Chapter One
The Knowledge of
Good and Evil

The opening chapters of Genesis contain foundational and consequential events. We encounter the truth that God is the Creator, who used nothing to create everything. He is the one who speaks light, parts water, fills land, and declares things "good." We read of an ordered world. Evening and morning are followed by another evening and morning, and so on to this very day.

As the story progresses, the biblical author tells of a plot to undermine God's good design, to bring havoc into his good world. Lies echo in sacred space, and image bearers choose folly instead of wisdom.

Order in the World

In Genesis 1:26, God says, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." God made humans male and female (Gen 1:27), and he blessed them with the instruction, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth" (Gen 1:28).

The language in Genesis 1:28 echoes Genesis 1:26, which means that part of being an image bearer is representing God's rule in the world. It is the task of exercising dominion, of subduing creation. Like an ancient Near Eastern king might install his royal image in a land to claim it for his name and realm, God has placed his royal images in the world he has made.1 Placing image bearers in his world is a signal of his divine ownership, and at the same time, being an image bearer involves subduing the world owned by God.

God's creation in Genesis 1, and his task to his image bearers in Genesis 1:28, brims with order and design. As Proverbs 3:19-20 says, "The LORD by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens; by his knowledge the deeps broke open, and the clouds drop down the dew." He makes light and separates it from darkness (Gen 1:4). He separates waters (Gen 1:9). He brings forth land (Gen 1:9-10) from the waters, and on it he forms plants and fruit trees (Gen 1:11-12). A rhythm of "evening and morning" moves from one day to the next.

The Lord causes living creatures to fill the waters and the skies (Gen 1:20). He commands the living creatures, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth" (Gen 1:22). This language in Genesis 1:22 echoes in the commission to image bearers in Genesis 1:26 and Genesis 1:28. But there is a crucial difference. While the animals will procreate, they will not have dominion over God's image bearers. Only humankind exists in the image of God, and only God's image bearers will subdue the created order. Desmond Alexander is right: "Through commissioning human beings to govern all land animals, birds and fish, God sets them apart from all other creatures and gives them a royal status."2

Reflecting on the events and movement throughout Genesis 1, we notice order and design. We see human beings as the climax of God's creative work, and we read of these image bearers receiving the commission to exercise dominion and to subdue creatures and creation. Since God is the author of creation and the supreme authority in the world, whatever he says is good. His commands direct his image bearers in what is good. The goodness of divine commands derives from the goodness of divine character.

How does wisdom factor into all this? Submission to our sovereign and good Creator is good and thus wise. If God has ordered the world in a certain way, and if he has given commands that direct the hearts and lives of his image bearers in a certain way, then defying God's design is foolishness. Wisdom would involve living according to God's design and commands, and foolishness would involve living contrary to them.

A Forbidden Tree

When God makes his image bearers, he makes Adam first. He places the man in the garden (Gen 2:8), and in the midst of this garden are two trees. Plenty of trees were pleasing to the sight and good for food, but two trees are distinct: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The Lord puts Adam in the garden to work it and keep it (Gen 2:15)-a pair of verbs that, when occurring together later in the Pentateuch, connect to priestly activity (Num 3:7-8; 8:26; 18:5-6).3 More than a farmer, Adam is a priest in Eden. He is to work (or serve) the sacred space and keep (or guard) the vicinity.

A prohibition informs Adam about the trees in the garden. The Lord says, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" (Gen 2:16-17). One tree is off limits. And the prohibition comes with a consequence, a promise of something Adam does not have experience with: death.

The very name of the forbidden tree-"the tree of the knowledge of good and evil"-invokes terms we associate with wisdom. The wise discern between good and evil. Would image bearers not be helped by knowing good and evil so that they could love the former and abhor the latter?

While the prohibition is a serious command, we would be overreading it if we were to conclude that the tree itself was bad or evil. God did not place an evil tree next to a good tree ("the tree of life") in the garden. Instead, everything God made was good. Perhaps the prohibition would only persist for a period of growth and testing, where God's image bearers would learn to trust the Lord and demonstrate obedience. Perhaps God would have eventually permitted his people to eat from this tree that had been for a time forbidden by him. If some kind of probationary period was in view, then trusting the Lord's prohibition would involve growth in wisdom, and this growth would lead to eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil at the appointed time. Even if such eating was possible at a later and divinely revealed time, the label of the tree might designate it as a judgment tree. "In this respect," says G. K. Beale, "the tree in Eden seems to have functioned as a judgment tree, the place where Adam should have gone to 'discern between good and evil' and, thus, where he should have judged the serpent as evil and pronounced judgment on it, as it entered the garden."4

In fact, let's talk about that serpent.

Disorder in the Garden

Near the end of Genesis 2, the Lord makes the woman and brings her to the man (Gen 2:20-23). As male and female, they would fulfill the commission to be fruitful and multiply, and they would subdue God's creatures and creation because they-and not the animals in the sky or land or waters-existed as image bearers.

It is clear in the exchange between the woman and the serpent in Genesis 3 that she is already aware of the forbidden tree as well as the consequence if someone eats from it. Either the Lord told her directly or Adam told her directly, but the biblical narrative does not report how or when she knew.

At the beginning of Genesis 3, we read of a serpent in the garden of God. Here is a creeping thing, the likes of which we have read about in Genesis 1:25 ("everything that creeps on the ground"). Here, then, is a thing to subdue. So we wait to see whether an exercise of dominion is in store. But before that outcome is clear, we read a description: "the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field" (Gen 3:1). The language of craftiness is about shrewdness, and shrewdness is related to the concept of wisdom. Clearly the serpent is not wise in a God-honoring sense. But the serpent is clever and knows how to use words. The serpent manipulates, deceives, and tempts.

The serpent engages the woman with a question: "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" (Gen 3:1). If we recall the specifics of God's prohibition from Genesis 2:16-17, we realize that the serpent is distorting what God said. The serpent is portraying God as someone who created all these trees and who then denied them to his people. The serpent is telling a lie that distorts God's character and intent.

She corrects the serpent and says, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die'" (Gen 3:2-3). The language of "touch" is not in the original command (Gen 2:16-17), so some interpreters have concluded that she has wrongfully added to God's words. Others suspect that she says "touch" because touching the fruit would be necessary in order to eat it, and thus her words would be reasonable and not necessarily a distortion of God's command. Perhaps significant in this discussion is that neither in Genesis 3, nor in any later biblical passage, is there an indictment against the woman for what she says in Genesis 3:2-3 to the serpent.

What should stand out for the reader is the serpent's response in Genesis 3:4-5: "You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and...