Troublesome Topic: Death is a Separation Not a Termination

Genesis 2:17

Translation

but of the tree

of the knowledge

of good

and evil

you shall not eat,

for in the day you eat from it, in dying you will die.

Paraphrase

but you should not eat from the source of wisdom that gives discernment about what will bring about pleasing results and what will bring about unpleasant results, for on the very day you eat of it you will definitely suffer separation; there will be no escaping it, no alternatives, no “ifs, ands or buts.”

Death Is a Separation, Not a Termination

In Bible times the death of a loved one was often described with the words, “He slept with his fathers.” Death was not seen as a termination, but as a separation. In Modern America we think of death with finality, as an end. We use phrases like “the death of a dream.” The Bible talks about a “second death;” that would not be possible if death were a true end. The loved one who had died had not ceased to exist altogether, but had been separated from the ones still living. “He is not with us, he is now with our ancestors.” If death is a separation, then there is hope for a future reunion. Therefore, “In dying you shall die,” can also be rendered, “in being separated, you will be truly and utterly separated.” The extent of our separation, a separation which is complete and total, gives testimony to the extent of God’s love, mercy, grace and forgiveness in doing everything necessary to bring us back to Him. Our separation was full, but God’s love is fuller; the distance between us was vast, but God’s forgiveness is “vaster;” the brokenness of our relationship was complete, but God’s acceptance is “completer.”

We don’t know the language in which God was communicating to Adam so we don’t know the nuances of the word “die” as used that first time. At that point there was no such thing as physical death, which presented a conundrum. Either God was talking about something that Adam could not fully understand (an end to physical life) or God used a word that emphasized separation and Adam did not realize it would come in the form of the end of life. Either way, this was hard for Adam to fully grasp. In retrospect we know that it involved both a separation from God and also a separation from the body and from one’s loved ones.

The next lesson is: The First Covenantal Relationship

Footnotes

1

Was it an apple tree? NO! We can be confident that it was not any of the fruit trees we are familiar with. According to the writer of the Jewish blog Chabad.org, the myth of the apple got started because the Latin word for “evil” sounds similar to the word that Latin borrowed from Greek meaning “apple.”

2

The word I have rendered as “knowledge,” means “knowledge” and also “wisdom.” It is often used in the proverbs for wisdom, although it is not the only word for “wise or wisdom” used in Proverbs. This word focuses on the knowledge needed to make good choices, whereas the other word for wisdom focuses on the act of choosing well between the choices available. One is the knowledge necessary to make a good choice, but you have to want to make the right choice; the other one is a demonstration of that desire by having made the right choice. The word “discernment” can be used of each of them and is thus the point where the two words overlap.

3

The word “good” is the most commonly used Hebrew word for “good.” It is usually not moral in connotation, but it can be moral goodness depending on the context. The word means “pleasant, pleasing, agreeable, favorable, advantageous, and right.” God is calling this choice of action good because it will bring pleasing and favorable results, not just “because I said so.”

4

The Hebrew word I have translated as “evil” means “disagreeable, unpleasant, unhappy, evil, and malignant.” It is more often used of moral issues than is the word for “good.” Once again the emphasis is on the consequences of the action.

5: “In dying you will die”

For emphasis the author uses two forms of the word “die” back to back, just like he did with the word “in eating you will eat” in the previous verse. The Hebrew text is beautiful in its balance and symmetry, but it is hard to render such phrases in English without using a long and cumbersome explanatory clause, which I have done in my paraphrase. It is a struggle to know how to convey the power of the Hebrew phrase without sounding ridiculous in English. In my paraphrase column I have shown what I think is the true intent of this emphatic phrase, while I admit that it is cumbersome.

Notice that this command was given to Adam before Eve was separated from him. It was his responsibility to communicate it properly to her later.