Jehovah God was apparently referring to himself and his only-begotten Son when he said: “The man has become like one of us in knowing good and bad.” (Genesis 3:22) Let us consider why.
Jehovah said these words after pronouncing sentence upon the first human couple. Some have taken the expression “one of us” as the plural of majesty, just as a human king might say “we are not pleased” when referring only to himself. With regard to Genesis 1:26 and 3:22, however, Bible scholar Donald E. Gowan says: “There is no support in the O[ld] T[estament] for most of the proposed explanations: the royal ‘we,’ the deliberative ‘we,’ the plural of fullness, or an indication of a plurality of persons in the Godhead. . . . None of these explanations makes much sense in 3:22, which speaks of ‘one of us.’”
Could Jehovah have been referring to Satan the Devil, who had come to decide “good and bad” on his own and who had influenced the first humans to do the same? That is not reasonable. Here Jehovah used the expression “one of us.” Satan was no longer among the throng of Jehovah’s faithful angels, so he could not have been included with those who were on Jehovah’s side.
Was God referring to the faithful angels? We cannot say definitely. However, the similarity of the expressions at Genesis 1:26 and 3:22 gives us a clue. At Genesis 1:26, we read that Jehovah said: “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.” To whom was he addressing these words? Referring to the spirit creature who became the perfect man Jesus, the apostle Paul said: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; because by means of him all other things were created in the heavens and upon the earth.” (Colossians 1:15, 16) Yes, it seems logical that at Genesis 1:26, Jehovah was speaking to his only-begotten Son, the “master worker,” who was at his side during the creation of the heavens and the earth.
(Proverbs 8:22-31) The similarity of the expression at Genesis 3:22 suggests that Jehovah was again speaking to the one closest to him, his only-begotten Son.
God’s only-begotten Son apparently had knowledge of “good and bad.” From his long and intimate experience with Jehovah, he certainly learned well his Father’s thinking, principles, and standards. Convinced of his Son’s acquaintance with these and loyalty to them, Jehovah may have granted him some latitude in handling matters without direct consultation with Him in each instance. So the Son would to this extent be able and authorized to determine what was good and bad. However, unlike Satan, Adam, and Eve, he did not set up a standard that conflicted with Jehovah’s.
Finally, Adam and Eve were evicted from the garden of Eden. Jehovah said: “Here the man has become like one of us in knowing good and bad, and now in order that he may not put his hand out and actually take fruit also from the tree of life and eat and live to time indefinite . . .” “The sentence ends in mid-air,” notes scholar Gordon Wenham, and we are left to supply the rest of God’s thought—presumably, “let me expel him from the garden.” Generally, a Bible writer reports God’s complete thought. But here, continues Wenham, “the omission of the conclusion conveys the speed of God’s action. He had hardly finished speaking before they were sent out of the garden.” (Genesis 3:22, 23) With that, all communication between Jehovah and the first couple apparently ceased.
Adam and Eve did not die physically during that 24-hour day. However, they died in a spiritual sense. Irremediably alienated from the Source of life, they began a decline into death. Imagine how bitter their first encounter with death must have been when their second son, Abel, was murdered by Cain, their firstborn!—Genesis 4:1-16.
After that, comparatively little is known about the first human couple. Their third son, Seth, was born when Adam was 130 years old. Adam died 800 years later, at the age of 930, after fathering “sons and daughters.”—Genesis 4:25; 5:3-5.
The Bible says that in the garden of Eden, “Jehovah God made to grow out of the ground . . . the tree of life.”
The reason given for putting Adam out of the garden was so that he could “not put his hand out and actually take fruit also from the tree of life and eat and live”—yes, forever! After expelling Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, Jehovah posted “the cherubs and the flaming blade of a sword that was turning itself continually to guard the way to the tree of life.”—Genesis 2:9; 3:22-24.
If Adam and Eve had been permitted to eat of that tree of life, what would that have meant for them?
Why, the privilege of living forever in Paradise! One Bible scholar speculated: “The tree of life must have had some virtue by which the human frame was to be kept free from the decrepitude of age, or the decay that terminates in death.” He even claimed that “there was an herbal virtue in paradise capable of counteracting the effects” of aging. However, the Bible does not say that the tree of life in itself had life-giving qualities. Rather, that tree simply represented God’s guarantee of everlasting life to the one who would be allowed to eat its fruit.—Revelation 2:7.
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