Pensamento Judaico sobre Gênesis 3:7

And it is along these lines that I interpret (Genesis 2:17): "For on the day that you eat from it, you shall surely die." This is not a monition of punishment for rebellion, for if it were, Adam should not be further cursed for his sin, but receive that punishment decreed for him for transgression of the command, namely, to become mortal, and nothing more. Why, then, was the work of his hands subsequently cursed and a curse pronounced upon the earth because of him? But the key to the matter is as we have explained. All the perfection of his nature and his residing in the choicest of environments would not avail to invest him with eternal life if not for the ascendancy of the intellect and its power. And it is well known that the intellect grows in power in proportion to one's occupation with the ideational and that it diminishes through his concentration upon the phenomenological. And it is also well known that this tree (whatever its identity) possessed the property of arousing lust in man and drawing him to the phenomenological, as our sages of blessed memory have stated (Berachoth 40a): "It (the tree) was wheat, for a child cannot call 'Father' and 'Mother' until he has tasted grain." This accounts for G-d's telling him (Ibid 2:17): "And from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, do not eat from it." For I am informing you that on the day that you eat from it you will become mortal, for the powers of your body will grow and your intellect will weaken, and in point of your body, you are not oriented to life. This verse, then, constitutes an exhortation and its rationale, and not a monition of punishment at all. But Eve did not penetrate to the depths of the matter (and it is possible that its true meaning escaped Adam too) and because of this she took the words literally to the effect that it was in the very nature of that tree to be destructive of the body. This is the intent of (Ibid 3:7): "And the woman saw that the tree was good for eating…" The Torah expatiates on this to impress upon us the nature of Eve's error. Proceeding on the understanding that G-d had pronounced the tree as destructive of body because of the nature of body itself, she saw this to be impossible. For all of the scholars have already written that the odor, taste, and proximity of lethal poisons cannot be pleasant to the body, and that anything found to be pleasant to the palate or to the taste cannot be such a poison. Because of this, when Eve found the character, smell, and appearance of the fruit to be compatible with the body and the human compound, she reasoned that it could not conceivably cause death or shorten life.

Now mark our reply, which was as follows:—“You appear to have studied the matter superficially, and nevertheless you imagine that you can understand a book which has been the guide of past and present generations, when you for a moment withdraw from your lusts and appetites, and glance over its contents as if you were reading a historical work or some poetical composition. Collect your thoughts and examine the matter carefully, for it is not to be understood as you at first sight think, but as you will find after due deliberation; namely, the intellect which was granted to man as the highest endowment, was bestowed on him before his disobedience. With reference to this gift the Bible states that “man was created in the form and likeness of God.” On account of this gift of intellect man was addressed by God, and received His commandments, as it is said: “And the Lord God commanded Adam” (Gen. 2:16)—for no commandments are given to the brute creation or to those who are devoid of understanding. Through the intellect man distinguishes between the true and the false. This faculty Adam possessed perfectly and completely. The right and the wrong are terms employed in the science of apparent truths (morals), not in that of necessary truths, as, e.g., it is not correct to say, in reference to the proposition “the heavens are spherical,” it is “good” or to declare the assertion that “the earth is flat” to be “bad”: but we say of the one it is true, of the other it is false. Similarly our language expresses the idea of true and false by the terms emet and sheker, of the morally right and the morally wrong, by tob and ra’. Thus it is the function of the intellect to discriminate between the true and the false—a distinction which is applicable to all objects of intellectual perception. When Adam was yet in a state of innocence, and was guided solely by reflection and reason—on account of which it is said: “Thou hast made him (man) little lower than the angels” (Ps. 8:6)—he was not at all able to follow or to understand the principles of apparent truths; the most manifest impropriety, viz., to appear in a state of nudity, was nothing unbecoming according to his idea: he could not comprehend why it should be so. After man’s disobedience, however, when he began to give way to desires which had their source in his imagination and to the gratification of his bodily appetites, as it is said, “And the wife saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to the eyes” (Gen. 3:6), he was punished by the loss of part of that intellectual faculty which he had previously possessed. He therefore transgressed a command with which he had been charged on the score of his reason; and having obtained a knowledge of the apparent truths, he was wholly absorbed in the study of what is proper and what improper. Then he fully understood the magnitude of the loss he had sustained, what he had forfeited, and in what situation he was thereby placed. Hence we read, “And ye shall be like elohim, knowing good and evil,” and not “knowing” or “discerning the true and the false”: while in necessary truths we can only apply the words “true and false,” not “good and evil.” Further observe the passage, “And the eyes of both were opened, and they knew they were naked” (Gen. 3:7): it is not said, “And the eyes of both were opened, and they saw”; for what the man had seen previously and what he saw after this circumstance was precisely the same: there had been no blindness which was now removed, but he received a new faculty whereby he found things wrong which previously he had not regarded as wrong.

See my brother, that the fool is like a blind man, and when he becomes intelligent, he will be similar to a blind man whose eyes were healed and can now see, as the verse says on Adam and Eve: "the eyes of both of them became opened" (Bereishis 3:7), though we know that they could see before this.