And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “Of every
tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall
surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17)
I am under the impression that most people hold to the
view that Adam’s death had to be ‘spiritual’ due to the fact that he did not
die instantaneously. Perhaps this is because the word יום (YOM) – translated as ‘day’ – is stated as the time at which
Adam would ‘die’. If Adam therefore
did not die in the same twenty-four hour period in which he ate the fruit it is
assumed that another kind of ‘death’ took place. This, I believe, is an
unnecessary conclusion to make.
Strong’s shows that YOM
can be understood beyond the literal twenty-four hour concept: ‘time’, ‘age’, ‘life’, ‘period’ are just some of the many other
translations. We know that Adam died physically. No reading between the lines
is required if we are to view this as the death that God had in mind when
warning Adam. His eventual physical death is surely sufficient in itself to
prove God’s warning to be true. Rather than reconcile the ‘problem’ of Adam not
physically dying on the day of his sin by saying that he ‘died spiritually’,
ought we not to reconcile the problem by recognising that this YOM (in Genesis 2:17) was not a twenty-four hour period?
This makes perfect linguistic sense in the structure of Genesis chapter two
because, after the creation of the world in six twenty-four hour days is
detailed (Genesis 1:3-2:3), the word ‘day’
takes on a new meaning:
This
is the history of the heavens
and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made
the earth and the heavens (Genesis 2:4)
Clearly the word no longer means an actual twenty-four hour
period (a key to recognising that the author is beginning a new section)
because the world was created in six
twenty-four hour days. It is within this
section that we read the warning that Adam would die in the ‘day’ in which he ate the fruit. God is
therefore warning Adam that his death would occur within a period of time of
much looser definition.
Furthermore, I find it difficult to follow how man has
a spirit that is essentially dead. Does it mean that man is born without a
spirit, or with a dead spirit that can be revived by the Holy Spirit? Where in
the Genesis record does it speak of Adam being given such a spirit? Except for ‘the
breath of life’, which it can be argued returns to God at the point of
death, there is no mention of man having a spirit let alone a description of
what it is. This again comes back to previous disagreements I now have concerning man’s tripartite
constitution, so it is probably wasteful to repeat the same arguments. However,
it is still worth mentioning this extra difficulty as, once again, I believe
that to make God’s pronouncement mean anything other than the death of the
physical man (which is the entire man) is not to take God at His word.
We would all agree that Adam and Eve eventually
died as a result of their sin (had it only been the ‘spirit’ affected by the
fall then surely the body would have continued to live endlessly) so we cannot help
but accept that physical death was what God meant when He gave the warning.
Otherwise, He meant ‘spiritual’ and physical death, but
not death of the ‘soul’ – why did the
‘soul’ survive this penalty?
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