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Hey, this is John at the Bible Project.

And today on the podcast, we're going to continue a conversation on how to read the wisdom books in the Bible.

Proverbs, ecclesiasties, song of songs, and joke.

And like we tend to do, we first are spending a lot of time in Genesis 1 through 3.

Genesis 1 through 3 is crucial for grasping why the books of Solomon are what they are.

In the garden are two trees.

The tree of life which God wants us to eat of, and also the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Which, if we eat of, we will die.

Today, we're going to talk about that second tree, and 10 points out that calling it the tree of good and evil is problematic.

So the word evil in English is pretty much narrowly connected to moral evil or essential evil.

And the Hebrew word raw is not.

Evil loads in too much cosmic moral meaning.

If you look at other places in the Hebrew scriptures where that phrase, the knowledge of good and bad, or in Hebrew the knowledge of tove and raw, you'll notice this phrase.

This is a way of talking about a mature adult human with discernment between good and bad.

So in other words, Adam and Eve are depicted as being in their moral infancy.

So eating of the trees and just about whether we will choose evil, it's about how we're going to learn wisdom so that we can rule the world with God because...

He's called a child to rule.

So the tree represents a choice about two different ways of learning what is tove and raw.

I can take it for myself because it's good in my eyes. That's what can happen.

Or hands off, I will allow God in his own time to give me the knowledge of tove and raw.

All that, and more on today's episode.

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