והנחש היה ערום. The serpent was sly. First we must understand why the Torah told us that the serpent was so sly.

I have also tried to find what precise slyness the serpent demonstrated in this episode and have only been able to find elements of רשעות, wickedness.

The matter becomes clearer, however, when one examines what the serpent intended to achieve with the words אף כי אמר אלוקים לא תאכלו מכל עץ הגן, "even though G'd said not to eat from any of the trees of the garden." Since we know that these words were totally untrue, we would have considered the serpent as feeble-minded. The Torah therefore has to preface the account by pointing out that these words were carefully calculated, that the serpent was exceedingly sly. Any creature which is not exceedingly sly would most certainly not have succeeded in seducing a G'd-fearing woman such as Eve.

The serpent concentrated on three subjects and by combining them achieved its purpose.

1. The serpent told Eve that by not eating from the tree of knowledge she would remain for all intents and purposes as if she had not eaten either from any of the other trees. The serpent indicated that the fruits of the other trees were totally inferior when compared to the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The word אף was to indicate that Eve was to view the situation as if G'd had also forbidden all the other trees. The serpent's intent was to heighten Eve's desire to taste the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The more its virtues were extolled, the more intense the curiosity to test that statement. At the same time the serpent hoped to diminish Eve's interest in the other trees. It is characteristic of the workings of the evil urge to exaggerate one's expectations of the forbidden and to denigrate the value of that which is permitted.

2. The serpent pretended to teach Eve a halachah, thus creating the impression that it was very knowledgeable and on G'd's wavelength. It told Eve that G'd had first planted the tree of knowledge and had then used its shoots to plant all the other trees in the garden. This was part of the seduction. Once the original tree is out of bounds the other trees are automatically forbidden inasmuch as they are "earthed" branches of the original tree (compare Orlah chapter 1,5 where it is taught that such a branch is considered as a new plant for the purpose of calculating the three years of the ערלה prohibition). The serpent's argument therefore was that though G'd had specifically prohibited only the fruit of the tree of knowledge, the fruit of the other trees were out of bounds by reason of the laws governing "earthed" branches. [The author supplies additional halachic sources, which I do not feel are relevant. Ed.] At any rate the meaning of אף כי אמר אלוקים would have to be translated as though G'd said: "if you accept that commandment" you must automatically also accept its extension as far as the other trees are concerned because the three years required until the new trees are considered as no longer drawing on the original tree have not yet expired.

3. The word אף referred to the fact that G'd had not commanded Eve anything directly, He had only commanded her husband. The serpent said that it was a witness to the fact that G'd had indeed forbidden the eating of the fruit of any of the trees. The serpent had two things in mind by making that statement. A) If Eve were to believe it, the serpent could then point to the illogical nature of such a prohibition which would deny man everything to be found in the garden. The way for rebellion against G'd would then have been paved. B) To provoke a confrontation with Adam who had told Eve that G'd had only forbidden the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The serpent wanted that Adam's testimony be considered as having been refuted. We find an interesting statement by the school of Shammai in Ediyot 4,11. When two pairs of witnesses testify against an individual, the first pair claiming he had made a vow comprising two periods of abstention from wine, etc, whereas the other pair testfied that the vow involved five such periods, the school of Shammai considers this as an example of conflicting testimony. As a result the individual would not be held liable for anything on the basis of this testimony. The school of Hillel holds that inasmuch as both pairs of witnesses are agreed concerning at least two periods of נזירות, abstention from wine, etc., the person testified against is guilty if he failed to honour that part of his vow. A similar disagreement is discussed in the Talmud Sanhedrin except that there only one pair of witnesses testified, one of them testifying to a vow concerning two periods, the other claiming that the vow comprised five periods. The serpent reasoned that since there were only two witnesses, i.e. Adam and the serpent, Adam having testified to a single tree being forbidden whereas the serpent testified that all trees were forbidden the halachah should be based on the school of Shammai, i.e. the testimony was void, and as a result Eve could not be held culpable for eating from the tree of knowledge. After having written this down, I found that the author of Tikkuney HaZohar section 59 agrees with me. The author states that the serpent violated the commandment not to testify falsely by saying that G'd had forbidden all the fruit of all the trees in the garden. It is characteristic of Satan to plant lies in the minds of people, thus creating false images and beliefs in their hearts. Sometimes Satan convinces man that the sin he is planning is inevitable so that he might as well not feel badly about committing it. This is the slyest way of all to seduce people into committing a sin.

The reason that G'd created such a seducer in this world seeing He has our best interests at heart is to increase the reward we will qualify for if we made a successful effort to resist all forms of temptation.

