Both the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil represent knowledge. The tree of life is the knowledge that God has allocated for man: the knowledge of the Divine requirements of justice the fulfillment of which leads to life. The tree of knowledge represents the knowledge that God has refused to man. The attempt to obtain it ends with sin. Adam and Eve could eat in Eden from the tree of life without any obstacles - following the Divine commandments, they would live endlessly. Our ancestors, however, not only just wanted to live, but they wanted to find out what the essence of life was. To this end, Eve reached for the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Good is everything that leads to life; everything that leads to death is evil. So what did Eve do to gain knowledge that was forbidden - the knowledge of the essence of life: she reached for life (because Jesus in his redemptive sacrifice is pictured in the Bible as a lamb, one can guess that it was a lamb that fell victim in Eden).
Eve kills the lamb because she is deceived: the opponent convinces her that if she discovers the essence of life, she will never die, but she will be like God - she will be able to generate new life, which will cause herself to be immortal. Adam's motivation is completely different. Adam knows that he became one body with his wife. When he sees that she has committed sin, he is convinced that the consequence in the form of death will also befall him. Adam probably reasons that sticking to God's commandment will not help him in this situation. The only thing that can save him is to find out what the essence of life is so that he can preserve it by his own means. To this end, Adam eats from the same fruit from which Eve has just eaten and kills. The result of breaking God's commandment, however, is not the desired knowledge, but the opening of the eyes - our ancestors see that they are naked. The ease with which they manage to take away the life of the lamb makes them aware that they can also easily lose their lives.
For this reason, they start to panic when they hear the steps of God walking around the garden. God is a spirit, so he doesn't have to take steps to move. Adam and Eve hear some sounds - the sounds of something they can't see, but what can become a deadly threat to them, since they have already realized their 'nakedness'. Since God has foreseen death for the consumption of the forbidden fruit, the sounds can be a signal of God approaching - the approaching of death as a punishment for the committed sin. Then our ancestors embark on explaining to God why they have trespassed His law. Eve's explanation is actually a description of what happened. The explanation provided by Adam is more interesting, not only because the Bible makes him the culprit, but also because of the reasons with which he justifies himself. Well, a woman is guilty because she first reached for the fruit, and you, Lord God, because you gave me this woman. So, Adam sees himself as a participant in a tragic situation from which he had no way out because death awaited him regardless of his own actions.
The original sin in itself is an act of disobedience. The reason that brought Adam to sin, i.e. voluntary and conscious violation of God's law, is twofold. First of all, Adam is not ready to pay the price of life for sticking to the commandment of God. He does not trust God and His reassurance that obedience brings life. Rather, he prefers to break the commandment, reaching for the fruit in the hope of finding something that will allow him to save his life. Second, Adam acts in error - if he had not reached for the fruit, the sin would not have been committed. The fact that God made him one body with his wife did not mean that Adam would be punished for her disobedience. From this moment on, all of the Bible's teaching shows how this twofold cause of sin can be removed so that man can return to the community with God.
Related themes:
- thematic lectures: Ethics in the Bible, Evil and the existence of Satan