God's definition of death
In Genesis, the Lord God commands Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, "for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" (2:17b). The serpent was all over that warning, telling the woman, "You will not surely die" (3:4). And the woman saw that the fruit was delightful. She ate it, handed some to Adam, and they didn't "die"; but their eyes were opened, just like the serpent promised. He's batting 2 for 3, it appears: they didn't "die," their eyes were opened, but now what about them becoming like God, knowing good and evil?
I spent an hour with my nine-year-old on Genesis 2 and 3 this morning, and it is dawning on me that God's definition of die was completely different than the one the serpent presented to the woman. The temptation he offered her was based on a cunning deception, and his understanding of her desire to be deceived. Just like my nine-year-old sometimes doesn't want to believe the warnings I give her, the woman demonstrated what Paul described 4,000 years later in his letter to the Romans:
Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet." But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.
(Rom 7:7-11)
Paul's analysis here really appears to reflect back to that first appearance of the word command in the Bible in Gen. 2:16. The command, or law, not to eat from the tree in the midst of the garden becomes an opportunity that he illuminates by personifying sin as something with volition: it seizes the opportunity and produces the opposite of the commandment.
"Apart from the law, sin lies dead." Paul's next statement, that he was once alive apart from the law, is the wonderful experience of the pre-command Garden of Eden: once the Lord God spells out the prohibition, the serpent in us speaks the temptation, and the rest is history.
So what did God mean when he said, "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die"? That Adam and the woman would stop breathing and their bodies would begin to decay physically? That's sure how most of us understand that word at first blush.
The translation doesn't necessarily help, either. Young's Literal Translation is, "Dying thou dost die." The Hebrew has a doubling of the concept of death, an "emphatic emphasis." Ok, so we must not ignore or minimize this warning. But when the first couple ate the fruit, they didn't die before the sun went down. That doesn't make God a liar, it just shows that we're outside the full understanding of what he meant.
Consider Psalm 28 as another possible solution to this knotty problem. In the first verse, David begs God not to be deaf to his cries, "lest, if you be silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit." God's silence is death to David, and in the day (one day is like a thousand years to the Lord!) Adam and the woman broke God's commandment, their open, intimate, regular relationship with God in the Garden ended. They hid from him, and were relegated to the pit of death. Their new fig-leaf covering was evidence of this relational breakage. Atonement wasn't an option yet, but the replacement of their fig leaves with skins is the beginning of animal sacrifice.
Others have pointed to the words Jesus has prodigal's father speak to expose more meaning on this issue: "For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found" (Luke 15:24). The relationship between the father and the son (God and Adam) was broken (died) when the son decided to abandon the relationship. But upon his return, the death is undone, and the relationship is resurrected. That the phrase is repeated in verse 32 emphasizes its significance (here we are again!).
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