ויאמר אל האשה, he said to Eve, etc. The serpent spoke in the kind of hissing that is characteristic of its species. The Torah does not mean to give the impression that the serpent was able to speak like humans do. Prior to the sin, man was able to comprehend the language of the animals, even the conversation carried on by the inert parts of nature. Every creature G'd created was equipped with a means of expressing itself to enable it to praise its Creator. Our sages base this on Proverbs 16,6: כל פעל השם למענהו, "G'd has made everything for His sake." Some of our sages have composed books in which they translate the songs of the animals and birds. Some of our greatest scholars were able to to understand the various sounds made by the animals, especially a man such as Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai. If the latter was able to understand the parables of the foxes (compare Sukkah 25), Adam, who was a direct creation of G'd, was certainly able to.

ותאמר האשה. Eve said, etc. Eve answered the serpent very intelligently, addressing all the three points which we described the serpent as having made. Concerning the first argument that all the trees were forbidden, Eve said that this was not so, that only the tree in the centre of the garden was prohibited. Concerning the argument that all the other trees were really earthed branches of the tree of knowledge she argued that this was quite irrelevant. It might have been relevant if G'd had not specifically permitted the fruit of all the other trees. There was therefore absolutely no sense in denying oneself something G'd had specifically permitted. She refused to accept the testimony of the serpent because it contradicted the testimony of her own husband. She argued along the lines of the school of Hillel, i.e. the common denominator between what the serpent had declared as out of bounds and what her husband had declared as out of bounds was only the tree of knowledge. Therefore, that tree and its fruit was forbidden; the other trees were permitted since no valid testimony existed that would deny them to her.

As to the argument that the tree was so far superior to all the other trees etc., Eve said she thought differently. The tree was inferior; G'd had forbidden it because eating from it would bring on death, the clearest proof that it was inferior to the other trees. Eve told the serpent that all of G'd's commandments were intended for man's benefit, not in order to cause him harm or damage. All the many fruit trees in the garden were proof that G'd had laboured to present man with a beautiful and enjoyable universe. As far as the forbidden tree of knowledge was concerned, G'd had only forbidden its harmful part, i.e. its fruit. Eve argued correctly. This is the meaning of her words: "from the trees of the garden we may eat. She claimed that this was proof that G'd has our best interests at heart. She reasoned that this in turn proved that G'd was concerned to protect man against harmful influences. Eve added that G'd said: "do not touch it," although G'd is not on record as having said this. She considered the prohibition to touch the tree a logical extension of G'd's concern that His creatures should not come to any harm. It is also possible that at the time Adam had told her not to eat from that tree he had added the warning not to touch it as an additional safeguard because he realised that its fruit contained a deadly poison.

She told the serpent further that even if it were true that the tree of knowledge was the most superior of all the trees, the fact remained that G'd had said not to eat from it on pain of death. How could one ignore such a warning?! Perhaps she added that the tree was not to be touched for fear that some oil on the outside of the fruit would serve as nutrient for her skin if it came into contact with it. Such bodily contact might be just as forbidden as oiling one's skin is prohibited on the Day of Atonement as part of denying oneself food and drink (based on Pessachim 21). Eve tried to point out that the advantages the tree seemed to offer were outweighed by its disadvantages. As a result the tree was actually the most inferior of all the trees in the garden.

At this point Eve completely rejected the serpent's attempt to convince her to eat from the fruit of that tree. She decided that it was her and her husband's duty to keep their distance from that tree.

ויאמר הנחש…לא מות תמותון. The serpent said: "You will most certainly not die." The reason the serpent repeated the reference to death was to counter Eve's fears that the tree itself was lethal, or that even if it were not harmful at all, G'd would punish them with death for disobeyimg Him. The serpent claimed that neither natural nor judicial death would result from contact with the tree or its fruit. Assuming that the serpent was right, this in turn raises the question of why G'd had forbidden the fruit of that tree? The serpent had to make such a prohibition sound plausible. This is why it continued that G'd was aware that as soon as man ate from that tree he would become a real competitor to G'd, i.e. knowing what is good and what is harmful. This argument was pure blasphemy. The only reason that the wicked serpent was able to employ such an argument was that its creation had preceded that of man. The serpent was able to use its senior status in the history of creation to claim that it was privy to matters that Adam and Eve could not have been privy to. He also argued that the reason he (the serpent) had been denied entry to גן עדן was that entry had been permitted only to those who were not privy to the secret of the tree of knowledge and what it represented. It claimed that by preventing the serpent from entering the garden G'd had wanted to preserve the secret of the power that tree would impart to those who ate from it. According to the serpent, once Eve would eat from that tree she would no longer be afraid of G'd, and G'd would no longer exercise any control over her. The use of such an argument was idolatrous. According to our halachah idolatry is punishable even when it is merely an intellectual conviction (Berachot 12).

According to Bereshit Rabbah 19,3 there is another reason that the serpent used the expression מות תמות. The serpent pushed Eve against the tree and "proved" that touching the tree was not lethal- as Eve had claimed. It argued that just as touching the tree had not resulted in death, neither would eating from its fruit. We must examine this so-called "proof." If we accept that Eve had convinced herself that contact with the tree would have fatal consequences because of its very nature, the fact that her contact with the tree had proved harmless should have convinced her of the tree's harmlessness. There was therefore no reason to be afraid to eat from it. Alternatively, if Eve's fear of touching the tree were based on her belief that G'd had outlawed both eating from the tree and touching it, she now had "proof" that this was not so because nothing had happened to her after she had touched the tree. We do not consider this in the nature of any "proof," seeing that G'd's punishment did not have to be meted out immediately. We therefore prefer the explanation we offered previously that the serpent wanted to "prove" to Eve that the tree itself was quite harmless.

