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• Gen 2:15-17 . .The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden
of Eden, to till it and tend it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying:
Of every tree of the garden you are free to eat; but as for the tree of
knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat of it; for in the day you eat of
it, you shall die.
The first thing to point out is that in order for the warning to resonate in
Adam's thinking; it had to be related to death as he understood death in his
own day rather than death as modern Sunday school classes construe it in
their day. In other words: Adam's concept of death was primitive, i.e.
normal and natural rather than spiritual.
Death was common all around Adam by means of vegetation, birds, bugs,
and beasts so that it wasn't a strange new word in his vocabulary; i.e. God
didn't have to take a moment and define death for Adam seeing as how it
was doubtless a common occurrence in his everyday life.
Adam saw things born, he saw things grow to maturity, he saw things
gradually wither, he saw their life ebb away, and he saw them decay and
dissolve into nothing. So I think we can be reasonably confident that Adam
was up to speed on at least the natural aspects of death and fully
understood that if he went autonomous, and tasted the forbidden fruit, that
his body would lose its perpetual youth and eventually dry up just as crisp
as an Autumn leaf.
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