Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/197



which it originally conveyed from those which it suggested to more advanced theological speculation.

(1) We observe, in the first place, that the ætiological motive is strongly marked throughout. The story gives an explanation of many of the facts of universal experience,—the bond between man and wife (2$24$), the sense of shame which accompanies adolescence (3$7$), the use of clothing (3$21$), the instinctive antipathy to serpents (3$15$). But chiefly it seeks the key to the darker side of human existence as seen in a simple agricultural state of society,—the hard toil of the husbandman, the birth-pangs of the woman, and her subjection to the man. These are evils which the author feels to be contrary to the ideal of human nature, and to the intention of a good God. They are results of a curse justly incurred by transgression, a curse pronounced before history began, and shadowing, rather than crushing, human life always and everywhere. It is doubtful if death be included in the effects of the curse. In v.$19$ it is spoken of as the natural fate of a being made from the earth; in v.$22$ it follows from being excluded from the tree of life. Man was capable of immortality, but not by nature immortal; and God did not mean that he should attain immortality. The death threatened in 2$17$ is immediate death; and to assume that the death which actually ensues is the exaction of that deferred penalty, is perhaps to go beyond the intention of the writer. Nor does it appear that the narrative seeks to account for the origin of sin. It describes what was, no doubt, the first sin; but it describe it as something intelligible, not needing explanation, not a mystery like the instinct of shame or the possession of knowledge, which are produced by eating the fruit of the tree.

(2) Amongst other things which distinguish man's present from his original state, is the possession of a certain kind of knowledge which was acquired by eating the forbidden fruit. This brings us to the most difficult question which the narrative presents: what is meant by the knowledge of good and evil? Keeping in mind the possibility that the two recensions may represent different conceptions, our data are these: In 3$39$ knowledge of good and evil is an attainment which (a)