If you were to ask why G'd would have created a tree that was poisonous at all, the answer is -as in many such instances- that the greater the physical and spiritual effort to overcome such potential impediments to our faith, the greater the reward which is stored up in heaven for such acts of faith, a reward to be consumed by us in the Hereafter. This concept is phrased in Avot 5,26: לפום צערא אגרא, as "the reward is commensurate with the effort expended." Had G'd imposed strict limits on the power of the seducer to entice us, overcoming him would not have amounted to much. The Zohar illustrates this principle by the example of a father who wanted to test his son's moral fibre and who instructed a beautiful harlot to use all her wiles to seduce him. At the same time he had instructed the son to keep his distance from the harlot in question.

ותרא האשה כי טוב העץ. Eve saw that the tree was good. The first problem is how could one judge what is good to eat by merely looking at it? Another question is why the Torah describes a feeling of the mouth before describing the effect on the eye? The verse should have read: "she saw that the tree was a beautiful sight and that it was good as food," in that order. Furthermore, whence did Eve know that the tree was apt to add to her perceptive powers, i.e. להשכיל? If the Torah merely intended to tell us that the serpents's description of the tree had been accurate, why describe the woman as seeing something that she did not see? Also why did the Torah add two superfluous words הוא, and העץ a second time? If the repetition of the word is justified, why did the Torah not also write the word העץ after the word תאוה?

The verse describes the way in which Eve was snared, and how she eventually became willing to listen to her seducer. When you examine Eve's earlier words, you will find that she said: "and from the fruit of the tree in the center of the garden, G'd' said "do not eat." She had expressed her conviction that only the fruit of the tree was forbidden, that the trunk, the branches, etc., were permitted. She may have arrived at that conviction for one of two reasons. 1) Adam had commanded her in those very words. 2) Though Adam had mentioned only the tree without specifying its fruit, etc., she reasoned that there would have been no point in forbidding something that anyways was not food, such as the trunk, the branches, and the leaves. We have pointed out earlier that whereas the other trees did not taste similar to their fruit, the tree of knowledge was the exception, its trunk, etc. being just as edible as its fruit. We must therefore assume that Eve had already tasted the tree itself, not having considered it as forbidden. She also applied the prohibition to touch it as applicable only to its fruit, not to the trunk, etc. At any rate, Eve had already experienced the taste of the tree's trunk and nothing had happened. Alternatively, she may have discounted the prohibition to touch the tree knowing that this was not a direct command from G'd Himself and would not lead to death.

Having tasted from the tree itself, and having experienced that its nature was different from all the other trees, she decided to take a closer look at the fruit of that tree. It was then that she discovered that the fruit exerted a powerful visual attraction; the word הוא refers back to the word פרי, fruit. It could not refer to the word העץ, the tree, as this would be unnecessary. It would have sufficed to say וכי תאוה לעינים, if it were merely a reference to the tree. The word העץ is needed in the sequence ונחמד העץ לעינים because the subject matter had changed from the fruit to the tree. The knowledge of the nature of the tree had been based on her sense of taste, whereas her perception of the nature of the fruit was based only on her sense of sight. The Torah explains that Eve's purpose in eating of the fruit was to broaden her powers of perception. At this point Eve believed that the serpent had spoken truthfully when it claimed that as a result of eating from the fruit of that tree she would gain greater insights, and that G'd had forbidden the fruit only in order to prevent her from gaining the insight which would make her equal to G'd. The Torah emphasises that "she took from its fruit," as she had already tasted the trunk. We have now completed answering the various questions we raised about this verse. Eve gave to her husband from this fruit out of her love for him; she wanted him to share her new insights so that he too would become G'd-like.

I have seen it said in defence of Eve that her sin was not so serious as she could not imagine that G'd had created a being whose sole purpose it was to test man's love for G'd by having Satan masquerade within it to try and mislead man. If such a thought had even occurred to Eve she would never have engaged in a dialogue with the serpent. She would have acted just like the righteous nowadays who do not listen to or engage in disputes with tempters however slick-tongued they may be in making something sinful look desirable. The righteous of our time are not so naive; this is why they can withstand the wiles of Satan. Poor innocent Eve did not have their advantage and that is why she fell victim to the seductive tactics of the serpent (Satan). She had furthermore been mislead by the taste of the tree itself, something she thought of as permitted. She also did not possess as analytical a mind as that of a man, else she would have been able to resist the lure to eat from the fruit of that tree. Had she not first erred in believing that the tree itself was pemitted to eat from, she never would have considered eating from the fruit as well.

