21st Century Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 3:2-4, negated duplicate conditional

Genesis 3:2-4

 

ב וַתֹּ֥אמֶר הָֽאִשָּׁ֖ה אֶל־הַנָּחָ֑שׁ מִפְּרִ֥י עֵץ־הַגָּ֖ן נֹאכֵֽל:

ג וּמִפְּרִ֣י הָעֵץ֘ אֲשֶׁ֣ר בְּתוֹךְ־הַגָּן֒ אָמַ֣ר אֱלֹהִ֗ים לֹ֤א תֹֽאכְלוּ֙ מִמֶּ֔נּוּ וְלֹ֥א תִגְּע֖וּ בּ֑וֹ פֶּ֖ן תְּמֻתֽוּן:

ד וַיֹּ֥אמֶר הַנָּחָ֖שׁ אֶל־הָֽאִשָּׁ֑ה לֹא־מ֖וֹת תְּמֻתֽוּן:

 

Translation:     The woman said to the serpent, from the fruit of the garden tree we may eat.

But from the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, Gd said: you shall not eat from it, or touch it: pen t’mutun. 

The serpent said to the woman: lo mot t’mutun.

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

תִגְּעוּ	touch
פֶּן	lest

 

T’mutun is important grammar.

 

This is an uncertainty epistemic. We had certainty epistemics which use phenomena, perceptible things, as evidence for the truth of what is being said.

 

But death is not perceptible.

 

What’s more, nobody has ever died before, in the experience of either the woman or the serpent.

 

So the woman really isn’t sure that she has the straight dope.

 

What the serpent says is even more subtle and proves that he was watching Gd’s every conversation with Adam as well as Chavvah. He uses a duplicate conditional. He’s saying that there is no due process that will kill them.

 

There is a similar structure in Exodus 34:7, naqeh lo yinaqeh. What’s the difference between them?

 

In Exodus, the thrust of the statement is that there is no due process for declaring somebody innocent. That’s true in American law as well. Courts can convict or they can say “the prosecution/plaintiff hasn’t proven its case so we can’t record that the defendant was convicted.” Usually the defendant’s attorney will then go on the evening news and say “my client was found innocent” but that’s false.

 

But here we have lo before the duplicate conditional, and it’s connected to the mot that is the aspectless verb, and there’s even a little curve under mot that hooks it to the lo but the t’mutun is just hanging out there on its own.
 

As far as I know, there’s nothing else like this in Tannakh; if you find it, email me. But if I had to guess I would the serpent as saying, it’s not that there is no due process for killing them, it’s that Gd was lying when He said there was such a thing as dying.

 

In fact what has really happened is, the serpent knows Gd said not to eat, but he also knows that the “not touching” part, the woman has made up. So now he knows that if he proves she won’t die from touching the tree, she’ll also eat from it. And midrash does indeed say that at this point he pushed her against the tree, and the rest followed.