“In the middle of the garden stood the tree that gives life and the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad…’You may eat the fruit.

“In the middle of the garden stood the tree that gives life and the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad…’You may eat the fruit of any tree in the garden, except the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad. You must not eat the fruit of that tree; if you do, you will die the same day.’” (Genesis 2:16-17 GNB)

“The woman stared at the fruit. It looked beautiful and tasty.” (Genesis 3:6 CEV)

“Adam was but human - this explains it all.  He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden.” Mark Twain

“Sheer irrationality of the command not to eat of the tree, and of the threat to deprive of life if it was eaten, has had great effect on the history of understanding: for it has been read as if to mean that the slightest deviation from the slightest divine command, however devoid of perceptible ethical basis that command might be, was and must be a totally catastrophic sin which would estrange from God not only the immediate offender but also all future descendants and indeed all future humanity.” - Barr, Garden of Eden,12.

“It is God who is placed in a rather ambiguous light. He has made an ethically arbitrary prohibition, and backed it up with a threat to kill, which in the event, he does nothing to carry out.”

“The person who comes out of this story with a slightly shaky moral record is, of course, God. Why does he want to keep eternal life for himself and not let them share it? Even more seriously, why does he not want them to have knowledge of good and evil?” - Barr, Garden of Eden, 12, 14.

“Since, then, the Garden in that place is one, why does the text say that each of the trees is to be treated as something separate, and that both of them are at the center, when the account which tells us that the works of God are “very good” teaches that the killer-tree is no part of God’s planting?”

Gregory of Nyssa, Hom. in Cant., praef. (GNO 6:10.17-11.5., quoted in Richard A. Norris, Jr., “Two Trees in the Midst of the Garden (Genesis 2:9b): Gregory of Nyssa and the Puzzle of Human Evil,” in In Dominico Eloquio: Essays in Patristic Exegesis in Honor of Robert Louis Wilken, ed. Paul Blowers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 220.

“A simple test was given to Adam and Eve, to see whether they would—in their freedom—obey the Lord.” (2Q 2011 SS Quarterly)

“A trial of obedience that Adam, by observing it, might prove his willing submission to the command of God.” (Calvin)

“A stern commandment” (Luther) “The fourth commandment is, in a sense, a

test commandment…In a certain sense, the Sabbath is arbitrary. Why the seventh day over any other? It’s because God said so, that’s why. There’s a lot of obvious and apparent logic in not stealing, not killing, not coveting, and so forth. You don’t have to be a Christian to follow those precepts; many non-Christians do. But to obey the seventh-day Sabbath, which isn’t rooted in any natural phenomena, is to reveal a willingness to obey simply because God tells us to.” (1Q 2009 SS Quarterly)

despotic; tyrannical, capricious; unreasonable; unsupported

marked by or resulting from the unrestrained and often tyrannical exercise of power

determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle

arbitrary is often used in a negative way to describe a set of rules or a ruling by a judge that doesn't seem to follow a logical or legal thought process.

actions that lack a meaningful goal or outcome associated with Nihilism, the philosophy that

believes that there is no purpose in the universe, and that every choice is arbitrary

“The dress code ruling at our school was completely arbitrary. The principle would give no rationale for how the decisions were made.”

“The judge's ruling seemed arbitrary and not based on a rational interpretation of the law or of any precedent.”

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.” (Genesis 1:1-3 NASB)

Formless (tohu) – a worthless thing, desert, chaos, confusion, empty place, void

Void (bohu) – an undistinguishable ruin

“Enemies are coming from a country far away. These enemies will shout against the cities of Judah and will surround Jerusalem like men guarding a field, because her people have rebelled…The LORD says, ‘My people are stupid; they don’t know me. They are like foolish children; they have no understanding. They are experts at doing what is evil, but failures at doing what is good.’ I looked at the earth---it was a barren waste (“formless and void”); at the sky---there was no light.” (Jeremiah 4:16-18, 22-28 GNB)

“There are several aspects of the Genesis narrative that indicate that, while the creation of Genesis 1:2 onwards is “good,” it is set in the context of a broader environment that is not altogether good.”