Another reason that may have accounted for Eve falling an easy victim to Satan's lure was that she considered it to have been a mistake to accept the prohibition not to eat from the tree. When she accepted the commandment she had not thought that it would be so difficult to observe. Originally the tree had not appeared to her as sufficiently desirable to pose a threat to her obedience to G'd's command. We find a parallel to such considerations when we consider how many covenants G'd concluded with the Jewish people to ensure that they would not go back on their commitment to observe the Torah. G'd did not consider it sufficient to just give the commandments to the Jewish people without creating a legal device to make the commitment irrevocable. Our sages (Shabbat 85 based on Exodus 19,17) tell us that at Mount Sinai G'd had threatened to kill the Jewish people unless they embraced the Torah. He subsequently reinforced the validity of their acceptance by making them swear an oath. Our rabbis go so far as to describe the renewed acceptance by the Jewish people of the Torah at the time of Mordechai as the only free acceptance of G'd's laws, describing the original acceptance as having occcurred under conditions of duress and therefore legally not valid (Shabbat 88). Inasmuch as Eve had not been sworn to observe the commandment not to eat from the tree she was not really obligated to do so. Even though she had orally accepted the commandment and such acceptance is comparable to the uttering of a vow, it is in the category of a vow erroneously entered into, something that can be annulled retroactively (compare Nedarim 66). The exact text in the Talmud is as follows: If someone undertakes not to drink wine because the wine is bad for his digestion, and he is informed that aged wine is good for his digestion, his vow is annulled and he may drink any kind of wine. We face a similar situation here. When Eve had accepted G'd's commandment prior to having become conscious of the powerful attraction exerted on her by this tree she had been quite sincere. However, once she noticed the powerful pull which the fruit of that tree exerted on her she regretted having undertaken to honour the commandment not to eat from it.

We therefore have two causes that helped to mislead Eve. The reason she may have thought that only the fruit of the tree was forbidden was because her husband had not given her precise instructions. Had her husband told her that G'd had said: "You may eat from all the trees of the garden, but from the tree of knowledge in the centre of the garden you must not eat," she would never have considered the trunk as permissible, and the fact that neither eating from it nor touching it had resulted in any harm to her would not have served as a verification of the serpent's argument. Eve's not having been aware of the attractive nature of the tree was also Adam's fault. He had not told her that G'd had described the tree as the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He had only told her not to eat from the tree in the middle of the garden, without a reference to its special nature. Had Eve been aware that the tree was of such special significance the serpent could not have tricked her, and she herself would have been unable to invoke her lack of knowledge as a reason to revoke her acceptance of G'd's command not to eat from it.

None of the causes of the sin can be attributed to G'd, all were due to man's inadequacy, i.e. both Adam's and Eve's.

For all we know, Adam may not have been aware that the trunk of the tree of knowledge was edible. He had only tasted the other trees and found invariably that their trunks were not edible. He did not realise that the earth had conformed with G'd's instructions to the letter when it produced the tree of knowledge. The manner in which the Torah describes Eve's realisation of the tree's properties suggests that she did not have an inkling previously that this tree had such special features.

ותפקחנה עיני שניהם. The eyes of both of them were opened. We have explained on 2,25 that sin caused man to become aware of his nudity, and that the awareness in turn results in a feeling of shame. This is what this verse is all about. Each of them was ashamed, one of the other. The use of the words ותפקחנה עיני…reflects the teaching of our sages that "one does not commit a sin unless one's mental eyes had first been blinded." Isaiah 42, 18 speaks about והעורים הביטו לראות, "blind ones, look up and see!" Surely the prophet must have referred to the wicked whose mental eyes had been blinded. Once the temporary mental blindness caused by the decision to sin had passed and the seducer had departed, they became aware of their nudity. Satan is also referred to as personifying darkness, someone who blinds people's eyes. The nudity referred to here is not merely lack of ordinary clothing, but the removal of an aura of holiness which had served them thus far in lieu of clothing in the accepted sense of the word. It is characteristic of a wicked person that after he has committed an abominable act he becomes aware that what he did was an abomination.

וישמעו את קול השם They heard the voice of G'd. The reason the Torah describes the direction G'd's voice took, i.e. לרוח היום, was to enable them to find a place to "hide" from G'd. In this instance G'd's voice travelled westwards, parallel to the sun, whereas Adam and Eve were in the centre of the garden.

ויאמר לו איכה? He said to him: "Where are you?" The meaning is: Why do you hide yourself and do not appear before Me? Adam replied that he was afraid because he considered himself naked, and as it is forbidden to stand naked in front of a Torah scroll it certainly is unseemly to appear before G'd in such a state. According to our exegesis, he meant they had become aware of their reduced stature. Their sin had made them aware of the loss of their aura of holiness, hence their nakedness. They could not have referred to actual nudity as the Torah already reported that they sewed together fig-leaves to serve as clothing.

