What was the "tree of life," and what was its purpose? What explanation can you draw from Scripture?
Why does God want to deny knowledge of good and evil? Sociopaths don’t know right from wrong, so did God want a race of sociopaths? We don’t punish people who are unaware that something is wrong, so Adam and Eve must have known that it was wrong to disobey God, but if they already knew right from wrong, then what was the purpose of the tree?
In Genesis 3:6, Eve saw that the tree was good for food, it was a delight to the eyes, and that it was to be desired to make one wise, so desire warped her perception, and once desire enters the picture, then we can’t be sure if something is truly good or if we just think that it is because we desire it, so this is why it is important to rely on God’s instructions for correct understanding so that we may walk in His way:
Proverbs 3:1-6 My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments, 2 for length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you. 3 Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart. 4 So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man. 5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. 6 In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
So the tree did not give us knowledge of right from wrong when we had none, but rather our desire warped it into something called knowledge of good and evil. In Genesis 2:9, the Tree of Life was in the center of the Garden, and in Genesis 2:16-17, God commanded to eat of any tree in the Garden except the Tree of Good and Evil, so it was desirable to God for it to only be a matter of time before they eat from the Tree of Life. In Genesis 3:22, God said that man has now become like one of us knowing good and evil, and now he must be prevented from putting forth his hand and also taking from the Tree of Life and eat and live forever, so He only prevented access to it after they had eaten from the wrong tree and would be multiplying the wrong fruit, which means if we are to return to having access to the Tree of Life in Revelation 22:14, then we need to we need repent from multiplying the wrong fruit and return to having knowledge of right and wrong before it became knowledge of good and evil by obediently leaning on God’s instructions, which knowledge of true and false. The Torah is truth (Psalms 119:142), so we need to lean on it to distinguish between what is true and false.
In Genesis 2:14, God took man and placed him in the Garden to guard it, and in Genesis 3:24, God commanded cherubs to guard the way to the Tree of Life, so they were given the same task that Adam and Eve could no longer do from inside the Garden, though they were never told to stop guarding it, which can still choose to do from the outside because we are frequently instructed to guard the commandments of the Torah. The main other place that cherubs are referred to is being place on top of the Ark of the Covenant, which was guarding the Torah, which is referred to as a Tree of Life for all who take hold of her (Proverbs 3:18), so guarding can refer either to preventing access or to escort preventing anything from blocking access.
In Genesis 2:17, it says that they will surely die if the eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, so doing that caused Adam and Eve to become mortal, however, eating from the Tree of Life would have caused them to become immortal, so before eating from either tree, they were at a crossroads between morality and immortality, and we are given the same choice:
Deuteronomy 30:15-20 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. 16 If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. 17 But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, 18 I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. 19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, 20 loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”
So they did not yet possess either life of death, and choosing life was embracing the Torah, which at the end of Deuteronomy wraps back around to Genesis and back to the Tree of Life. Multiplying in the land is also connected to God’s command to be fruitful and multiply in Genesis 1:28. In Genesis 18:19, it says that God knew Abraham that He may command His children and those of his household to walk in the ways of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice that the Lord may bring to him all that He has promised him, and in Genesis 26:4-5, God said that He will multiply his offspring as the stars in the heaven and will give his offspring these lands and in his offspring all of the nations of the earth will be blessed because he heard God’s voice and kept His charge, His commandments, His statutes, and His laws, so it wasn’t until Abraham that God found someone who was multiplying the right kind of fruit by walking in God’s way in obedience to His law and teaching his children to walk in God’s way that God could make and bring about all of the promises that He made to Him. In John 8:39, Jesus said that if they were children of Abraham, then they would be doing the same works that he did, or in other words, multiplying the same fruit.
The Hebrew word “yada” refers to experiential or intimate knowledge, such as in Genesis 4:1, where Adam knew (yada) Eve, she conceived, and gave birth to Cain. In Exodus 33:13, Moses wanted God to be gracious to him by teaching him His way that he might know God and Israel too, the Torah is often described as instructions for how to walk in God’s way, such as in Deuteronomy 10:12-13, 1 Kings 2:1-3, Isaiah 2:2-3, Joshua 22:5, Psalms 103:7, and in John 17:3, eternal life is knowing God and Jesus, which is also why Jesus said in Matthew 19:17 that the way to enter eternal life is by obeying God’s commands, so this is all connected to the Tree of Life.
In Jeremiah 9:3 and 9:6 they did not know God and refused to know Him because in 9:13, they had forsaken the Torah, while in 9:24, those who know God know that He delights in practicing steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in all of the earth, so delighting in expressing those and other aspects of God’s nature through our obedience to the Torah is the way to know God and the Son, who is the exact expression of God’s nature (Hebrews 1:3). In 1 John 2:4, those who say that they know Jesus, but don’t obey his commands are liars, in 1 John 3:4-6, those who continue to practice sin in transgression of the Torah have neither seen nor know him, and in Matthew 7:23, Jesus said that he would tell those who are workers of lawlessness to depart from him because he never knew them, so knowing God and Jesus is the goal of the Torah (Romans 10:2-4). The Torah is how to children of Abraham knew how to be blessed so they way that we inherit the promise by faith of being a blessing to the nations is by teaching the nations to turn from their wicked ways and how to walk in God’s way, which has its ultimate inheritance in Jesus, who is the living embodiment of the way, and who was sent to fulfill that promise through blessing us by turning us from our wicked ways (Acts 3:25-26).