Génesis 3:22

22. As one of us, to know good and evil The plural form of expression is the so-called plural of majesty, as in Genesis 1:26. Some, however, imagine that the angels are here addressed . The likeness is defined and limited by the words, to know good and evil, and this entire utterance of Jehovah Elohim is a solemn declaration of judgment . The allusion to the serpent’s words, in Genesis 3:5, is too marked to be denied, and hence we may allow that this word of the Lord contains an element of irony . This opinion is not to be set aside by the assertion that irony, at the expense of a fallen soul, would befit Satan rather than Jehovah . The irony is an element of the penal judgment, and as Goeschell (quoted in Lange) well observes, “a divine irony is everywhere the second stage in all divine acts of punishment . ” Lange himself thus paraphrases: “He is become like God; true, alas! God pity him! He knows now, in his guilty consciousness, the difference between good and evil . ” God, in his infinite holiness and wisdom, possesses absolute knowledge of good and evil, but not by participation in the evil . By a perfect knowledge and possession of good, sinning is with him immutably impossible . Hebrews 6:18. Man should have attained like knowledge in a normal way, not by an opening of his eyes through disobedience . Compare note on Genesis 2:17.

Take also of the tree of life The word also does not necessarily imply “that the man had not yet eaten of the tree of life,” ( Keil,) nor are we to suppose that once eating of the fruit of that tree would secure exemption from death. Often, during his sojourn in Eden, might he have eaten of that tree. But now, lest by continuing to eat he maintain himself in immortal vigour, he must be excluded from the garden, and allowed no access to the tree of life.