Charles Ellicott Commentary Genesis 2:16

"And Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:" — Genesis 2:16 (ASV)

EXCURSUS A: UPON THE PROBATION OF ADAM (Genesis 2:16).

The great object for which the world is constituted as we actually find it is evidently the trial and probation of man’s moral nature. Therefore, we cannot wonder at finding Adam subject to a probation. Even if he had remained innocent, we have no right to suppose that his posterity would always have withstood temptation, or that the world would not finally have become, in the main, as it is now. But the manner of Adam’s probation was different. In Paradise he had unlimited freedom, except in one small particular, and no promptings of his own nature urged him to take delight in disobedience and sin.

But if he was thus free from passion, on the other hand, his conscience was undeveloped—even if it could be said to exist at all in one who did not know the difference between good and evil. He was also devoid of experience, and his reason must have been in a state as rudimentary as his conscience. For, as there was no struggle between passion and conscience, man had not then learned to choose between opposing ends and purposes, as he does now.

Nevertheless, Adam was an intellectual being. He must have had a deep knowledge of natural history, for undoubtedly he named the animals according to their natures. In Genesis 2:23, he calls his wife Ishah and himself Ish.

Now, this name signifies a being; in so naming himself, Adam seems to claim for mankind that he is the one creature on earth conscious of his own existence. When Eve appears, he simply adds a feminine termination to the name, thereby recognizing her as his female counterpart. In doing so, he shows a mastery of language and the power of inflecting words according to the rules of grammar. There is proof, after the fall, of even increased insight into the nature of things. For in the name Eve (meaning life), Adam plainly recognized in her difference of sex the divinely appointed means for the maintenance of human life on earth.

But man now, to balance the corruption of his nature, has—in addition to intellect—the help of conscience, increased knowledge and experience of the effects of sin, and largely developed reason. Lacking such assistance, a difficult probation like that which is the lot of mankind now would apparently have been beyond Adam's power to sustain. In contrast, if he had not been tempted from without, he might easily have endured the simple trial to which he was subjected, with his passions as yet unstirred and most of his intellectual gifts still dormant. But temptation from without was permitted, and Adam fell.

It would be easy to lose ourselves in reasoning about the possibilities involved in Adam’s trial, but there are points about which there can be no doubt:

1. If probation is the normal law of our condition now, it would be just as right and equitable to make Adam subject to a probation. Indeed, for both Adam then and for people now, probation seems to be a necessary condition for the existence of beings endowed with free will.
2. The fall was not all loss; Saint Paul affirms this with reference to the gift of a Savior (Romans 5:17–19). Moreover, higher qualities are called into existence now than were possible for one who had no experimental knowledge of evil. We may even say that in giving this command, Jehovah was appealing to qualities still dormant in Adam. This exercise of the divine attribute of foreknowledge makes us sure that the divine purpose was to develop these qualities—not necessarily, however, by the fall, for they would have been exercised to some extent by resisting temptation.
3. Adam, had he remained innocent, could nevertheless have attained no higher happiness than what was possible for a being in a rudimentary and passionless state of existence. He would have attained the perfection of innocence, pure physical enjoyment, and even considerable scientific knowledge; but his moral nature would have developed very slowly, and its profounder depths would have remained unstirred. He would have been a happy, grown-up child, not a proven and perfected man.

The sufferings of this fallen world are intense (Romans 8:22), but the product in those who use their probation aright is probably higher than any product Paradise could have yielded. The holiness attained by Eloah (the seventh from Adam) was of a different and higher kind than the most perfect innocence of a being who had been called to make no earnest struggle, for it was as the gold tried in the fire (1 Peter 1:7).