Friday 25 September 2020

Psalm 126 

Background

Today’s story is one of the most famous of all the biblical stories, so the chances are that you already have some sense of what it says, even if you do not read the Bible very often. That means that one of the challenges we face is to put aside what we think we already know and pay careful attention to what the text actually says.

Chapter 3 opens talking about the serpent being ‘crafty’. The Hebrew word for crafty is very closely related to the Hebrew word for ‘naked’. Chapter 2 closed by telling us that Adam and Eve were “naked and not ashamed”. There seems to be a word play here, inviting us to ponder the innocence, perhaps naivety, of the humans and the cunning of the serpent. Eve will claim that she was deceived by the wily serpent (3:13). The question then is, how does this relate to the fact that eating the fruit offers “knowledge of good and evil”?

A lot seems to rely on how we interpret the phrase “knowing good and evil”. It is a very broad phrase, because, as we all know, it is possible for us to ‘know’ things in different ways. There is a purely academic, theoretical form of knowledge, or there is a much deeper knowledge which affects us. We sometimes talk about ‘head knowledge’ as against ‘heart knowledge’. Famously, the Bible will sometimes use ‘knowing’ as a euphemism for sexual intercourse, seeing it as another way of knowing.

What then does “knowing good and evil” actually mean? Our only real clues are in the story itself. Both the serpent and God agree that it makes human beings “like God” (verses 5 and 22), but when the couple actually eat the fruit they seem weaker, rather than more powerful. They realise they are naked and they hide. They experience shame for the first time and shame is another way of knowing. They know themselves but with a critical eye. They judge themselves and are no longer comfortable in the presence of God. They know something that cannot be unknown.

To Ponder:

• “You can eat from all the trees except this one.” Was God asking for trouble?
• How would you describe from this story what it means to “know good and evil”?