1. The form of the warning is emphatic, consisting of an infinitive plus the qal verb. The force of the commandment is augmented by the repetition of mimmenu "from it," at the end of the command; this made sure what tree the command applied to.
2. Examples included Deut 4:20 (But as for you, the LORD took you and brought you out of the iron-smelting furnace, out of Egypt, to be the people of his inheritance, as you now are."), 4:34 (Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by miraculous signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?
3. Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, s.v.
4. Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, s.v.
5. G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church's Mission. A biblical theology of the dwelling place of God (NSBT 17; Downers Grove/Leicester: InterVarsity Press/Apollos, 2004), 66ff. Others who have written considerably about this include
6. My use of the terms "of" and "with" is not intended to prejudge any exegetical conclusion about Exo 19:6.
7. When the aging Reformer John Calvin was sick and dying, friends visiting him would counsel him to rest. He invariably protested, "Would you have the Lord find me idle when he comes?" Click here to read an account of his last days.
8. John Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve. Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2015), 88, 242.
9. James Randerson, "Is 'suicide tree' toxin a murder weapon?" New Scientist (27 November 2004), 15, suggests that its poison may have been used as a poison to murder "young wives who do not meet the exacting standards of some Indian families."
10. G. W. Wenham, Genesis 1-15 (WBC 1; Waco, TX: Word Books, 1987), 67.
11. The adjective "poisonous" is, of course, a relative term in two senses. 1) Just as there are no weeds in nature, there are no poisonous fruit in nature; what makes the fruit poisonous is not the fruit itself. Fruits do what fruits do, producing seeds, but also sugars, vitamins and a host of other substances unique to each species or variety. Left on its own no fruit is poisonous. A fruit becomes poisonous only when we consume it and what it produces disagrees with our constitution and does us harm, i.e., the fruit was simply minding its own business until we start a predative relationship with it and our body then disagrees with it. 2) The yam or taro, Colocasia esculenta, e.g., is loaded with micro-crystals of calcium oxalate, a poison which can make the unsuspecting really sick. It has so far not killed any one only because its effect on the tongue is so immediate we reactively spit it out and, therefore, never get enough of the poison into our body to do us serious harm. Yet, if we know what to do—simply cook it—it makes a wonderful food (you should try my wife's 'yam cake'!).
12. We reject as untenable the suggestion that the knowledge is sexual, hence the first act the couple did immediately after their consumption of the fruit was to hide and cover themselves. This explanation is unlikely because 1) there is nothing in the label to suggest that anything sexual was involved, 2) it would imply that God, in saying that "the man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil" (3:22), also engaged in sex, and 3) why would God want to keep the first couple from such knowledge when he had made them male and female and intended them to "be fruitful and multiply"?
13. Even more worrying, assuming we resolve our problem with plastic, is genetic engineering and artificial intelligence.