Commentaire sur La Genèse 3:6

ותרא האשה AND THE WOMAN SAW — She approved the words of the serpent — they pleased her and she believed him (Genesis Rabbah 19:3).

THAT THE TREE WAS GOOD FOR FOOD. She [Eve] had thought that the fruit of the tree was bitter and poisonous and this was why He admonished them against eating thereof, but now she saw that it was good and sweet food.

And that it was desirable to the eyes: Since, with every sin, the good impulse has a debate with the evil impulse: For the good impulse promises [a person] spiritual reward in the world to come, whereas the evil impulse responds and claims that it is better to go after the desires which are perceivable to the eyes of the seer - for the desires of this world are visible to the eyes of everyone - rather than going after the delights of the world to come, 'which no eye has beheld.' That is why it states, "And the woman saw" the words of the serpent, and the arguments of the serpent were correct in her eyes - "that the tree was good for food and that it was desirable to the eyes" - that the desires of this world are visible, 'eye to eye.' This is to exclude the delights of the world to come - 'no eye has beheld' [them]. "And one who wants to lie will distance his witnesses" (Rosh on Shevuot 6, Paragraph 13).

ותרא האשה כי טוב העץ למאכל, she realized that the tree was good to eat due to its location, its nature and the pleasant fragrance of its fruit.

ותרא האשה כי טוב העץ. Eve saw that the tree was good. The first problem is how could one judge what is good to eat by merely looking at it? Another question is why the Torah describes a feeling of the mouth before describing the effect on the eye? The verse should have read: "she saw that the tree was a beautiful sight and that it was good as food," in that order. Furthermore, whence did Eve know that the tree was apt to add to her perceptive powers, i.e. להשכיל? If the Torah merely intended to tell us that the serpents's description of the tree had been accurate, why describe the woman as seeing something that she did not see? Also why did the Torah add two superfluous words הוא, and העץ a second time? If the repetition of the word is justified, why did the Torah not also write the word העץ after the word תאוה?

ותרא האשה, she believed the words of the serpent and saw with her heart כי טוב העץ למאכל וכי תאוה הוא לעינים, as the Torah had already described this tree in its own words in 2,9 when we were told that all “the trees of the garden were pleasant to look at and good to eat.” The tree of knowledge did not distinguish itself in external appearance from the other trees of the garden. Therefore, Chavah argued, there is no reason to believe that we will die if we eat from it. She agreed that the serpent had spoken the truth when it said that the distinction of this tree must lie in the spiritual benefits its fruit bestow on us not in the taste of its fruit. The serpent must be right when saying that we will become G’d-like (verse 5). ותקח מפריו ותאכל, and afterwards she gave to her husband who at that time had been in some other location inside the garden; she brought him some of the fruit and told him what the serpent had said to her and why she had eaten from the fruit. They then ate from the fruit jointly. This is the meaning of the additional word עמה. In other words, Chavah ate from the fruit twice, whereas Adam ate from it only once. It is important to understand this. Our sages (Bereshit Rabbah 19,5) explained that the word גם which is supposed to add something means that she fed the fruit also to the animals and the birds. We need to reflect on this statement by our sages.

That the tree was good for food: Given that she was only warned by Adam about the fruit, she permitted herself to take from the tree (bark) and tasted its good taste. And from that, she understood how great was the taste of the fruit.

כי טוב העץ למאכל , “for the tree is good as food.” She had thought originally that the reason why G’d had forbidden the tree was because its fruit was bitter, and the poison of the fruit would result in death to those who ate it. Now she had convinced herself that its fruit was sweet.

She “saw”... Rashi is answering the question: What did she see now that she did not see before, as she did not yet eat from the tree? [The answer is: Here,] “seeing” means “contemplating.”

תאזה rad. אזה verwandt mit עזה krumm, von der geraden Richtung abweichend. (Vielleicht auch mit חוה, wovon chald. חויא, die Schlange). In Beziehung auf das Gemüt des Menschen ist ישר (Vergl. גשר ,קשר ,כשר) das physisch oder sittlich von mir Erreichbare, innerhalb meines geraden Weges Liegende. Erstrebe ich jedoch etwas außerhalb desselben Liegendes, so bin ich מתאוה, suche eine Bogenlinie um mich zu beschreiben, suche die Grenzen meines Gebietes zu erweitern, mich zum Mittelpunkt eines größeren Kreises zu machen.