ויאמר מי הגיד לך כי עירום אתה, He said: "Who has told you that you are naked?" G'd meant: "what is different now? You stood before Me previously without feeling naked?" The new knowledge you display cannot have originated within you. It must have been provided by an external source. G'd therefore wanted to know: "Who has told you?" According to our exegesis that the feeling was generated internally, i.e. a result of the sin and the loss of the aura of holiness, we must understand the question as merely rhetorical. G'd did not want to shame man too much, therefore He Himself supplied the answer that Adam might have eaten from the forbidden tree, and the act of eating revealed this knowledge to him.

By the reference to the tree as opposed to the fruit, the verse once more stresses that the trunk too was forbidden.

ויאמר האדם האשה אשר נתת עמדי. Adam said: "The woman You put with me." The manner of Adam's reply was so unseemly that one would not expect him to use it vis-a-vis the least important human being, certainly not when addressing the King of Kings. Besides, when Adam said: "she gave me from the tree, and I ate," why did he add the unnecessary words "from the tree?" We would all have understood that he referred to said tree without his repeating this. Eve did not bother to say that it was the tree she ate from.

Apparently Adam did not know exactly what happened except that Eve had placed something before him and he had eaten without examining it. He had not felt the need to ask her what it was she had placed before him seeing that the whole earth was his to enjoy. He added "which You put with me" in justification for not having enquired where the fruit had come from. It was as if he had said to G'd that since G'd had supplied the woman, he, Adam, had no reason to be suspicious about her motives. After all, nothing evil originates in Heaven! Our sages have said: אין בודקין מן המזבח ולמעלה, "once something (a slaughtered animal) has arrived on the altar (having passed several stages of inspection on the way) there is no need to again check its suitability as a sacrifice." Adam argued that if the חזקה, the presumption of fitness of such an animal, is acceptable, then surely a woman supplied by G'd Himself need not be examined for blemishes.

When Adam said: "from the tree," he referred to a tree planted within the garden seeing all those trees had been planted by G'd Himself (2,8-9). When Adam spoke of "the tree," he did not refer to the tree of knowledge which G'd had referred to. He described his situation before he had eaten from the fruit Eve gave him. At that time he thought the fruit was from any of a number of trees. It was only after he had tasted the fruit that he became aware that this fruit must have been from the tree of knowledge. Adam's argument then was not nearly as outrageous as it appears at first glance. Although one might even argue that Adam said he ate merely from the tree and not from its fruit, and that eating from the tree had not been forbidden, such an argument is not tenable for a number of reasons.

As a result, Adam was merely a שוגג, an unintentional sinner. One might go further and claim that he was an innocent victim and thus not guilty at all. This would explain why G'd' did not curse Adam but only the earth. The truth is, however, that Adam acted carelessly in not accurately repeating G'd's command to Eve. He had mentioned only the fruit of the tree to Eve, not the prohibition of the tree itself. This inaccuracy paved the way for all the subsequent events.

ויאמר השם אלוקים אל האשה. The Lord G'd said to the woman. The only reason G'd asked Eve what she had done was to give her an opportunity to confess her sin against G'd. The confession would act as the cure for her newly contracted sickness. When she said that the serpent had seduced her this was both a confession and an explanation that her sin had not been intentional. I have explained earlier that Eve had been under the impression that it was permitted to eat from the trunk of the tree. She had also not realised that the serpent was a seducer. She confessed her error to her Creator.

ויאמר השם אלוקים אל הנחש. The Lord G'd said to the serpent. The serpent had caused three kinds of harm by its words. 1) It caused the withdrawal of the glory of G'd's light which had hovered over Adam and Eve as we explained previously. This is the real meaning of the כתנות אור, the garments of light. [this spelling is reported to have been found in the Torah scroll of Rabbi Meir. Ed.]. 2) It resulted in Adam and Eve both becoming mortal, losing their immortality in this world. This was the punishment G'd had threatened would result from eating of the tree of knowledge. 3) The serpent caused even man's limited life on this earth to be of an inferior quality, outside the confines of גן עדן.

G'd therefore punished the serpent separately concerning each one of these losses it had caused man. 1) G'd cursed the serpent because it deprived man of his blessing, i.e. the presence of G'd's glorious light. 2) G'd deprived the serpent of the legs it used to walk on because the serpent had deprived man of eternal life on earth. Prior to the sin the serpent possessed the kind of stature that enabled it to share all the advantages of the world with Adam. It would have been an honoured houseguest at Adam's all its life. As a result of its sin, co-existence of man and the serpent in this world became almost impossible. 3) The serpent was condemned to eat dust for having deprived Adam and Eve of the enjoyment of life in גן עדן. Our sages explain this to mean that the serpent does not enjoy any of its food, just as one does not enjoy eating dust (Yuma 75). G'd's words: כי עשית זאת, "because you have done this," which introduces the serpent's punishment, are a reminder that the serpent's words were considered its deeds.

