vatipakachnah einei shneihem vayede'u) "the eyes of both of them were opened..." The Torah deliberately did not write that as a result of this opening of their eyes ויראו (they saw) but it wrote וידעו (they knew) that they were naked. What they suddenly "knew" they had already "seen" previously. The Torah wanted to emphasise that they now "saw" something they had been aware of previously in a totally new light. What had previously not been shameful had suddenly become something shameful. The reason was that they had overstepped the boundaries and displayed a tendency to derive physical pleasure from something G-d had denied them. They had displayed a desire to be more animal-like in their cravings. As a result, their punishment consisted in their being allocated animal-like food as we find in v18 "you will eat the grass of the field." Previously, they had been allocated only the kind of herbs which produced self perpetuating seeds, as distinct from the food allocated to the animals (1:29).
3:6
וַתֵּרֶא הָאִשָּׁה כִּי טוֹב הָעֵץ לְמַאֲכָל
Vatere ha'ishah ki tov ha'etz lema'achal
the woman saw that the Tree was good for food.
Chazal disagree as to the exact nature of this tree (Berachot 40). Some say it was a fig tree and they base themselves on the fact that immediaely after eating from the tree Adam and Chavah are describe as covering their genitals with fig leaves (v7). They feel that this shows that the very thing which had become their downfall now had become the instrument of their rehabilitation.
Other Sages believe that the Tree in question was the grapevine. This is why we read in Bereishit Rabbah 19:8 "Chavah squeezed the juce from the grapes and brought it to her husband." Seeing that its appearance was red like blood, their blood would be spilled and the blood of the whole universe, measure for measure, the punishment fitting the crime. The blood of the female of the species which would be spilled at regular intervals is the menstrual blood. This is also the mystical dimension of Devarim 32:14, "and the blood of the grapes you will drink as if it were delicious wine." The Torah called the grape "blood," seeing that grapes had brought blood into the world.
Still another view is that of Rabbi Abba from Acco in Bereishit Rabbah 15:8 who believes that the Tree in question was the Etrog tree, the citron fruit. From the Kabbalistic point of view, the Tree was indeed the Etrog tree something which is hinted at in the words וְנֶחְמָד הָעֵץ לְהַשְׂכִּיל (venechmad ha'etz lehaskil) "and the Tree was a desirable means to gain insights." Onkelos translates these words as, "that the fruit was exceptionally beautiful and desirable." The nature of that fruit was that it excited and dominated one's intellect. This is also why the Targum translates VaYikra 23:40 again using the word אתרוג (etrog) to describe an especially beautiful fruit. We may thus understand v18 where the curse (punishment) for eating from such a beautiful tree is that henceforth the earth will sprout forth thorns and thistles as another example of punishment fitting the crime.
וְכִי תַאֲוָה-הוּא לָעֵינַיִם
vechi ta'avah-hu la'einayim
and that it was a delight for the eyes.
Originally man was a totally intellectually oriented creature. The Torah wanted to remind us that at that stage (before the sin) whatever motivation prompted Chavah and Adam to eat from this Tree was the desire to gain further insights (lehaskil). This would correspond to Tehillim 38:10, "You G-d are aware that (nearness) to You is the objective of all my desire." According to this interpretation it was the intellect which dictated to them to eat what G-d had withheld from them.
Whatever his or her motivation, the fact remains that Chavah (and Adam) violated G-d's will as expressed by His prohibition. Just as his intellect had told him that the fruit of the that Tree held promise of further insights, the same intellect had also told him that the acquisition of such insights was clearly against G-d's will, else why would He have forbidden its fruit? At this stage the yetzer hara, the force within man which moves him to assert his independence, was in the shape of his wife, Chavah. He was misled into believing that what he did was in order.
After having eaten from the fruit of that Tree Adam began to experience a new sensation altogether, a sensation which became an integral part of him from then on. This was the sex drive which is a drive originally inspired by the commission of a sin.
The question may be asked, if indeed this drive was and is responsible for sinning and Adam and Chavah did not yet have it before they ate from the tree, how did they come to sin? The fact is that even angels who most certainly do not have a sex drive and are motivated purely by intellectual considerations also sin on occasion. One example is found in Bereishit 19:13 where the angels who had been commanded to destroy Sedom and to save Lot described themselves as if it were they who were destroying Sedom and not G-d. They told Lot, "for we are about to destroy this place."
וַיֹּאכַל
vayochal
and he ate
At this point Adam sinned seeing G-d had warned him previously, "and you must not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" (2:17). The one warning applied to earthly matters such as not to eat from the fruit in order not to ingest the ource of the evil, carnal desires, etc. The other warning pertained to celestial matters, that as a result of eating from the Tree and obtaining new insights he should not speculate about the origin and essence of G-d. From a practical point of view the word "mimenu" (3:5) also included the prohibition not to use the branches of that Tree to plant a duplicate.
Philosophically speaking, Adam was not to make the mistake made later by the generation of the Tower who thought that there was no one beyond the heavens.
★ Inasmuch as his spiritual image in the celestial regions received its input from the "left" part of the emanations, the seat of the attribute of Justice, it became necessary for him to offer an ox with only a single horn as expiation after he had done teshuvah in order to demonstrate that he recognized the Unity of G-d and did not believe that G-d had partners, i.e. that there was a power-sharing arrangement between the various midot (attributes) of G-d. In order for Adam to learn this lesson G-d especially made available to him an ox which had a unicorn on its forehead. The word קרן (keren) "horn" in Hebrew is equivalent to כח (ko'ach) "power." The strength of an ox is concentrated in its horns. The unicorn was in the center of that ox's forehead, the center of its body, in order to symbolize the קו האמצעו (center line, mid-line - a Kabbalistic concept pertaining to the diagram of the emanations). The purpose of that "line" is to unify the "lower" and the "higher" regions. This is the meaning of the enigmatic though well known Midrash based on Tehillim 69:32 "that will please HASHEM even more than the ox, i.e. bull whose horns protruded beyond its hooves."
The verse from Tehillim contains a double entendre as the word מקרין though spelled with the letter י (yod), is read as if it were written without the letter yod. The first (regular) spelling would symbolize the strength radiated from the animal, whereas the defective spelling, i.e. the way we read the word suggests that the ox in question had only one horn, mi-keren. When the Benei Yisrael sinned in the desert and they made the golden calf they had to sacrifice an ox in atonement for their sin as we know from VaYikra 9:3 "take a he-goat for a sin-offering; a calf and a lamb,...and an ox and a ram for a peace-offering..."
From that time on, the Benei Yisrael were commanded to take the four species including the Etrog in the month of Tishrei, the month in which man was created, in order to combine all these species. These four species were a symbolic offering atone for the first sin man had committed around that time of the year. In all other instances of publicly paid for sin-offerings on the festivals, a bull or bulls are included in the Torah's list of such offerings. The same applies to the sin-offerings on Rosh Chodesh (New Moon). All of this was to teach that when doing penance it is appropriate to use the instrument with which one had sinned to effect forgiveness.
May HASHEM continue to enlighten us with the Light of His Torah.
- Chazal
----------------
Bereishit Pardes - Creation
Bereishit Pardes - Gan Eden
Bereishit Pardes - Nishmat Chayim - Living Soul