The woman saw that the tree was good for food: She began to observe it. She said, "How beautiful is this fruit; how sweet is its smell - it is certainly not like poison. Yet the Holy One did not command us not to eat from it for nothing." And the tree was desirable to her to contemplate; as she desired it, in order to contemplate. She said, "It appears that the serpent is speaking truth." So she ate it and gave it to her husband. And immediately slyness, pride, coarseness, jealousy, competition, covetousness and malice entered into them; to entrap and flatter, and to carry on in the dark, to rob and to steal. And they quickly began to say, "It is a disgrace for creatures like us to be 'baring buttocks' and revealing our nakedness." They made loincloths for themselves to cover their nakedness and they went out of the Garden to the breeze of the day, a place that there were no trees blocking the wind. As this is the way of thieves, to distance themselves from the the place in which they stole; meaning to say, "I was not even there." But while they were there sitting in the breeze of the day, they heard the 'voice of the Lord marching in the tops of the baca trees.' They said, "Behold the Master of the Garden has come"; so they were afraid and trembling - as is the way of a thief - and they hid. And that is the meaning of (Genesis 3:8), They heard the voice of the Lord God moving in the Garden to the breeze of the day - as they were there. Know that "to the breeze of the day," is referring to Adam. As it is written after it, and the man and his wife hid themselves [...] among the trees of the Garden - implying that at first, they were not in the Garden.

ותרא האשה, “the woman saw,” with her mental eye; as in Kohelet 1,17 ולבי ראה הרבה חכמה, “and with my heart I saw a great deal of wisdom.”A different exegesis of these words: the verse must be rephrased as: “the woman took from the fruit and ate; as a result she realised that the tree (its fruit) was good to eat, and she also gave to her husband to share it and he ate.” [The problem was that one can taste that something is good, but one cannot know by looking at it that something tastes good. Ed.]

כי טוב העץ THAT THE TREE WAS GOOD to make her become like God.

AND THAT IT WAS A DELIGHT TO THE EYES, i.e., that by means of its fruit, one attains desire and goes about after his own eyes.

And she also gave it to her husband with her: The commentators explained the word, "with her" - so that he would always be with her, and not marry another when she herself would die. But it could be that she gave it to him when he was literally with her. As she pressured him then, in the way that it says about Shimshon (Judges 16:16), "and she pressed him." For at another time, maybe he would not listen to her, to transgress the word of the Lord. So he said about this in his apology, "'The woman that You gave to be with me' (Genesis 3:12) - she defeated me at the time that she was literally with me." As according to its straightforward understanding, there is no logic to this apology. And [regarding] that which He claimed, "she gave me from the tree" - maybe he intended to say, by way of an apology, "It was since it was not stated in the commandment, 'You shall not eat from the fruit of the tree of knowledge.' It was [rather] stated (Genesis 2:17), 'from the tree of knowledge [...] you shall not eat.' I reasoned that the intent was that I am not allowed to pluck the fruit from the tree. But I thought, if the fruit is already plucked, it is permissible for me to eat it. So now, she gave it to me from the tree, and it was not me who took it from the tree."

ונחמד העץ להשכיל, seeing that G’d Himself had already described the tree as being the tree of knowledge.

And that it was desirable to the eyes: They explained in [Bereishit] Rabbah, Chapter 19:5, "From here, [we understand] that it was good for the eyes." It added to the understanding of these words - that they do not have a straightforward meaning, since desire is rooted in the heart and not in the eyes. Rather the explanation is, for the sake of the eyes. So it is desirable for the sake of the eyes, since it is good for the eyes, like its literal meaning - that the eyes would see more brightly than they did [before]. And this is also included in the statement of the serpent, "your eyes will be opened" - that the eyes would be opened to see from further.

וכי תאוה לעינים, “and that its appearance caused one to desire it.” We learn that man’s desires are activated by his eyes, by what he sees.

To be... You might ask: Why does Rashi not interpret [the phrases of our verse] in the same order that the serpent spoke to her? First he said, “Your eyes will open,” and then, “To be like a god.” The answer is: Since in the second phrase it is clearly written: “Tempting to the eyes,” this must refer to: “Your eyes will open.” And “Appealing as a means of wisdom” clearly refers to: “Knowers of good and evil.” Perforce, “The tree was good for food” refers to, “To be like a god.”

The verse describes the way in which Eve was snared, and how she eventually became willing to listen to her seducer. When you examine Eve's earlier words, you will find that she said: "and from the fruit of the tree in the center of the garden, G'd' said "do not eat." She had expressed her conviction that only the fruit of the tree was forbidden, that the trunk, the branches, etc., were permitted. She may have arrived at that conviction for one of two reasons. 1) Adam had commanded her in those very words. 2) Though Adam had mentioned only the tree without specifying its fruit, etc., she reasoned that there would have been no point in forbidding something that anyways was not food, such as the trunk, the branches, and the leaves. We have pointed out earlier that whereas the other trees did not taste similar to their fruit, the tree of knowledge was the exception, its trunk, etc. being just as edible as its fruit. We must therefore assume that Eve had already tasted the tree itself, not having considered it as forbidden. She also applied the prohibition to touch it as applicable only to its fruit, not to the trunk, etc. At any rate, Eve had already experienced the taste of the tree's trunk and nothing had happened. Alternatively, she may have discounted the prohibition to touch the tree knowing that this was not a direct command from G'd Himself and would not lead to death.

