Background...

After forming the Adarm from the soil of the Adarmah (ground) & his own breath, then after planting a garden (East, in Eden) with all kinds of beautiful trees to produce good fruit, and putting the Adarm in it, and after naming two trees   in the middle of his garden, God says that the way forward for the Adarm in Eden, was “You may eat the fruit of any tree in the garden, except The Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil”  God went on to say, “You must NOT EAT the fruit from that tree-  for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”[1].

 Later, Snakey says “that is a lie! You won’t surely die!” In fact, (though he doesn’t command it straightforwardly, he sows doubt into Eve’s mind about the character and motives of the previous commander, with the view to tempting her to eat it, to get the knowledge of Good & Evil that it will supposedly give to them - when Eve & Adam EAT the fruit. Then, to compound things,  it looked like when they do eat the fruit, that they DON’T DIE - in that day! [it seems to me that God wasn’t  talking about the death of their biological life (bios) which (death)came along years later]

But the whole sad story - after Genesis 3 shows something dead, lost, purposeless, stinking , rotten about humanity. We are “The living Dead”, zombies who are born, & move, grow old, have kids, do work to maintain the system (or work against it, to make another system basically the same) then die & perpetuate the cycle.. (of “life(bios)”). And, Jesus later says, “I tell you the truth (not like snakey), the time is coming, - the time has now come- when the dead will hear the voice of the son of God, & come to Life(zoe).”

 One more thing from the bible... Israel is a tree planted by God in his garden. It is a “vine/olive-tree/fig-tree”, the planting of the Lord, meant to bear fruit for it’s gardener to eat. (Am I pushing it too far when I wonder whether it Is meant to be a tree to bring the knowledge of good & evil somehow to the onlookers or even non-partakers, & also wonder whether, in this new garden of God, it is  meant to be a tree of life to the nations?)

One more thing from life... two nights ago we had some mind-games/riddles on the way home from the Teen Camp. Jayden Sweeting told us one that was simple enough, but  we all gave up before we got it (We might have got it if we had acted it out concretely?). But solving it hinged on information gained not only from what happens, but also from what doesn’t happen in the scenario:

That, & the stories above that I had spoken of in class, alerted me to another level of story the next day, when I was reading or thinking about Jesus - on his way one morning to clean out the rotting “thieves’ den” of a temple[2] & then also the next morning going back to the same place[3].

 And, since then, I've also been reminded of a  story from Israel's history; as they learned to be ordered as the people of God to serve the Nations and be a blessing to them... there was a time when the leaders quibbled over the power/authority and the spiritual leadership of God's people and (maybe a bit like snakey) didn't want to have God's choice of leaders (Moses or Aaron) "over them". Aaron and his descendants were given the priesthood via a sign from God: his dry stick of a staff/rod being miraculously given buds (and flowers, and fruit) overnight.

Adarm’s Fruit-tree

“..In da day you eat there-of you will surely die.”

came the words to the first pair from the One On High.

Leader, he - named  that tree, then[4], to let children know,

and told them   how to spend life   with this tree[5], to grow.

And o-nly  one more tree was   named by Father God,

and we’ll see   what’ll be the   upshot of his nod,

his ok,  to today go   and find you’ve eaten[6]

fruit from The  LIVING Tree that   grows in God’s Eden.

Later on,  when second Ar-darm came to get fruit

from fruit-tree,  lovingly plan-ted in his “youth”;

poet he,  used that tree then   to let children know:

Adarm came, to it’s “shame” the fruit-tree’s fruit dain’t grow!

And the Fa-ther must ’a said   something “like” before

“in da day  he  don’t eat of   it, dat tree ’s no more!”

‘cause sure e-nough when Pe-ter next day saw that tree

   that there stood,  “Aaron’s Rod”, had   no buds to be seen.