Or HaChaim on Genesis 3:6/אור החיים על בראשית ג׳:ו׳

1 ותרא האשה כי טוב העץ. Eve saw that the tree was good. The first problem is how could one judge what is good to eat by merely looking at it? Another question is why the Torah describes a feeling of the mouth before describing the effect on the eye? The verse should have read: "she saw that the tree was a beautiful sight and that it was good as food," in that order. Furthermore, whence did Eve know that the tree was apt to add to her perceptive powers, i.e. להשכיל? If the Torah merely intended to tell us that the serpents's description of the tree had been accurate, why describe the woman as seeing something that she did not see? Also why did the Torah add two superfluous words הוא, and העץ a second time? If the repetition of the word is justified, why did the Torah not also write the word העץ after the word תאוה?

2The verse describes the way in which Eve was snared, and how she eventually became willing to listen to her seducer. When you examine Eve's earlier words, you will find that she said: "and from the fruit of the tree in the center of the garden, G'd' said "do not eat." She had expressed her conviction that only the fruit of the tree was forbidden, that the trunk, the branches, etc., were permitted. She may have arrived at that conviction for one of two reasons. 1) Adam had commanded her in those very words. 2) Though Adam had mentioned only the tree without specifying its fruit, etc., she reasoned that there would have been no point in forbidding something that anyways was not food, such as the trunk, the branches, and the leaves. We have pointed out earlier that whereas the other trees did not taste similar to their fruit, the tree of knowledge was the exception, its trunk, etc. being just as edible as its fruit. We must therefore assume that Eve had already tasted the tree itself, not having considered it as forbidden. She also applied the prohibition to touch it as applicable only to its fruit, not to the trunk, etc. At any rate, Eve had already experienced the taste of the tree's trunk and nothing had happened. Alternatively, she may have discounted the prohibition to touch the tree knowing that this was not a direct command from G'd Himself and would not lead to death.

3Having tasted from the tree itself, and having experienced that its nature was different from all the other trees, she decided to take a closer look at the fruit of that tree. It was then that she discovered that the fruit exerted a powerful visual attraction; the word הוא refers back to the word פרי, fruit. It could not refer to the word העץ, the tree, as this would be unnecessary. It would have sufficed to say וכי תאוה לעינים, if it were merely a reference to the tree. The word העץ is needed in the sequence ונחמד העץ להשכיל because the subject matter had changed from the fruit to the tree. The knowledge of the nature of the tree had been based on her sense of taste, whereas her perception of the nature of the fruit was based only on her sense of sight. The Torah explains that Eve's purpose in eating of the fruit was to broaden her powers of perception. At this point Eve believed that the serpent had spoken truthfully when it claimed that as a result of eating from the fruit of that tree she would gain greater insights, and that G'd had forbidden the fruit only in order to prevent her from gaining the insight which would make her equal to G'd. The Torah emphasises that "she took from its fruit," as she had already tasted the trunk. We have now completed answering the various questions we raised about this verse. Eve gave to her husband from this fruit out of her love for him; she wanted him to share her new insights so that he too would become G'd-like.

4I have seen it said in defence of Eve that her sin was not so serious as she could not imagine that G'd had created a being whose sole purpose it was to test man's love for G'd by having Satan masquerade within it to try and mislead man. If such a thought had even occurred to Eve she would never have engaged in a dialogue with the serpent. She would have acted just like the righteous nowadays who do not listen to or engage in disputes with tempters however slick-tongued they may be in making something sinful look desirable. The righteous of our time are not so naive; this is why they can withstand the wiles of Satan. Poor innocent Eve did not have their advantage and that is why she fell victim to the seductive tactics of the serpent (Satan). She had furthermore been mislead by the taste of the tree itself, something she thought of as permitted. She also did not possess as analytical a mind as that of a man, else she would have been able to resist the lure to eat from the fruit of that tree. Had she not first erred in believing that the tree itself was pemitted to eat from, she never would have considered eating from the fruit as well.

5Another reason that may have accounted for Eve falling an easy victim to Satan's lure was that she considered it to have been a mistake to accept the prohibition not to eat from the tree. When she accepted the commandment she had not thought that it would be so difficult to observe. Originally the tree had not appeared to her as sufficiently desirable to pose a threat to her obedience to G'd's command. We find a parallel to such considerations when we consider how many covenants G'd concluded with the Jewish people to ensure that they would not go back on their commitment to observe the Torah. G'd did not consider it sufficient to just give the commandments to the Jewish people without creating a legal device to make the commitment irrevocable. Our sages (Shabbat 85 based on Exodus 19,17) tell us that at Mount Sinai G'd had threatened to kill the Jewish people unless they embraced the Torah. He subsequently reinforced the validity of their acceptance by making them swear an oath. Our rabbis go so far as to describe the renewed acceptance by the Jewish people of the Torah at the time of Mordechai as the only free acceptance of G'd's laws, describing the original acceptance as having occcurred under conditions of duress and therefore legally not valid (Shabbat 88). Inasmuch as Eve had not been sworn to observe the commandment not to eat from the tree she was not really obligated to do so. Even though she had orally accepted the commandment and such acceptance is comparable to the uttering of a vow, it is in the category of a vow erroneously entered into, something that can be annulled retroactively (compare Nedarim 66). The exact text in the Talmud is as follows: If someone undertakes not to drink wine because the wine is bad for his digestion, and he is informed that aged wine is good for his digestion, his vow is annulled and he may drink any kind of wine. We face a similar situation here. When Eve had accepted G'd's commandment prior to having become conscious of the powerful attraction exerted on her by this tree she had been quite sincere. However, once she noticed the powerful pull which the fruit of that tree exerted on her she regretted having undertaken to honour the commandment not to eat from it.

6We therefore have two causes that helped to mislead Eve. The reason she may have thought that only the fruit of the tree was forbidden was because her husband had not given her precise instructions. Had her husband told her that G'd had said: "You may eat from all the trees of the garden, but from the tree of knowledge in the centre of the garden you must not eat," she would never have considered the trunk as permissible, and the fact that neither eating from it nor touching it had resulted in any harm to her would not have served as a verification of the serpent's argument. Eve's not having been aware of the attractive nature of the tree was also Adam's fault. He had not told her that G'd had described the tree as the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He had only told her not to eat from the tree in the middle of the garden, without a reference to its special nature. Had Eve been aware that the tree was of such special significance the serpent could not have tricked her, and she herself would have been unable to invoke her lack of knowledge as a reason to revoke her acceptance of G'd's command not to eat from it.

7None of the causes of the sin can be attributed to G'd, all were due to man's inadequacy, i.e. both Adam's and Eve's.

8For all we know, Adam may not have been aware that the trunk of the tree of knowledge was edible. He had only tasted the other trees and found invariably that their trunks were not edible. He did not realise that the earth had conformed with G'd's instructions to the letter when it produced the tree of knowledge. The manner in which the Torah describes Eve's realisation of the tree's properties suggests that she did not have an inkling previously that this tree had such special features.