Subject: Did Adam / Eve know the meaning of evil |
Bible Note: Hi, CDBJ... Of this verse (Gen 3:22), John Gill writes, "is generally understood as an irony or sarcasm at man's deception by Satan, who promised man, and he expected to be as gods, knowing good and evil; behold the man, see how much like a god he looks, with his coat of skin upon his back, filled with shame and confusion for his folly, and dejected under a sense of what he had lost, and in a view of what he was sentenced to; yet must be understood not as rejoicing in man's misery, and insulting over him in it, but in order the more to convince him of his folly, and the more to humble him, and bring him to a more open repentance for affecting what he did, and giving credit to the devil in it: though I rather think they are seriously spoken, since this was after man was brought to a sense of the evil he committed, and to repentance for it, and had had the promised seed revealed to him as a Saviour, and, as an emblem of justification and salvation by him, was clothed with garments provided by God himself." On the other hand, Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown write, "not spoken in irony as is generally supposed, but in deep compassion. The words should be rendered, 'Behold, what has become [by sin] of the man who was as one of us'! Formed, at first, in our image to know good and evil--how sad his condition now." I'm generally more comfortable with Gill, however. In Him, Doc |