21st Century Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 3:22-24, immortality

Genesis 3:22-24

 

כב וַיֹּאמֶר ׀ יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהִים הֵן הָאָדָם הָיָה כְּאַחַד מִמֶּנּוּ לָדַעַת טוֹב וָרָע וְעַתָּה ׀ פֶּן־יִשְׁלַח יָדוֹ וְלָקַח גַּם מֵעֵץ הַחַיִּים וְאָכַל וָחַי לְעֹלָם:
כג וַיְשַׁלְּחֵהוּ יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהִים מִגַּן־עֵדֶן לַעֲבֹד אֶת־הָאֲדָמָה אֲשֶׁר לֻקַּח מִשָּׁם:

כד וַיְגָרֶשׁ אֶת־הָאָדָם וַיַּשְׁכֵּן מִקֶּדֶם לְגַן־עֵדֶן אֶת־הַכְּרֻבִים וְאֵת לַהַט הַחֶרֶב הַמִּתְהַפֶּכֶת לִשְׁמֹר אֶת־דֶּרֶךְ עֵץ הַחַיִּים:

    

Translation: **** Gd said behold the man has become like one with us knowing good and evil; but now lest he send out his hand so that he takes from the tree of life such that he eats and lives forever...
**** Gd sent him from the garden of Eden, for the purpose of working the earth from which he had been taken.
He completely broke with the man: He set eastward of the garden of Eden the keruvim and the flash of the sword that keeps revolving for the purpose of guarding the path of the tree of life.
 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

עַתָּה	Now, at this time
יִשְׁלַח	He put out
יָדוֹ	His hand
גַּם	also
לְעֹלָם	forever
יְגָרֶשׁ	Push out, divorce
יַּשְׁכֵּן	establish
לַהַט	flash
חֶרֶב	sword
מִּתְהַפֶּכֶת	revolves
דֶּרֶךְ	Road, path

The word hineh and its relative hen in this verse, are emphatics. They require a substantive to follow them. Why emphasize “the man”? Not at the expense of the woman, but the man as opposed to the angels, who don’t know what good and evil are. But people are not omniscient, and Gd now has a dilemma.

 

He made a prohibition on one of the two special trees, and it was disobeyed. He said nothing about the other tree. If He does, there’s a chance it will be disobeyed.

If he lets people become immortal, and they reproduce according to His orders after this, are the children going to be immortal? If not, then how are they going to know that their first ancestors were created by Gd? How do they know that their first ancestors, who are like Gd in three things, are not gods in and of themselves? And how can parents bear for their children not to be immortal? So having eaten of the tree of life themselves, why would they not feed its fruit to their children?

By the way, what this narrative does not explore is the issue of whether the children will be born knowing the difference between good and evil. I come down on the side that they will. The end result will be a population of immortals who know the difference between good and evil – but can they be trusted to always do good? Well, their parents have already disobeyed a direct commandment and so no, the descendants can’t be trusted to always choose to do good.

The only thing Gd can do in this situation is make immortality impossible for humans.

So while there are interpretations that say people would have been immortal without eating from the tree of life, I disagree.

I've been telling you about trop and I know you're wondering what those vertical bars are. On each side of such a bar, there is a word marked with a trop that connects it to the next word. But when one of them is supposed to be the end of a phrase, Torah puts in those bars in writing and during recitation the reader will read the first word, stop, and then start the next phrase.