ואיבה אשית בינך ובין האשה. And l shall place hatred between you and the woman. G'd applied the principle of גואל הדם, a relative avenging a killing who is permitted to kill the slayer without trial. This is so because the serpent's deed brought death to all of Eve's descendants. The nature of the revenge matches what the serpent had done. Humans will strike at the head of the serpents, seeing that the original serpent had initiated man's downfall and the head is the beginning of life, it is the area which is smitten by the angel of death. Whenever it attacks man, the serpent will aim at the heel because man in the end trailed, i.e. followed the advice of the serpent when sinning. The word "heel" may also simply be an allusion to the serpent's having lost its legs, being forced to move on its belly.

You may well ask how could the Torah in the same breath as allowing man to avenge himself on the serpent permit it to attack man's heel? What kind of penalty is it for the serpent to be allowed to continue harassing man? The answer is simply that the serpent could have retorted that no one forced Eve to listen to its advice. Our sages (Kidushin 42) have formulated this by asking rhetorically: "When the instructions of the teacher conflict with those of the disciple, whose instructions is one to follow?" If Eve had followed this simple piece of logic there would not have been any unfortunate developments as a result of the serpent's argument. The serpent therefore felt aggrieved that Eve's lack of logic had caused it permanent harm. There is an allusion as to how long this condition of enmity between man and the serpent will continue. As long as man, i.e. Israel, is ראש, deserving of the title "head" by performing G'd's commandments, it will prevail over the tempter called serpent and smash it. On the other hand, when Israel ignores G'd's commandments, the serpent will bite it because Israel has itself become like a heel instead of like a head.

אל האשה אמר. He (G'd) had said to the woman. G'd intended to make it clear that Eve would suffer three curses as retribution for the three features of the tree of knowledge she had wanted to enjoy. She had seen that the tree a) was good as food; b) a temptation for the eyes; and c) desirable to make one perceptive. G'd decreed that instead of enjoying the fruit of the tree she would suffer pains when producing her own fruit, i.e. her children. Regarding the temptation for her eyes Eve wanted to enjoy, G'd decreed that she would henceforth pine for her husband as a passive partner, her husband deciding if and when to indulge her desire. Her husband would always derive satisfaction from the mating process without a guarantee that her desire would be satisfied during union with her husband. Finally, instead of satisfying her desire to be G'd-like, she would be dominated not only by G'd but also by her husband.

ולאדם אמר. And G'd had said to Adam. We need to understand why G'd mentioned Adam's "listening to the voice of his wife;" It would have sufficed to say: "because you ate from the tree, etc.;" Besides, why did the Torah add the word "to the voice?" Could the Torah not simply have said "because you listened to your wife, etc.?" Having in mind that we explained that Adam had not been aware at the time he ate that the fruit he ate was from the tree of knowledge, it would not have been appropriate for the Torah to simply say: "because you ate from the tree, etc." since in fact he did not eat from the tree knowingly but inadvertently. The Torah therefore had to spell out that Adam's sin was accepting the words of his wife without checking them. As a result of his failure to investigate his wife's words more closely, he "ate from the tree." The reason the Torah refers to the "voice" of Adam's wife is to alert us to the fact that Adam was satisfied that it was his wife talking; he did not bother to analyse what she was saying. When she told him: "take and eat," this is what he did. He did not ask where the fruit came from. The Torah alludes once more to Adam's error in not giving Eve precise instructions when it says: "from the tree which I told you not to eat from." Adam had only told Eve not to eat from the fruit of the tree. The lack of adequate information at the time Adam relayed G'd's command to Eve was a major cause of the tragedy.

The reason G'd cursed both the earth and Eve but not Adam is due to the earth's failure on the third day of creation to produce trees exactly as G'd had commanded. Had the earth produced only trees whose trunk were edible, or only trees whose trunks were not edible, Eve could not have made the error she made. It was only because the tree of knowledge was different in this respect that made Adam's failure to warn her not to eat from this tree result in tragic consequences. G'd therefore cursed the earth as the cause of all that had happened. Since G'd expelled Adam from the garden and made him toil the unresponsive earth, Adam was punished for having accepted his wife's urgings without checking. He had greedily indulged his desire, and as a result he would forever more remain in a state of sadness that he could not earn his livelihood without hard work. He would now eat grass of the field in lieu of the fruit of the trees of the garden for which he did not have to toil. In future when he would have to labour to secure his food supply he would know exactly where it came from.

עד שובך אל האדמה, Until you will return to the soil, etc. The Torah gives two reasons why man would have to die. It would not have sufficed to explain the need for man to die, i.e. return to the folds of the earth merely because that had been his origin. After all, he had originated from earth before the sin and was not bound to return to it. Since man is made of dust, i.e. earth, he is part of it, or rather, he has made himself part of it through his sin. Had he not sinned, the holiness acquired by triumphing over temptation would have guaranteed that he did not have to return to his lowly origin. His body would have become so refined that it no longer would have been considered as part of the earth. Now, even the part of Adam that was spiritual had been severely tainted through his sin. G'd explained to Adam that although it is normal for things to return to their origin; he, Adam, had forfeited his opportunity to defy that norm through non-observance of G'd's commandment.

