Genesis 2:16 Commentary and Bible Study

Then you get the command, the covenant test that was put upon man: ‘And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat,’ wonderful fruits and much greater diversity of fruit and taste and texture than we know today; Adam could freely eat of all those things. Then verse 17: ‘But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it.’ This covenant test was not about man being commanded to accomplish something; he was sinless, he was perfect, he was happy being fulfilled in keeping the garden. The test was not a command to do something; it was, in a sense, the easiest kind of command; it was a command to not do something, and to not do something which he had no need to do. He did not need the knowledge of good and evil; he did not know what it was. The lack of it did not make him go short of anything. In other words this great test consisted in not being hostile to the will of God, not opposing the will of God – that was all. He will have bliss, happiness, fulfilment, every wonderful thing, but do not oppose the will of God, and trust him and what he says, and look to him for everything. That was the test, and it was such a reasonable test. Why should Adam measure God’s goodness towards him by the one thing that he was forbidden, and allow that to cancel out the goodness of God shown in all that he was allowed to do? As we shall see in chapter 3, the man failed. Of course the woman has not been brought into it yet. ‘But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day’ – at once, immediately – ‘that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.’ As we shall see in due course, man fell immediately. He died in any number of respects: his fulfilment died; his perfect happiness died; his perfect peace died; his intimate communion with God died; his status died; his eternal blessedness died; his immortality was recalled by God and he was at serious risk. And he died physically, not altogether but he began to die physically. Death came in and his body began the process of death. He was as good as dead. He died as soon as he fell, and that was the warning God gave him here.Only one creature was verbally given a commandment by God, because only one creature is made in the image of God and possesses a moral nature which is capable of obeying God. Only man could understand a verbal command and obey it willingly. No other creature is expected to obey or is accountable, and no other creature is therefore tested in this way.