The Fall From Eden - Bdieved or Lichatchila

And God ה׳ commanded the Human, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you are free to eat; but as for the tree of knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat of it; for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die.”

Now the serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild beasts that God ה׳ had made. It said to the woman, “Did God really say: You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?” The woman replied to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the other trees of the garden. It is only about fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said: ‘You shall not eat of it or touch it, lest you die.’” And the serpent said to the woman, “You are not going to die, but God knows that as soon as you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like divine beings who know good and bad.” When the woman saw that the tree was good for eating and a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable as a source of wisdom, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave some to her husband, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they perceived that they were naked; and they sewed together fig leaves and made themselves loincloths. They heard the sound of God ה׳ moving about in the garden at the breezy time of day; and the Human and his wife hid from God ה׳ among the trees of the garden. God ה׳ called out to the Human and said to him, “Where are you?” He replied, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.” “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat of the tree from which I had forbidden you to eat?” The Human said, “The woman You put at my side—she gave me of the tree, and I ate.” And God ה׳ said to the woman, “What is this you have done!” The woman replied, “The serpent duped me, and I ate.”

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And to the woman [God] said,
“I will greatly expand
Your hard labor—and your pregnancies;
In hardship shall you bear children.
Yet your urge shall be for your husband,
And he shall rule over you.” To Adam [God] said, “Because you did as your wife said and ate of the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’
Cursed be the ground because of you;
By hard labor shall you eat of it
All the days of your life:
Thorns and thistles shall it sprout for you.
But your food shall be the grasses of the field;
By the sweat of your brow
Shall you get bread to eat,
Until you return to the ground—
For from it you were taken.
For dust you are,
And to dust you shall return.” The Human named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. And God ה׳ made garments of skins for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. And God ה׳ said, “Now that humankind has become like any of us, knowing good and bad, what if one should stretch out a hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever!” So God ה׳ banished humankind from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which it was taken: it was driven out; and east of the garden of Eden were stationed the cherubim and the fiery ever-turning sword, to guard the way to the tree of life.

Rabbi Yoḥanan bar Ḥanina says: Daytime is twelve hours long, and the day Adam the first man was created was divided as follows: In the first hour of the day, his dust was gathered. In the second, an undefined figure was fashioned. In the third, his limbs were extended. In the fourth, a soul was cast into him. In the fifth, he stood on his legs. In the sixth, he called the creatures by the names he gave them. In the seventh, Eve was paired with him. In the eighth, they arose to the bed two, and descended four, i.e., Cain and Abel were immediately born. In the ninth, he was commanded not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. In the tenth, he sinned. In the eleventh, he was judged. In the twelfth, he was expelled and left the Garden of Eden, as it is stated: “But man abides not in honor; he is like the beasts that perish” (Psalms 49:13). Adam did not abide, i.e., sleep, in a place of honor for even one night.

“It would at first sight,” said the objector, “appear from Scripture that man was originally intended to be perfectly equal to the rest of the animal creation, which is not endowed with intellect, reason, or power of distinguishing between good and evil: but that Adam’s disobedience to the command of God procured him that great perfection which is the peculiarity of man, viz., the power of distinguishing between good and evil-the noblest of all the faculties of our nature, the essential characteristic of the human race. It thus appears strange that the punishment for rebelliousness should be the means of elevating man to a pinnacle of perfection to which he had not attained previously.

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Namely, the intellect which was granted to man as the highest endowment, was bestowed on him before his disobedience. With reference to this gift the Bible states that “man was created in the form and likeness of God.” On account of this gift of intellect man was addressed by God, and received His commandments, as it is said: “And the Lord God commanded Adam” (Gen. 2:16)—for no commandments are given to the brute creation or to those who are devoid of understanding. Through the intellect man distinguishes between the true and the false. This faculty Adam possessed perfectly and completely. The right and the wrong are terms employed in the science of apparent truths (morals), not in that of necessary truths, as, e.g., it is not correct to say, in reference to the proposition “the heavens are spherical,” it is “good” or to declare the assertion that “the earth is flat” to be “bad”: but we say of the one it is true, of the other it is false. Similarly our language expresses the idea of true and false by the terms emet and sheker, of the morally right and the morally wrong, by tob and ra’. Thus it is the function of the intellect to discriminate between the true and the false—a distinction which is applicable to all objects of intellectual perception. When Adam was yet in a state of innocence, and was guided solely by reflection and reason—on account of which it is said: “Thou hast made him (man) little lower than the angels” (Ps. 8:6)—he was not at all able to follow or to understand the principles of apparent truths; the most manifest impropriety, viz., to appear in a state of nudity, was nothing unbecoming according to his idea: he could not comprehend why it should be so. After man’s disobedience, however, when he began to give way to desires which had their source in his imagination and to the gratification of his bodily appetites, as it is said, “And the wife saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to the eyes” (Gen. 3:6), he was punished by the loss of part of that intellectual faculty which he had previously possessed. He therefore transgressed a command with which he had been charged on the score of his reason; and having obtained a knowledge of the apparent truths, he was wholly absorbed in the study of what is proper and what improper. Then he fully understood the magnitude of the loss he had sustained, what he had forfeited, and in what situation he was thereby placed. Hence we read, “And ye shall be like elohim, knowing good and evil,” and not “knowing” or “discerning the true and the false”: while in necessary truths we can only apply the words “true and false,” not “good and evil.” Further observe the passage, “And the eyes of both were opened, and they knew they were naked” (Gen. 3:7): it is not said, “And the eyes of both were opened, and they saw”; for what the man had seen previously and what he saw after this circumstance was precisely the same: there had been no blindness which was now removed, but he received a new faculty whereby he found things wrong which previously he had not regarded as wrong.

“And God commanded man, saying, from all the trees in the garden you may surely eat. And from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil do not eat ….” (Bereshit, 2:16–17)
In the future, when the sin of Adam will be fixed, then the verse will be rearranged, “from all the trees in the garden you may surely eat and from the tree of the knowledge of good,” and after that the next verse will begin, “And evil do not eat.” Then we will eat the good in the tree and not the evil. And God will make it clear that he only ate the good, and the sin was regarded by God as insignificant as a peel of garlic and no more.

And the idea that the root of the separation of the upper and lower firmaments, is so that there will be place for Man's work, as Man only serves God from amidst darkness… Therefore God created the “Tree of Doubt” which is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In this way man can serve God out of this very uncertainty. This is as it is said (ibid.): Light is only that which comes out of darkness. When this side is subdued, the Holy One, blessed be He, ascends above, and His Glory is magnified. Indeed, from the downward evolutions and concatenations of the branches of the Tree of Doubt, there eventually arises the phenomenon of the dispute which is not for the sake of Heaven, like the dispute of Korah. This is because the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil also contains separate evil. This is included in the divine utterance of creation, “Let there be a firmament,” – which is separate – and creates a division between the upper and lower realms.