ויקרא אדם שם אשתו חוה. Adam called the name of his wife Chavah. We must understand why Adam had not named his wife immediately after he met her, before any of the happenings described by the Torah.

Know therefore that G'd had already given the woman a name reflecting her distinction when He named both the man and the woman ADAM. We know from Ezekiel 34,31 that the name ADAM is a great distinction. The prophet proclaims: אדם אתם, "you are Adam" (referring to Israel). Our sages (Yevamot 61) have stated about Israel: "you have been called ADAM, whereas the Gentiles have not been called ADAM." There was therefore no reason for Adam to have named Eve previously. Now that his wife had been seduced by the serpent she had suffered a spiritual decline and no longer qualified for the name ADAM. In fact it is generally accepted that when a person violates G'd's law knowingly he forfeits his original name. This is what Solomon (Proverbs 10,7) meant when he said: ושם רשעים ירקב, that the "name" i.e. the original name of the wicked, will rot. Adam now had to give his wife a name which reflected her function in life, namely that she became the "mother" of all human beings. True, Adam had sinned too, but his sin had been unintentional as already pointed out. He did not forfeit his name on that account.

As a matter of fact Adam too experienced a diminution of status as expressed by his name. The Torah here calls him suddenly האדם, three or four times instead of אדם as previously. You must appreciate that the category of person called האדם is inferior to the one called אדם without the letter ה. Sifri 143 quotes Rabbi Yirmiyah on Leviticus 18,5: אשר יעשה אותם האדם וחי בהם, that האדם should perform these commandments in order to live by them, as including Gentiles. This is so because whenever the letter ה before the word אדם does not signify a definite article it refers to the human species as such. [I have condensed the proof presented by the author. Ed.] Although Adam declined in spiritual stature and forfeited the full extent of his name, this was a temporary phenomenon. The Torah again accords him his full name when it describes that he became the father of Sheth (4,25). He regained his stature having only sinned inadvertently.

There is another reason for the name חוה. First we must understand why "life" is attributed to Eve and not to Adam. After all, Adam was the "father" of all human beings! Besides, if the reason we have given for Adam calling חוה is that she is the "mother" of all human beings, he should have called her חיה, not חוה! Her name was to reflect two new developments. 1) She had listened to the urgings of the seducer. Adam called her by the name of the seducer, the word חוה being the same as חויא the aramaic for serpent. This is the reason given in the Zohar. The second new development was that she was condemned to bear children in pain. She alone deserved to be called "mother" of all human beings because it was only she who had to endure pain in connection with procreation. The Torah did not want to spell out the other reason, seeing that it is already alluded to in the name חוה.

ויאמר השם אלוקים, The Lord G'd said: "Here man has become like one of Us, etc." We need to understand why G'd had not commanded Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of life before He forbade them to eat from the tree of knowledge. Had they eaten from it first they would have lived forever!

Another peculiarity in our verse is the word היה. G'd was afraid that Adam might live forever, not that he had already achieved that status. The word therefore should have been עוד לא היה, or something to that effect. Furthermore, why would the ability to distinguish between good and evil elevate man to the status of G'd? How can we justify the expression ממנו, "like one of Us?" This would give the impression that there are physical beings in the heavens!

In view of the fact that G'd had warned man not to eat from the tree of knowledge He was not worried about his eating from the tree of life. He did not think man would be motivated to do so either of his own volition or as a result of seduction by the serpent. The seducer only urges man to taste what is forbidden; Satan never urges you to do what is perfectly permissible. Man on his own had no desire to eat from that tree in order to secure permanent life, something that was his birthright anyways. It was only after he had forfeited his birthright that he would seek to find an alternative for what he had lost. If G'd had forbidden the tree of life immediately, the serpent might have succeeded to entice even Adam himself into eating from it. Therefore G'd was wise in not including the tree of life in the prohibition immediately. After having eaten from the tree of knowledge with its fateful consequences, Adam's priorities had changed, and G'd now had to be concerned lest man eat from that tree in order to neutralize the mortality that had been decreed on him.

The meaning of the word היה then is: "up until now man was alone unto himself," i.e. he was immortal," however, now that he has lost his immortality, he might want to eat from the tree of life. The word אחד ממנו, would refer to the uniqueness of man on earth. He alone of all the creatures on earth was immortal. The knowledge man acquired due to having eaten from the tree of knowledge might prompt him to want to eat from the tree of life to recapture the uniqueness of his former stature of ruling over the creatures of earth. I have found a proof for my interpretation of the word ממנו in Onkelos. Onkelos translates the word as מניה, "from him," i.e. כאחד ממנו, "like the only one of its kind"

