Kommentar zu Bereschit 3:4

לא מות תמתון YE SHALL NOT SURELY DIE — He pushed her until she touched it. He then said to her, “Just as there is no death in touching it, so there is no death in eating it” (Genesis Rabbah 19:3).

לא מות תמותון “you will sure not die, כי יודע אלוקים כי בים אכלכם ממנו ונפקחו עיניכם, G’d did not forbid this fruit because it is lethal, but because He knows that through eating it you will attain additional knowledge so that you will be just like G’d, possessing total knowledge.

ויאמר הנחש…לא מות תמותון. The serpent said: "You will most certainly not die." The reason the serpent repeated the reference to death was to counter Eve's fears that the tree itself was lethal, or that even if it were not harmful at all, G'd would punish them with death for disobeyimg Him. The serpent claimed that neither natural nor judicial death would result from contact with the tree or its fruit. Assuming that the serpent was right, this in turn raises the question of why G'd had forbidden the fruit of that tree? The serpent had to make such a prohibition sound plausible. This is why it continued that G'd was aware that as soon as man ate from that tree he would become a real competitor to G'd, i.e. knowing what is good and what is harmful. This argument was pure blasphemy. The only reason that the wicked serpent was able to employ such an argument was that its creation had preceded that of man. The serpent was able to use its senior status in the history of creation to claim that it was privy to matters that Adam and Eve could not have been privy to. He also argued that the reason he (the serpent) had been denied entry to גן עדן was that entry had been permitted only to those who were not privy to the secret of the tree of knowledge and what it represented. It claimed that by preventing the serpent from entering the garden G'd had wanted to preserve the secret of the power that tree would impart to those who ate from it. According to the serpent, once Eve would eat from that tree she would no longer be afraid of G'd, and G'd would no longer exercise any control over her. The use of such an argument was idolatrous. According to our halachah idolatry is punishable even when it is merely an intellectual conviction (Berachot 12).

ויאמר, the serpent in its craftiness, said: לא מות תמותון, not as you say that G’d loves you so much that He forbade eating you to protect you from dying, but the reason is that not only will you not die from eating, but He made you more afraid so that you will not acquire the additional advantage by eating from it,

You certainly will not die: How is it possible that there is a doubt for the Creator? Hence He is only being like someone intimidating and threatening because he does not want [it]. And such is the temptation of the evil impulse at all times - that the punishments will not be so great.

ויאמר הנחש אל האשה לא מות תמותון, “the serpent said to the woman: ”you will surely not die.” According to Rashi the serpent had pushed Chavah against the tree first, thus demonstrating to her that touching the tree did not result in any harm to her, contrary to what she had said in the name of G’d. The most common criticism of Rashi’s commentary is that Chavah simply had to reply that seeing the day was not yet over, the fact that she had not died as yet was no proof of anything, and that this was the reason that she had not died as a result of touching the tree. The defenders of Rashi’s commentary are forced to respond that the serpent challenged her by saying that since, according to her own words, she was going to die by the end of the day on account of having touched the tree, she might as well eat of it, seeing she could only die once. The basic objection to Rashi’s commentary is totally invalid, as Chavah had never said a word about dying on that day, but about dying as a result of eating or touching, i.e. immediately.

He pushed her... If it were not so, why did she believe him when he said, “You certainly will not die,” and not contradict him?

5. Nachdem die Schlange vergebens einen Zweifel an der ausnahmslosen Verpflichtungskraft angeregt, weckte sie einen Zweifel an dem Ernst des Gebotes. "Ihr werdet nicht sterben! Man stirbt nicht sobald! Nur um euch in unmündiger Abhängigkeit von sich zu halten, hat er euch diesen Genuß verboten. Esset davon, so werden euch die Augen aufgehen, ihr werdet zur Einsicht gelangen, selbst zu wissen, was gut und nicht gut ist, und diese Einsicht wird euch Gott gleich und unabhängig von ihm machen. Eine göttergleiche Einsicht, die das kleinste Tier neben euch besitzt?. — פקה, verwandt mit פקע ,בקע, klaffen, aufspringen.

לא מות תמותון, according to Rashi, this expression means that the serpent had first pushed the woman against the tree to demonstrate that though she had touched it, she had not died. Neither would she die by eating from it. If you were to ask how did the serpent know that the woman would not die by touching that tree? G-d had threatened that anyone eating from that tree would die on that day, and the day had not come to an end yet?We must not ask such questions when examining the exegesis of our sages! Actually, this question has been asked, and answered as the serpent having convinced the woman that death would follow instantaneously if she would violate G-d’s commandment. In order to answer the doubters or deniers of the truth of the Torah, this dialogue was not completed until the next morning when the previous day had already passed without any harm befalling the woman. [Some commentators claim that the serpent had eaten herself and demonstrated that she had not suffered any harm. In that case we must assume that the animals had not been forbidden to eat from that tree. Ed.] A different interpretation of the words: לא מות תמותון: the serpent told the woman that she now risked nothing by eating, as if she had said that also touching had been forbidden, she could not die more than once anyways, so what did she have to lose by also tasting the fruit of that tree? The literal meaning of the words: לא מות תמותון, would therefore be: “you cannot die twice.”

