divinity (see p. 97). In v.5 the same words are put in the mouth of the serpent with a distinct imputation of envy to God; and it is perhaps improbable that the writer of that v. would have justified the serpent's insinuation, even in form, by a divine utterance. There are several indications (e.g. the phrase 'like one of us') that the secondary recension to which v.22 belongs represents a cruder form of the legend than does the main narrative; and it is possible that it retains more of the characteristically pagan feeling of the envy of the gods.—in respect of knowing, etc.] Man has not attained complete equality with God, but only God-likeness in this one respect. Gres.'s contention that the v. is self-contradictory (man has become like a god, and yet lacks the immortality of a god) is therefore unfounded.—And now, etc.] There remains another divine attribute which man will be prompt to seize, viz. immortality: to prevent his thus attaining complete likeness to God he must be debarred from the Tree of Life. The expression put forth his hand suggests that a single partaking of the fruit would have conferred eternal life (Bu. Urg. 52); and at least implies that it would have been an easy thing to do. The question why man had not as yet done so is not impertinent (De.), but inevitable; so momentous an issue could not have been left to chance in a continuous narrative. The obvious solution is that in this recension the Tree of Life was a (or the) forbidden tree, that man in his first innocence had respected the injunction, but that now when he knows the virtue of the tree he will not refrain from eating. It is to be observed that it is only in this part of the story that the idea of immortality is introduced, and that not as an essential endowment of human nature, but as contingent on an act which would be as efficacious after the Fall as before it.—On the aposiopesis at the end of the v., v.i.—23 is clearly a doublet of 24; and the latter is the natural continuation of 22. V.23 is
T. § 205.—The pregnant use of (
Hebrew characters) (= 'I fear lest') is common (Gn. 1919
269 3811 4434, Ex. 1317 etc.). Here it is more natural to assume an
anakolouthon, the clause depending on a cohortative, converted in v.23
