ris3n's Apologetics Codex

Passage

Genesis 3.22

Genesis 3:22, Gen 3.22, Gen 3:22

Book: Genesis · NASB95

Verse

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Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever." (Genesis 3:22, NASB95)

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Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV (ASV)

20. And the man called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. 21. And Jehovah God made for Adam and for his wife coats of skins, and clothed them.

22. And Jehovah God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever,

  1. therefore Jehovah God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. 24. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden the Cherubim, and the flame of a sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. (Genesis 3:20-24, ASV)
WEB (WEB)

20. The man called his wife Eve because she would be the mother of all the living. 21. Yahweh God made coats of animal skins for Adam and for his wife, and clothed them.

22. Yahweh God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand, and also take of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever...”

  1. Therefore Yahweh God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. 24. So he drove out the man; and he placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:20-24, WEB)
KJV (KJV)

20. And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. Eve: Heb. Chavah: that is Living 21. Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.

22. And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

  1. Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. 24. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. (Genesis 3:20-24, KJV)
YLT (YLT)

20. And the man calleth his wife's name Eve: for she hath been mother of all living. 21. And Jehovah God doth make to the man and to his wife coats of skin, and doth clothe them.

22. And Jehovah God saith, 'Lo, the man was as one of Us, as to the knowledge of good and evil; and now, lest he send forth his hand, and have taken also of the tree of life, and eaten, and lived to the age,'

  1. Jehovah God sendeth him forth from the garden of Eden to serve the ground from which he hath been taken; 24. yea, he casteth out the man, and causeth to dwell at the east of the garden of Eden the cherubs and the flame of the sword which is turning itself round to guard the way of the tree of life. (Genesis 3:20-24, YLT)

Setting

  • Speaker: the LORD God, in intra-divine deliberation ("one of Us"), immediately after pronouncing the curses of the Fall.
  • Audience: the divine council form addresses no human hearer; the narrative audience is Israel receiving the Torah's account of why humanity lives east of Eden, under death, outside the garden.
  • Location: the garden of Eden, at the moment of expulsion; the verse supplies the stated rationale for barring the way to the tree of life (Genesis 3:23-24).
  • Time period: the close of the Fall narrative, between the curse oracles (Genesis 3:14-19) and the expulsion (Genesis 3:23-24).

Theological reading

Skeptics read this verse as God conceding that the serpent told the truth: the man really did become "like one of Us." The early church consistently refused that reading and defended two complementary alternatives.

1. Divine irony (judicial rebuke). John Chrysostom regularly read difficult divine statements as rhetorical rebukes, and took this one as judicial irony: the surface words acknowledge a result while exposing the folly that produced it. "Behold, the man has become like one of Us" functions as "see what came of his attempt to become divine." The immediate context enforces the ironic reading. The man who supposedly attained godhood is, in the same chapter, ashamed, hiding, blame-shifting, cursed, and exiled. If Adam had truly become divine in the serpent's sense he would be elevated; instead he is expelled. The narrative itself falsifies the serpent's promise, so the verse reads as exposure, not admiration.

2. Limited truth (experiential knowledge of evil). Augustine held that Adam and Eve gained knowledge of evil by experiencing it, not by acquiring divine wisdom. Before the Fall they knew good directly and evil only as a possibility; after the Fall they knew evil from the inside, as guilt, shame, and disorder. Augustine's comparison: God knows evil as a physician knows disease, as Judge; fallen humanity knows evil as the patient suffers it. Same verb, radically different mode of knowing. Irenaeus pressed the promise-versus-result contrast: the serpent promised exaltation and delivered corruption and death, so the claim "you will be like God" is exposed as deception. Ephrem the Syrian built the same tragic reversal: the serpent promised wisdom, glory, and elevation; Adam received nakedness, fear, and mortality.

The Hebrew supports the patristic reading. The participle is yodea from yada (see H3045 - yada), the broadest and most experiential of the Hebrew knowing-verbs. Adam "knew" Eve (Genesis 4:1); Israel is called to "know" the LORD; the word routinely denotes participatory acquaintance rather than bare information. If the author wanted to say Adam became wise, Hebrew had chakam (be wise); for discernment, bin; for insight, sakal. The text uses none of them. The pattern is already set at Genesis 3:7: their eyes were opened and they "knew that they were naked," not a new fact (they were naked all along) but a new experience of shame. "Good and evil" here also tracks the moral-discernment idiom visible in Deuteronomy 1:39, where children who do not yet "know good and evil" lack mature moral agency, not facts. See Tree of Knowledge Objection for the full idiom analysis.

Why the tree of life is barred. The verse's second half gives the expulsion's logic: fallen humanity must not eat of the tree of life and live forever in a fallen state. The ban is protective, preventing the permanence of alienation, and the trajectory completes in Revelation 22:2 where access to the tree of life is restored in the New Creation.

The "one of Us" plural also carries the same intra-divine deliberation as Genesis 1:26 and figures in Trinitarian readings of the plural passages; see Trinity.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word; see Lexicon Roadmap.

  • H3045 - yada, yodea (knowing), experiential-participatory knowledge, not the wisdom vocabulary (chakam, bin, sakal) the author had available and did not use
  • da'at tov vara' (knowledge of good and evil), the moral-autonomy idiom; full analysis at Tree of Knowledge Objection

Quoted in

Arguments and defeaters:

Concepts:

People:

Lexicon:

Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

  • ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
  • WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
  • KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
  • YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.