So. too, there is no death in eating. This [the serpent’s argument] is puzzling: she might still die, for Hashem said, “On the day you eat from it you will certainly die,” and there is plenty of time left in the day! Another question: If [she thought] they would die for touching, then it goes without saying for eating. For one cannot eat without touching. If so, why does she [mention both and] say, “You shall not eat from it, neither shall you touch it”? It seems the answer is: [She thought that] for eating from it they would die, and for touching it they would fall sick immediately, and then grow more sick until they would die on that same day. When she saw that she did not fall sick from touching it, [she thought that] she surely would not die either. Some ask: What did the serpent prove by making her touch the tree and not die? In truth she was forbidden only on eating, not on touching, and she knew this herself! Why was she not afraid for her life [to eat]? Furthermore, why did she add to Hashem’s command? The answer is: The command was made to Adam, not to Chavah. But when Adam taught it to Chavah he warned her not to touch it either, for he knew that women are light-minded. Whereas she thought that Hashem actually forbade touching. Although Rashi says that she added, and in fact she added nothing to what Adam had told her in Hashem’s Name, nonetheless she should not have replied to the serpent more than what he asked her. [And in this way, she added.] He asked only about eating, not about touching! So when she saw that she did not die from touching — which she should have, according to her understanding of her husband’s command — she took of its fruit as well and ate. And some ask further: How does touching prove that for eating [she will not die]? She was forced to touch, since he pushed her. But she will eat willingly! The answer is: She thought that the tree was like a deadly poison. Anyone who eats from it will die, similar to the Tree of Life whose very fruit bestows life. Thus she said, “Neither shall you touch it.” She considered it like a very potent poison which, as is known, can be lethal upon touch. So the serpent pushed her and told her, “Just as there is no death in touching...” (source unknown) There is a famous question: Why did Chavah fool herself? She knew that she herself added the prohibition against touching, and that is why she did not die! The answer is: Chavah understood that Hashem’s prohibition against eating also included touching. This is similar to the verse (Vayikra 12:4), “She shall not touch anything holy,” which means, “She shall not eat...” (Nachalas Yaakov)

According to Bereshit Rabbah 19,3 there is another reason that the serpent used the expression מות תמות. The serpent pushed Eve against the tree and "proved" that touching the tree was not lethal- as Eve had claimed. It argued that just as touching the tree had not resulted in death, neither would eating from its fruit. We must examine this so-called "proof." If we accept that Eve had convinced herself that contact with the tree would have fatal consequences because of its very nature, the fact that her contact with the tree had proved harmless should have convinced her of the tree's harmlessness. There was therefore no reason to be afraid to eat from it. Alternatively, if Eve's fear of touching the tree were based on her belief that G'd had outlawed both eating from the tree and touching it, she now had "proof" that this was not so because nothing had happened to her after she had touched the tree. We do not consider this in the nature of any "proof," seeing that G'd's punishment did not have to be meted out immediately. We therefore prefer the explanation we offered previously that the serpent wanted to "prove" to Eve that the tree itself was quite harmless.

עין: iAuge und Quell. Quell ist dasjenige, wodurch das Verborgene ans Licht tritt. So heißt הקר erforschen und aus der Tiefe heben, ebenso הפר. Auch בְאֵר Brunnen und בַאֵר klar, hell machen. So auch עין: Quell und Auge. Jedoch nicht so, als ob durch das Auge der Geist des Menschen sich ausspräche; vielmehr umgekehrt, das Auge ist der Quell, wodurch die Außenwelt in den Geist des Menschen einströmt. Das Universum strömt zusammen und nimmt durch das enge Auge den Weg zum Geiste. So וכסה את עין הארץ: es deckt die Erde so, dass es ihr den Weg zu ihrem Quell, dem Auge, sperrt, dass sie den Weg zum Auge und durch dasselbe zur Wahrnehmung des Menschen nicht findet. (אַיִן ist der Ausdruck des unbefriedigten Auges.)

If you were to ask why G'd would have created a tree that was poisonous at all, the answer is -as in many such instances- that the greater the physical and spiritual effort to overcome such potential impediments to our faith, the greater the reward which is stored up in heaven for such acts of faith, a reward to be consumed by us in the Hereafter. This concept is phrased in Avot 5,26: לפום צערא אגרא, as "the reward is commensurate with the effort expended." Had G'd imposed strict limits on the power of the seducer to entice us, overcoming him would not have amounted to much. The Zohar illustrates this principle by the example of a father who wanted to test his son's moral fibre and who instructed a beautiful harlot to use all her wiles to seduce him. At the same time he had instructed the son to keep his distance from the harlot in question.