A profound question!
For anything to make sense, we have to assume that Adam and Eve understood that they must not eat of the tree. Eve certainly seemed to understand this, for when questioned by the serpent, with his ‘Did God say?’... she gave a good reply.
So, what does it mean to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? I am guessing here, but knowledge conveys experience, think ‘Adam knew his wife Eve, and she conceived’ , so knowing evil means experiencing it. They already had knowledge of good, but now they had knowledge of evil too. And this knowledge is corrupting.
So I see no reason why the choice was not a free choice.
I also see no contradiction in God knowing what this choice would be.
Was it a reasoned answer that Eve provided the serpent? Or did she repeat what she'd been told by Adam?
Genesis 3:2 And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat the fruit from the trees of the garden,3 Except the fruit from the tree which is in the middle of the garden. God has said, You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.
Genesis 2:16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may freely eat of every tree of the garden;17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and blessing and calamity you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.
Adam and Eve were both naked and were not ashamed, as we're told in the Genesis 2 scripture. How did Satan know God's commandment to Adam concerning the tree of knowledge?
Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more subtle
and crafty than any living creature of the field which the Lord God had made. And he
[Satan] said to the woman, Can it really be that God has said, You shall not eat from every tree of the garden?(A)
(*A cross reference)Revelation 12:9-11
And the huge dragon was cast down
and out—that age-old serpent, who is called the Devil and...
)
I've considered the Genesis factor for some time. And I always return to the Book of Job and the trials he suffered, horrific impacts to his psyche, his emotions, his life itself. All of those unimaginable things that he suffered. May none of us know those things in our own life, amen. And due to Satan speaking with God and proposing a wager against the depth of Job's commitment and faith to the Father.
Satan, we're told led a rebellion in Heaven, the first paradise. He and 1/3rd of Heaven's angels thought they could overcome their creator? And Satan could take his place? When as a Cherubim he was and remains incapable of being a creator, thought he could take the throne and the creator's place?
Lucifer, light bringer, called Satan after his fall from Heaven. The angel of music. That first and most beautiful, most intelligent of the emissaries, angli, angels, to the earth refused to serve humans? And rebelled against the Omniscient Father, creator of the Heaven's and the Earth and all things. Including the angels. [Ezekiel 28:13-15 ]
The war was lost and Satan and that 1/3rd of his angel army were cast down to the earth before the creation of the first people. Why was Hell created to receive them all at the end of days,whenever God ordains that to be? Why were they not let to be "un-created" by God for their sin? Why were they and their wickedness and the sin ego they possessed let not only to live after losing the war in Heaven but instead were let to fall to the paradise place that was the new earth. And there lead the new created first humans to fall.
I believe it all transpired in Genesis to be the global human first wager between God and Lucifer and the 1/3rd that were all let to live as specially gifted by God, Satan being lord of this world and only by God's permission, actually serves in his plotting here to lead us to seek reunion with the Father. How many prisoners in that earthly Hell of prison have found their way to Christ?
One woman in Texas was a notable testimony in that regard. She had murdered people viciously in her early years. Arrested, found guilty and sentenced to death by lethal injection. While on death row she found Christ. And when then Governor George W. Bush Jr. refused to commute her sentence to life without parole, she was put to death as ordered. Guards wept at her loss.
Because she had become a shining, literally because I watched a documentary about her while she was alive and interviewed in prison, and the woman glowed in her union with God's holy spirit. Genuine peace and happiness that lived on her inside and shone forth without.
Satan walks the earth like a hungry lion seeking souls to devour. We're warned of this. Warned to put on the whole armor of God to protect against the slings and arrows of this world's darkness. All of that adversary of righteousness. An yet, he has an audience with his creator, the one he plotted against, that cast him to the new earth after losing the war in Heaven, and reaches an agreement concerning the slings and arrows he's allowed to aim at dear Job. All to test Job's faith and in Satan's mind win a bet with God.
It all happens because before our beginning God let Lucifer live.
God tells the Christian of today and since Jesus' blood inked the new covenant, that he knew us, and chose us to be in him, before he created the world. That would be before he created Adam and Eve.
John 1:3
Through Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made.
Colossians 1:15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through Him and for Him. 17 He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
Isaiah 45
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"I am the LORD, and there is no other; Besides Me there is no God. I will gird you, though you have not known Me;
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That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun That there is no one besides Me. I am the LORD,and there is no other,
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The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these.