Boyd, God at War

“The forces that oppose [Yahweh] and his acts of creation—the forces of disorder, injustice, affliction, and chaos, which are, in the Israelite worldview, one.”Jon Levenson, Persistence of Evil

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.” (Genesis 1:1-3 NASB)

choshek: figuratively misery, destruction, death, ignorance, sorrow, wickedness

“The Hebrew word simply means ‘darkness’ but in the Bible it has come to symbolize what opposes God, such as judgment (Exodus 10:21), death (Psalm 88:13), oppression (Isaiah 9:1), the wicked (1 Samuel 2:9) and in general, sin.

“He will protect His faithful ones, but the wicked will disappear in darkness.” (1 Samuel 2:9 NLT)

“God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it…”; (Genesis 1:28 NASB, NKJV, ESV)

“bring it under your control” (GNB, CEV)

Subdue: “to enslave”, “to conquer”

“Then the LORD God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and guard it.” (Genesis 2:15 GNB)

“This is usually interpreted to mean that Adam was simply to till the garden -- as though protecting the garden from weeds was his greatest concern. But in light of the fact that the broader narrative suggests that the ground did not become resistant to Adam or produce things like weeds until after the rebellion, and in light of the fact that a malevolent serpent appears in the next chapter with the intent of bringing Adam and Eve’s paradise to ruin (Gen. 3:1-5), one could easily argue that Adam’s charge to “guard” the garden concerned more than weeds. He was supposed to protect Eden from malevolent forces, represented by the serpent.” Greg Boyd, God at War

“Now the snake was the most cunning animal that the LORD God had made. The snake asked the woman, ‘Did God really tell you not to eat fruit from any tree in the garden?’” (Genesis 3:1 GNB)

“You may freely eat fruit from every tree of the orchard…” (Genesis 2:16 NET)

“We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,’ the woman replied. ‘It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, ‘You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die.’” (Genesis 3:2-3 NLT) “There is a notable change between what the Lord

God had said and what the woman says. God said ‘you may freely eat’, but the woman omits the emphatic infinitive, saying simply, ‘we may eat.’ Her words do not reflect the sense of eating to her heart’s content.” - NET Bible footnotes

“The snake replied, ‘That’s not true; you will not die..’” (Genesis 3:2-4) “A blatant negation equal to saying: ‘Not

– you will surely die.” (NET Bible footnote)

“God said that because he knows that when you eat it, you will be like God and know what is good and what is bad.” (Genesis 3:5 GNB)

“When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the LORD God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the LORD God among the trees. Then the LORD God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’ He replied, ‘I heard You walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.’” (Genesis 3:8-10 NLT)

Adam: “The woman you put here with me gave me the fruit, and I ate it.”

“The LORD God asked the woman, ‘Why did you do this?’ She replied, ‘The snake tricked me into eating it.’” (Genesis 3:11-13 GNB)

Arbitrary rules = arbitrary punishment

“Eve believed the words of Satan, and the belief of that falsehood in regard to God's character, changed the condition and character of both herself and husband. They were changed from good and obedient children into transgressors...” RH, January 5, 1886 par. 8

“From the very beginning he was a murderer and has never been on the side of truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he is only doing what is natural to him, because he is a liar and the father of all lies.” (John 8:44)

Freedom is “the most general of all the laws of the universe” (Origin)

“Omnipotence is not to be understood as the power of unlimited coercion, but as the power of infinite persuasion, the invincible power of self-negating, self-sacrificial love.” – C.B. Caird

“Evil arose in the context of freedom; there could not be evil in the absence of freedom. And yet freedom only provides the opportunity and is not the cause of evil. Freedom is the value that God will not surrender even in the face of sin...in the Christian account freedom is seamlessly tied to the character of God.” Sigve Tonstad

“The angel also showed me the river of the water of life, sparkling like crystal, and coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb and flowing down the middle of the city's street. On each side of the river was the tree of life, which bears fruit twelve times a year, once each month; and its leaves are for the healing of the nations.” (Revelation 22:1-2 GNB)