.נחמר rad. חמד verwandt mit אמר, ischätzen. Während תאוה den Gegenstand nur in Bezug auf die eigene Persönlichkeit schätzt und ihn herbei wünscht, weil er ihr angenehm ist, betrachtet ihn המד mehr objektiRaw Hirsch on Genesis 3: Möglich, dass das zwischen אמר und חמד stehende עמד aus demselben Begriff fließt. עמד bezeichnet den Zustand, in welchem wir die zu nehmende Richtung noch erst überlegen.

גם לאישה, “also to her husband;” this included her twins who had already been born by that time, as we have been taught in Sanhedrin 38. [The Talmud there describes that no more than an hour elapsed between Adam and Chavah mating and Kayin and Hevel, their twins having being born, Ed.]

וכי תאוה היא לעינים AND THAT IT WAS A DELIGHT TO THE EYES — even as he had said to her: “then your eyes shall be opened”.

AND THAT THE TREE WAS TO BE DESIRED TO MAKE ONE WISE for by means of its fruit, one becomes wise to desire. Now she ascribed “delight” to the eyes and “desire” to the mind. The principle is that [by eating the fruit of the tree], one can will and desire a thing or its opposite.

And some say, that he said, "Since He gave me the woman with me, to cook and prepare all the needs of the house, I thought that there was an assumption about her that she does not feed me anything prohibited. That is why I thought that this fruit was from another tree."

גם לאישה עמה, his heart was open to her words because he was her husband, and because he was by her side.

And that the tree was enticing to contemplate: As she acquired intellect from it. And it is as it is found in [Bereishit] Rabbah (19:5), "From here, [we understand] that it added wisdom." And the matter is like its literal meaning, that human knowledge was added to her by eating from the tree. And it is as I wrote adjacently, that the amazing wisdom that Adam had until now was not natural human intellect. Rather it was because he clung to his God that he grasped everything though the holy spirit; but he did not have human wisdom. It follows that the woman - who did not at all know from clinging to, and love of, God - did not have human knowledge. Because of that, they did not know embarrassment from walking around naked. But she saw that human intellect was added to her from the tree of knowledge.

So that she will not die... Rashi knows this because it is written, “with her”.

Having tasted from the tree itself, and having experienced that its nature was different from all the other trees, she decided to take a closer look at the fruit of that tree. It was then that she discovered that the fruit exerted a powerful visual attraction; the word הוא refers back to the word פרי, fruit. It could not refer to the word העץ, the tree, as this would be unnecessary. It would have sufficed to say וכי תאוה לעינים, if it were merely a reference to the tree. The word העץ is needed in the sequence ונחמד העץ לעינים because the subject matter had changed from the fruit to the tree. The knowledge of the nature of the tree had been based on her sense of taste, whereas her perception of the nature of the fruit was based only on her sense of sight. The Torah explains that Eve's purpose in eating of the fruit was to broaden her powers of perception. At this point Eve believed that the serpent had spoken truthfully when it claimed that as a result of eating from the fruit of that tree she would gain greater insights, and that G'd had forbidden the fruit only in order to prevent her from gaining the insight which would make her equal to G'd. The Torah emphasises that "she took from its fruit," as she had already tasted the trunk. We have now completed answering the various questions we raised about this verse. Eve gave to her husband from this fruit out of her love for him; she wanted him to share her new insights so that he too would become G'd-like.

השכל rad. שכל, verwandt mit סגולה .סגל: das was jemandem ausschließlich angeeignet ist. שכל ist diejenige Kraft im Menschen, welche durch das Auge einströmende Bilder der Dinge zum Begriff bringt und als solchen sich aneignet. סכל ist derjenige, dessen Erkenntnis zu subjektiv ist, der die Meinung, die er sich einmal von den Dingen gebildet hat, fest hält, ohne sie an der Wirklichkeit der Dinge außerhalb zu prüfen. השכל heißt: den Verstand auf etwas richten, verständig sein und handeln, auch den Verstand eines andern auf etwas richten: belehren. Es heißt aber nie: glücklich sein.

ותאכל, “she was the first one to eat;” she had assumed eating had not been included in the prohibition. According to Rashi, she reasoned that if she had to die G-d would surely provide Adam with another wife. In order to forestall this, she gave her husband to eat so that they would both die. Alternately, they would both continue to live. (Rashi may have used the word: לאשה, “to her husband,” instead of “to Adam,” as the inspiration for this insight.) Moreover, she thought that by her survival her husband would be able to fulfill G-d’s commandment to become fruitful and to multiply by means of her surviving.

ונחמד להשכיל AND IT WAS TO BE DESIRED TO MAKE ONE WISE — even as he had said to her: “knowing good and evil”.

