“Thou Shalt Not:” God Establishes the Law to Man

   God created a perfect universe, a perfect world, a perfect garden and placed a perfect man and woman in the garden and gave them only one requirement, one obligation, one law, the first law. A law that precipitated the Ten Commandments by thousands of years. “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”(Genesis 2:16-17)

With the disobeying of this one law, came a reality that must have been completely incomprehensible to Adam and Eve: Death. Adam and Eve did not have any conception of what constituted death or to die. They were probably curious as to what to “surely die” actually meant. Before God’s law was given, Adam never saw or understood anything bad, he never saw anything die, or death of any kind. Imagine for yourself an inability to know or define death. That is impossible for you and I because we know the difference between life and death. Adam and Eve did not know the difference prior to breaking God’s law.

 With God establishing His law as He did with the first man, He, began the first of many testing programs that not where first given to Adam and Eve but every individual that came from their loins ever since. In Adam and later Eve’s case, it was called, “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” This is an unusual name for a tree, but one that represents more than just a tree, it represents the test or trial.  There was a time, the Bible does not indicate, that Adam must have obeyed this command and passed the test for several days, perhaps weeks, or months. A time at least long enough for Adam to be given the awesome responsibility of naming every creature (or species) that God had created. God brought them to Adam to name each kind. What a task? How intelligent must Adam have been to take on such a task, and all before there was anything bad in the universe?! “And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought [them] unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that [was] the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.” (Genesis 2:19-20)

 It may be important to note that God’s purpose in parading all the animals before Adam may have not just been so that he gave them names. It was also to reinforce the fact that he was different in kind from the rest of creation, so that none of these animals could ever serve as a physical, emotional, intellectual or spiritual companion.  Eve was then to be created by God from Adam. “And the LORD God said, [It is] not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.” (Genesis 2:18) “And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This [is] now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” (Genesis 2:21-25) God created Eve from Adam and still everything was perfect.