MTC - Chumash In Depth - Genesis 3:2-3 - Life, Knowledge, and Perspective

(1) עץ הגן נאכלת, “we can eat from the trees of the garden and do not need to endanger our lives by eating from the tree that G’d has prohibited us to eat from on pain of death.”

Having said this, however, her power of imagination kept nagging at her weighing the possibility that G’d might indeed be jealous of competition from his creature. Her doubt, i.e. the voice of the evil urge, was expressed in the words

...In truth, connection of the woman to man was not there... at that time that the snake spoke with the woman. Man went from her and she felt a lust to eat from it and she was told to eat.

And in the manner of connection man to Hashem, she didn't feel it, and because of this she said she should surely eat, and she said from the fruit of the trees of the garden, like the language of Hashem from all the fruits of the tress,

From the fruit of the tree in the center of the garden. She didn't specify the tree of knowledge. Its understood that man did not explain to her that it was the tree of knowledge, out of concern that she would desire to eat because only he was connected to Hashem with Love.

But the woman who didn't know from this love of Hashem, man was concerned to reveal to her the reason and the explanation.

Therefore he said in general the fruit of the trees in the middle of the garden. And don't ask if so, this also includes the tree of life.

But because its proven from here that the tree of life had not fruit at all rather leaves to heal, that its goal was not physical enjoyment, rather pleasure from Hashem.

As opposed to the tree of knowledge, its purpose was to bring physical pleasure, so for that man said not to eat from the fruit, and from there she understood that the warning was only on a tree that had fruit.

And she said lest you die. She wasn't able to say surely die, because on touching alone there was not death, only on account of here is might come to eat.

And she said that Adam told her lest you die, and from this the snake found a place to contradict her...

And the woman said: We are not like animal that are locked within their instinct, we have the ability to do or hold back because we have free will.

And because of a command and a decree alone we wouldn't refrain from eating, because God said to eat from every tree of the garden, in other words, if Hashem told them not to eat from the fruit of the garden, they would have eaten from the side of their free will.

Only from the fruit of the trees that are in the middle of the garden Hashem said not to eat from, this was only decreed because He warned us lest we die, this was an elixir of death, and therefore he added don't eat and don't touch it.

After it was an elixir of death, you would die immediately, they were warned also not to touch it, and in this the snake found place to entire her, you will not surely die.

And in this we learn that the enticement of the snake goes on until our generation, because if a person seeks after the reason for Mitzvas, like the rebels of the generation that they seek the reason why Hashem forbade certain species and they want to find reasons because they are bad for the body.

And when they find out that it has no danger to the body, they throw away the Mitzvah, because if the woman hadn't seeked out a reason only that Hashem had commanded, who would have rebelled against His word, we wouldn't know the reason for Mitvzos and wouldn't come to this.