3:22-24 — 22And the Lord God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live for ever." 23So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
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Already the divine mind was racing ahead in grace over the future of the couple. However we understand the meaning of "the knowledge of good and evil" it is clear here that it brought the couple into a state of being—"like one of us"—they were not meant and made to be. The danger to the couple now is that, having succumbed to the temptation of eating the fruit of one forbidden tree, they might now reach for the fruit of the tree of life. Again, however we understand to be the meaning of "the tree of life," one implication of eating it is that the couple would "live for ever" (v22), but it would be "for ever" in a fallen state. The thought of the human couples in a permanent state of falleness is intolerable to Yahweh. The way out—already nascent in Yahweh's sentence on the man in vv17-19—is banishment from the Garden of Eden, putting the couple out of reach of the tree of life. Instead of "working" in the Garden of God, they would be "working" the ground from which he was taken. Expul, garash, is a strong word, used almost always with implications of force in the OT. Who would have ever imagine that Yahweh had to resort to forceful actions just to protect us! We said earlier that orginally God had not reason to 'house-proof' the Garden against us. Now He does; He acts against us for our good. And, people think of the OT as lacking in grace!
While it was, once, the man who was taken and assigned to "keep" (shamar) the Garden of Eden (2:15), that responsibility is now reassigned to the cherubim (v24). Why are they armed with "a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life"? Had humans become so un-trustworthy that such a drastic measure had to be taken? We cannot answer these questions, but it is a measure of how seriously Yahweh thought was the need to protect the couple from the possibility of eating of the tree and its unimaginable consequences. What grace!
You may wish to read the following commentaries-expositions:
Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, 2016