Two Trees: Two Fates:
Have you ever wondered exactly what Eve ate?
Many people have thoughts about the tree of Life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The questions are these:
If the tree was like any other tree why didn’t she eat apples from another tree?
- Why didn’t they want to eat from the tree of life? God never told them not to eat it.
Why did the fruit attract Eve so much as good to the eyes?
How many fruits are there in the world?
What does the Bible say about the two trees? Let’s take a good look:
The Tree of the knowledge if good and evil:
The Bible does not say what kind of fruit but we know this particular tree did have some kind of fruit upon it.
Before the Bible was translated into English, it was originally written in the Hebrew language.
In 1534, the Old Testament was translated in Latin. The idea that Eve ate from an apple could be that in the Latin Vulgate, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil written in Latin you found that evil bore the Latin word “mali” which the word apple in Latin in other places in the Bible was called “mala” or “malum” Perhaps this similarity made people think ‘apple’ however in the original Hebrew the words were not even close. Evil in Hebrew is rah apples in Proverbs and Song of Solomon is tappuwach.
No where in the Bible does it say that the forbidden fruit was an apple. But let’s think about this and make sense of the story to conclude this:
According to the Bible in Genesis chapter 2, Eve saw the tree was:
- Good for food,
- Pleasant to the eyes
- A tree to be desired to make one wise
So this tree had different qualities than all the other trees, otherwise she would have eaten of another apple tree and thought nothing of this particular apple tree.
It is not healthy to ever doubt the Bible, but it is also not healthy to add to the Bible or to assume things about the Bible that it does not say. So what kind of fruit? We do not know, but one thing is sure. It must have been beautiful and attractive that she so wanted to eat.
Two Trees: Two Fates
The one tree had a fate to open Adam and Eve’s eyes to the evil and good all around them. It bore the knowledge that both were present in the world. God wanted them to remain ignorant to that.
I wonder how long they were in the garden with the serpent never realizing his evil intent to tempt Eve against God. The serpent could have been a good friend to them. And unlike other myths, the serpent was not a snake, he did not crawl on his belly. (Afterward, God cursed him to walk on his belly Gen 3) because he was the cause of the deception.
This one tree put a curse upon mankind. But God put it there on purpose. He wasn’t going to make their free will impossible. And gave both of them a choice to choose for themselves which way they wanted to go. He wanted mankind to have a free will to love him; he didn’t want to make man love or appreciate him. Nor did he want man to live life ignorantly like puppets. So the second tree that he made was the tree of life and the Bible give us more information about the tree that is fantastic in the New Jerusalem:
Revelation 22:2 “In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”
This tree had amazing traits producing a different kind of fruit every month. We don’t have trees like that around us. The interesting thing is that Adam and Eve never ate of this Tree of Life even though it was in the Garden with them:
“And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” Gen 2:9 The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not said how many kinds of fruits, what color, if it was like a grape, pear, berry, etc. All we know is it was a fruit.
The Tree of Life if they had eaten would have given them everlasting life. It sounds like a fairy tale because the media has taken ideas of this nature and turned cartoons into magical realities. The truth is only God can have the power to create everlasting life, or to make something out of nothing. His hope I am sure was that they ate of the tree of life and lived perfectly forever but that is not what happened.
When Adam and Eve ate the fruit God told them not to, it cursed them to die. Death was not only a winding down of their health, it also meant that their souls had to go somewhere. Then God realized that man could not stay in the garden where the tree of life was because they would eat and live forever in a sinful condition! That would be awful! That would mean they would live forever with a disease, with anger, with imperfections, with an imperfect catastrophic world around them! That was not what he wanted either. So he created death for deliverance from those things and to give them a new life if they trusted in His deliverance. (Jesus)
This is what God did:
 Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
These two trees if combined would have been fatal! Wow I am glad Eve did not eat of the Tree of Life! We would be forever cursed upon earth with no death no matter how badly we wanted delivered! So God created Death to deliver us from this present evil world. I am glad that also he made a way that we didn’t have to pay for our sins in Hell forever after we died now that is what is amazing!