Verse 9
9. Out of the ground… every tree These growths of the garden may be regarded as special creations; a part of the special work of fitting up the garden for man: or they may be understood as a general statement made without reference to time . The context makes the former supposition the more probable one .
The tree of life A tree of special value and significance, the eating of whose fruit perpetuated life forever . Genesis 3:22. Prof. Warren cites the singular agreement of many ancient religions in associating their paradise-tree with the axis of the world, and observes: “If the garden of Eden was precisely at the North Pole, it is plain that a goodly tree standing in the centre of that garden would have had a visible and obvious cosmical significance, which could by no possibility belong to any other. Paradise Found, p. 263.
In the midst of the garden As if it were to be the most conspicuous object there, and a constant prophecy to man that he was made for immortality. Comp. Revelation 2:7; Revelation 22:2.
And the tree of knowledge of good and evil The notion that the tree of life and the tree of knowledge were identical is not the most natural meaning of this language. This tree, says Jacobus, “was so-called not merely as a test for proving man, and showing whether he would choose the good or the evil; nor merely because by eating it he would come to know both good and evil, and the evil so that he would know the good in the new light of contrast with the evil. Both these are involved. But it was set also as a symbol of the divine knowledge to which man should not aspire, but to which he should submit his own judgment and knowledge. The positive prohibition was to be a standing discipline of the human reason, and a standing symbol of the limitation of religious thought.”
These two trees being named in immediate connexion with the other trees of the garden, are to be understood literally of two particular trees, and not allegorically, as if they were merely symbols. See more on Genesis 2:17; Genesis 3:7.
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