And she took of its fruit and she ate: And she could not strengthen herself over the enticement to attain these three things, and also ate from the fruit.

Comes to include animal and beast. [Rashi knows this] because otherwise, why was death imposed upon the animals? But her intention was not that they should die.

I have seen it said in defence of Eve that her sin was not so serious as she could not imagine that G'd had created a being whose sole purpose it was to test man's love for G'd by having Satan masquerade within it to try and mislead man. If such a thought had even occurred to Eve she would never have engaged in a dialogue with the serpent. She would have acted just like the righteous nowadays who do not listen to or engage in disputes with tempters however slick-tongued they may be in making something sinful look desirable. The righteous of our time are not so naive; this is why they can withstand the wiles of Satan. Poor innocent Eve did not have their advantage and that is why she fell victim to the seductive tactics of the serpent (Satan). She had furthermore been mislead by the taste of the tree itself, something she thought of as permitted. She also did not possess as analytical a mind as that of a man, else she would have been able to resist the lure to eat from the fruit of that tree. Had she not first erred in believing that the tree itself was pemitted to eat from, she never would have considered eating from the fruit as well.

ותתן גם לאשה AND SHE GAVE ALSO TO HER HUSBAND so that she should not die and he remain alive to take another wife (Genesis Rabbah 19:5).

And she also gave it to her husband with her: Since at the time of her eating, her husband was not with her, as I wrote above. For had he been with her, he would not have allowed her to get into this at all - on account of his clinging to God. But he was not there then, and she did what she did. And with his coming, she gave it to her husband with her as well.

Another reason that may have accounted for Eve falling an easy victim to Satan's lure was that she considered it to have been a mistake to accept the prohibition not to eat from the tree. When she accepted the commandment she had not thought that it would be so difficult to observe. Originally the tree had not appeared to her as sufficiently desirable to pose a threat to her obedience to G'd's command. We find a parallel to such considerations when we consider how many covenants G'd concluded with the Jewish people to ensure that they would not go back on their commitment to observe the Torah. G'd did not consider it sufficient to just give the commandments to the Jewish people without creating a legal device to make the commitment irrevocable. Our sages (Shabbat 85 based on Exodus 19,17) tell us that at Mount Sinai G'd had threatened to kill the Jewish people unless they embraced the Torah. He subsequently reinforced the validity of their acceptance by making them swear an oath. Our rabbis go so far as to describe the renewed acceptance by the Jewish people of the Torah at the time of Mordechai as the only free acceptance of G'd's laws, describing the original acceptance as having occcurred under conditions of duress and therefore legally not valid (Shabbat 88). Inasmuch as Eve had not been sworn to observe the commandment not to eat from the tree she was not really obligated to do so. Even though she had orally accepted the commandment and such acceptance is comparable to the uttering of a vow, it is in the category of a vow erroneously entered into, something that can be annulled retroactively (compare Nedarim 66). The exact text in the Talmud is as follows: If someone undertakes not to drink wine because the wine is bad for his digestion, and he is informed that aged wine is good for his digestion, his vow is annulled and he may drink any kind of wine. We face a similar situation here. When Eve had accepted G'd's commandment prior to having become conscious of the powerful attraction exerted on her by this tree she had been quite sincere. However, once she noticed the powerful pull which the fruit of that tree exerted on her she regretted having undertaken to honour the commandment not to eat from it.

The word גם, also, may be understood to include cattle and beasts (that is, that she gave to these and also to her husband) (Genesis Rabbah 19:5).

We therefore have two causes that helped to mislead Eve. The reason she may have thought that only the fruit of the tree was forbidden was because her husband had not given her precise instructions. Had her husband told her that G'd had said: "You may eat from all the trees of the garden, but from the tree of knowledge in the centre of the garden you must not eat," she would never have considered the trunk as permissible, and the fact that neither eating from it nor touching it had resulted in any harm to her would not have served as a verification of the serpent's argument. Eve's not having been aware of the attractive nature of the tree was also Adam's fault. He had not told her that G'd had described the tree as the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He had only told her not to eat from the tree in the middle of the garden, without a reference to its special nature. Had Eve been aware that the tree was of such special significance the serpent could not have tricked her, and she herself would have been unable to invoke her lack of knowledge as a reason to revoke her acceptance of G'd's command not to eat from it.

None of the causes of the sin can be attributed to G'd, all were due to man's inadequacy, i.e. both Adam's and Eve's.

For all we know, Adam may not have been aware that the trunk of the tree of knowledge was edible. He had only tasted the other trees and found invariably that their trunks were not edible. He did not realise that the earth had conformed with G'd's instructions to the letter when it produced the tree of knowledge. The manner in which the Torah describes Eve's realisation of the tree's properties suggests that she did not have an inkling previously that this tree had such special features.