The Genesis of Justice (7 page)

If God Himself realized He was wrong to threaten the harsh punishment of immediate death, then perhaps He became more understanding
of the sin of Adam and Eve. I offer a contemporary midrash on this issue. A friend of mine who is a federal judge had to sentence
a woman to prison on a Monday. He was bound by the sentencing guidelines that mandated imprisonment, despite the fact that
she was a first-time offender whose boyfriend had enticed her to transport his drugs. On Sunday the judge was home taking
care of his toddler. The judge inadvertently forgot to lock his front door and the child wandered into the street, where a
truck barely missed running him over. The judge realized that he had made a terrible mistake and that he had been given a
second chance. The next day he refused to sentence the woman to prison, saying that she too had made a mistake and was entitled
to a second chance. Perhaps I ought not to analogize a federal judge to God, although lawyers have long joked that when God
has delusions of grandeur, he sometimes acts as if He were a federal judge.

God, like some parents and judges, finds it less difficult to threaten than to carry out His threats, especially one that
would destroy what He created. Moreover, in the case of Adam and Eve, there was a mitigating circumstance: The serpent did,
after all, beguile Eve, who in turn enticed Adam. We see here the first excuse in the Bible. There are many more to come.

Finally, maybe God realized that He was acting out of self-interest in denying to those He had created in His own image the
most important aspect of that divine image, namely the continuing quest for greater knowledge. A midrash states that the serpent
told Eve that God Himself “ate of this tree” and “hates to have a rival in His craft.”
²³
The God who threatened Adam is Himself an ever-learning God, not a statically omniscient Being Who knows everything there
is to know from the very beginning. Perhaps the command to forbear from eating the forbidden fruit was a test of Adam and
Eve’s willingness to obtain knowledge even if it required transgression. Recall that God gave Adam and Eve an opportunity
to explain their actions before imposing punishment: “What is this that you have done?” Some commentators point to this to
support the idea that every person has the right to a defense. A midrash, however, notes that the serpent was given no opportunity
to defend his actions and from this concludes that the wicked deserve no defense. Since “the wicked are good debaters,” the
serpent would have argued: “Thou didst give them a command, and I did contradict it. Why did they obey me, and not Thee? Therefore
God did not enter into argument with the serpent.”
²⁴
Not a particularly compelling point, since the midrash seems to assume that God would lose the argument to a snake! I guess
even the writers of this midrash had some doubts about God’s omniscience.

In any event, if Adam and Eve had explained that they believed themselves entitled to knowledge, even at the risk of disobeying
their Creator, God might have responded differently—perhaps more leniently, perhaps more harshly—to a principled act of disobedience.
I recall a case at Harvard where a student altered his transcript in order to be admitted, claiming that he wanted to obtain
the knowledge that comes with a Harvard education. The administration board was not sympathetic to his argument.

The novelist Philip Roth wrote that “without transgression there is no knowledge”—suggesting that all true knowledge requires
rule breaking.
²⁵
Perhaps God was simply warning human beings of the double-edged nature of knowledge and of its potential—if misused—to destroy
humankind. Maybe God decided to wait and see what Adam and Eve—and their descendants—
did
with that knowledge: whether they used it for good or for evil. Only then could God decide whether or not Adam and Eve did
the right thing or—if they did the wrong thing—how serious their crime was and whether His initial punishments were sufficient.
We know from contemporary experiences that knowledge itself is neutral, whether it be knowledge of nuclear physics, genetic
engineering, computer science, or anything else. It is how we use this knowledge that really matters.

The subsequent story of the Tower of Babel supports this interpretation. God saw nothing wrong with all people speaking the
same language—and thus increasing their knowledge by communication—until they misused this important tool by working together
to build a tower that reached the heavens. The midrash says that “the enterprise [of building the tower] was neither more
nor less than rebellion against God.”
²⁶
It was only then that God confounded their language, thus reducing their ability to share knowledge.

As the builders of Babel learned, humans must not use their knowledge to break down the barriers between man and God. Adam
and Eve were expelled from Eden to prevent them from becoming like God—knowledgeable
and
immortal. In building the Tower of Babel, their descendants were once again seeking to use their knowledge to close the distance
between the human and the divine by ascending to the heavens. They were trying to circumvent God’s decision to deny humans
access both to the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Eternal Life. God responded by making the sharing of information more
difficult. From now on human beings would speak different languages, not only making the gathering of knowledge a slower process,
but allowing wisdom—which takes longer to acquire—to accompany knowledge.

The story of the Tower of Babel can be seen therefore as a parallel to the story of the forbidden fruit. Both involve the
inherent human need to increase knowledge. In both instances humans push the envelope beyond the boundaries acceptable to
God. The consequences in each case can be viewed as self-fulfilling prophecy: Now that Adam and Eve have eaten from the Tree
of Knowledge, humans have the intelligence necessary to improve or destroy the world.

So too with the tower builders and their descendants: If they use their collective intelligence without foresight, wisdom,
and moral constraint, they may well succeed in producing apocalypse, thus merging our earthly world with God’s heavenly domain.

