The Literal Meaning of Genesis (continued)
For we are His work of art created in Christ Jesus in good works, which God has prepared, that we should walk in them.®? Elsewhere Paul says, With fear and trembling work out your own salvation. But then, lest they think this could be attributed to themselves, as if they would make themselves just and good, he immediately added, For it is God who works in you.°® Therefore, The Lord God took the man whom He made and placed him in Paradise to cultivate him (that is, to work in him) and to guard him.°°
CHAPTER 13
Why man was forbidden to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2.16-17).
28. And the Lord God commanded Adam, saying, "You may eat of every tree that 1s in Paradise, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. In the day that you eat of it you shall die."'?° If this tree from which man was forbidden by God to eat were an evil thing, it would seem that it was from the very nature of this evil thing that he received a deadly poison. But all the trees in Paradise were good, having been planted by God, who made all things very good,'! and there was no evil substance there because there is no evil substance anywhere"? (a point I shall discuss at greater length, God willing, when I take up the question of the serpent'?), The man, therefore, was forbidden to touch that tree, which was not evil, so that the observance of the command in itself would be a good for him and its violation an evil.
29. There could not have been any more apt or cogent way of teaching that disobedience alone is a great evil, when man was found guilty of iniquity because he touched a thing against a prohibition, although if he had not been prohibited and had touched it he certainly would not have sinned.
For when some one says, for example, "Do not touch this plant," if it is poisonous and means death for the one who touches it, death will surely come to a man who defies the command.