There is another way to solve the problems we have raised. On the day G'd commanded Adam not to eat from the tree of knowledge He gave two commandments. G'd actually allowed for the possibility that Adam would violate His command by saying: "should you eat from it, your only way to rehabilitate yourself will be through death, through mortality of the body." In halachah we would consider the second commandment, i.e. the need to die as a לאו הניתק לעשה, a negative commandment tied to a positive commandment. The positive commandment is viewed as the תיקון, reparation of the negative commandment that has been violated. We have mentioned earlier that had it not been for the sin, Adam would have become so refined that he would have been considered as at home in the world of the permanent beings, just as the prophet Elijah who departed this world, body intact. It was only due to the sin that Adam's body forfeited the chance to rise with him to such lofty heights. Once deprived of the opportunity to refine his body in the manner described, the very act of separation of the soul from the body becomes the symbol of the inability to achieve the elevation of the body to eternal life. Under such circumstances man would not eat from the tree of life of his own accord. He would be afraid that as a result of eating from it he would forever forfeit potential rehabilitation should he violate the command not to eat from the tree of knowledge. Only death could afford him that chance, and once he had eaten from the tree of life he would not die. The matter was different, however, once he had eaten from the tree of knowledge without having eaten as yet from the tree of life. If he had eaten deliberately from the tree of knowledge, man would certainly be careful not to eat from the tree of life as that would condemn him eternally to a physical existence only. However, as we explained, man's sin had been inadvertent, meaning that he thought he was not bound to die in order to rehabilitate himself. If so, there was no powerful incentive for him to stay clear of the tree of life. Actually, Adam erred; even though his sin was inadvertent it could only be completely atoned for through death of his body at some stage. The principal reason that G'd had commanded man not to eat from the tree of knowledge was to prevent knowledge of evil becoming an integral part of his perceptions. His perceptions were meant to concentrate only on what is good. This is what Solomon meant (Kohelet 7,29) when he said that ישר עשה האלוקים את האדם, that "G'd made man perfectly upright." Evil did not figure as part of man's imagination and fantasies. All of this changed after he ate from the tree of knowledge. The fact that man felt naked and ashamed is proof that his fantasies now included things that were evil. Once man had undergone such a drastic change and the purpose of the prohibition to eat from the tree of knowledge had been irreversibly thwarted, he would no longer consider not eating from the tree of life as his insurance should he need to recapture his original status. He had already lost that status irretrievably. With the incentive not to eat from the tree of life gone, G'd had to forbid man to eat from that tree. In view of the fact that man had ignored a previous command, G'd deemed it safer to place the tree of life out of Adam's reach by expelling him from the garden.

Having said all this we can now understand a difficult passage in Bereshit Rabbah 21,6. Commenting on the words: "and now, lest he reach out and take also from the tree of life and eat thereof and live forever," Rabbi Aba bar Kahane says that the word ועתה, "and now" in this verse teaches that G'd encouraged Adam to repent. This word is used by the Torah to introduce the process of repentance. For instance, we have Deut. 10 where Moses described the sin of the golden calf and his endeavours to obtain forgiveness for the Jewish people. Verse 12 there commences with the words: ועתה ישראל, and goes on to describe what it is that G'd asks of the Jewish people so that they can rehabilitate themselves. The expression פן, always means "not or no." G'd said: "lest he stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and and eat of it and live forever." Thus far Rabbi Aba bar Kahane. This Midrash is extremely puzzling. How could G'd justify encouraging man to do repentance by saying to him "NO!?" Why did G'd only start to worry that Adam would eat from the tree of life after He had said to him "No?" It appears as if G'd would not have been concerned about Adam living forever if he had done תשובה! This cannot be since man had already become mortal on the day he ate from the tree of knowledge!

Actually, keeping in mind our exegesis, the words of Rabbi Ada bar Kahane make sense. G'd wanted Adam to realise that he had sinned by eating from the tree of knowledge. He did this by telling him to repent. Adam answered this invitation to do תשובה by saying that he had not sinned in a manner that required him to repent. He argued that he had been unaware of committing a sin when he ate from the tree. When G'd heard that Adam thought that an inadvertently committed sin does not require repentance, He began to worry that now there was no impediment to Adam eating from the tree of life. This is why G'd had to expel him from the garden to prevent this from happening. Later on Adam did repent and spent 130 years immersing himself in the waters of the river גיחון to atone for his sin [compare Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer 20. Ed.].

Although G'd had said that Adam would die "on the day" he would eat from the tree of knowledge, the word "day" could have one of two connotations. It could mean a period of 24 hours, i.e. a day in human terms, or it could refer to a day in G'd's terms, i.e. 1000 years. If it is the latter, the meaning of the warning was that Adam would die before he reached the age of 1000 years. The respective connotation of the word depends on the severity of the sin and the feeling the sinner had at the time he committed the sin. If the sinner intended to anger G'd at the time he sinned, the meaning of the word "day" would be the minimum. The sinner would have to die before that period of 24 hours expired. If, however, the sin was not committed intentionally and the sinner had made it plain that he had not intended to sin, he would be given the maximum period possible, i.e. he would live up to but not including 1000 years.