For whatever reasons God decided not to punish Adam and Eve with the instant death He had expressly threatened, He conveyed
a confusing message to future sinners. One of the insights Adam and Eve gained from eating of the tree is that God does not
always carry out His threats—that sin (and crime) is not always followed by the threatened punishment. Such knowledge can
be quite dangerous.
²⁷
The serpent told them God was bluffing, they called God’s bluff, and God backed down—at least to the degree that He did not
kill them immediately. No wonder God did not want them to gain this knowledge. He would henceforth have a hard time enforcing
His commandments. In fact, God’s mixed message about the wages of sin may well have contributed to the Bible’s first murder.

1.
This and all quotations from Genesis are taken from
The Five Books of Moses
, trans. Everett Fox (New York: Schocken Books, 1995).

Genesis 2:16-17. The Bible begins with creation, and man appears only on the sixth day. Many midrashim have been written about the first five days, but there is a tradition prohibiting speculation on what came before “the beginning.” “You may speculate from the day that days were created, but you may not speculate on what was before that” (
Midrash Rabbah
, vol. 1, p. 9). In support of this view, it is observed that the first letter of the Bible is a
beth
—the Hebrew equivalent of “b” or “beta”—whose shape is open in the front and closed at the back, thereby signifying open inquiry about what happens after creation but a closing of all inquiry as to what took place before. Notwithstanding this tradition, there has always been speculation as to the universe
b’terem kol
—before everything.

2.
A midrash interprets the repetition of “die” to mean that not only would Adam die, but his descendants would also die (
Midrash Rabbah
, vol. 1, p. 131).

3.
“surely eat …doomed to die
. The form of the Hebrew in both instances is what grammarians call the infinitive absolute: the infinitive immediately followed by a conjugated form of the same verb. The general effect of this repetition is to add emphasis to the verb, but because in the case of the verb ‘to die’ it is the pattern regularly used in the Bible, for the issuing of death sentences, ‘doomed to die’ is an appropriate equivalent” (Robert Alter,
Genesis
, p. 8, notes 16-17).

4.
In I Kings 2:42 Solomon says to Shimei that “on the day thou goest out [of Jerusalem] thou shalt surely die.”

5.
Midrash Rabbah
, vol. 1, p. 154.

6.
See Kugel, James,
The Bible As It Was
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 67-71; and Ramban,
Commentary on the Torah, Genesis
(New York: Shilo, 1971), p. 74. Rashi avoids the issue.

7.
See Rashi and also
Midrash Rabbah
, vol. 1, p. 150. Ginzberg, p. 72, A Midrash asks where Adam was during this conversation. It answers: “He had engaged in intercourse and fallen asleep.”

8.
The New Catholic Encyclopedia
, p. 779;
The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge
, p. 443.

9.
This banishment also seems to contradict the notion that Adam and Eve were originally created to be immortal and that God carried out his threat of death by denying them eternal life as a punishment for disobeying his prohibition against eating of the Tree of Knowledge.

10.
Elon, Menachem,
Jewish Law
(New York: Matthew Bender, 1999) at pp. 175-76.

11.
He kills Nadav and Avihu without fair warning. He punishes Moses without fair warning. Moreover, in the Ten Commandments He is explicit that His punishments will be imposed on the innocent children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and even great-great-grandchildren of sinners (Exodus 20:5).

12.
Rabbi Simon ben Yochai manages to find a “hint” of the hereafter even in this verse, interpreting “return” to mean “thou shalt go to the dust, yet thou shalt return—at the resurrection” (
Midrash Rabbah
, vol. 1, p. 169).

13.
See
Chapter 13
. p. tk

14.
See Amram at p. 21.

15.
Midrash Rabbah
, vol. 1, p. 150.

16.
Midrash Rabbah
(Bereshith, p. 149).

17.
New York Times
, June 10, 1998, p. 1.

18.
See Amram at pp. 28-29.

19.
Twersky at p. 78.

20.
See Twersky at p. 250. A midrash speculates that Eve was Adam’s second wife. His first, Lilith, “remained with him only a short time because she insisted upon enjoying full equality with her husband” (Ginzberg at p. 65). Recently a fundamentalist Christian publication, published by Jerry Falwell, condemned the use of the name
Lilith
by a concert organizer, arguing that Lilith was a “demon.” See
Boston Globe
, June 25, 1999, p. A23.

21.
Quoted in Gillman at p. 44.

22.
6:6.

23.
Bialik and Ravnitsky,
The Book of Legends
, p. 20.

24.
Ginzberg, p. 77.

25.
Roth, Philip,
American Pastoral
.

26.
Ginzberg at p. 179.

27.
The knowledge that sin is not always followed by punishment can also be uplifting, allowing people to refrain from sinful acts simply because they are wrong. See pp. 108-9.

It was, after the passing of days

that Kayin [Hebrew for Cain] brought, from the fruit of the soil, a gift to YHWH [Hebrew for God],

and as for Hevel [Hebrew for Abel], he too brought—from the firstborn of his flock, from their fat-parts.