The account of human creation described in Genesis 2-3 vastly contrasts from the utopian and optimistic narrative preceding it. Whereas in the first account humans are endowed with carrying on God’s work, the divide between His power is established. Knowledge is introduced as one of the gaps existing between God’s omnipotence and human’s existence. While the beginning of the verse posits knowledge, an understanding of good and evil, is something reserved for only the divine, it transforms in meaning. As Legaspi explains in “Wisdom and Knowledge in the Hebrew Bible,” knowledge is construed to include desire- that results in shame and guilt as well. Having disobeyed God’s word, humans are now distracted from God’s mission of making and ordering and instead confer judgement with a limited scope. God’s omniscience allows him the ultimate ability to see good or evil, but humans are confined to the universe in which they were given.
The inclusion of eating as the vehicle for humans to receive knowledge founds their dependence on the rest of God’s creations. God made the world with its specific utility in mind, coinciding with the plants and animals creations detailed in Genesis 1. These are gifts to humanity, creating a barrier between God’s power and peoples. Humans may be able to tend to these creations, but they do not have the capacity to craft new ones with the same ability as God. A sense of debt to the Creator is entrenched in humans pursuit of living; a debt that is furthered as they learn the repercussions of disobeying God’s order. When humans take upon God’s role, represented by eating from the tree of good and evil, they are trespassing beyond their mission. God then banishing them from the Garden is an act of mercy as they will not have to view the tree of life that they could have been in possession of. God occupies humanity by giving them purpose, commanding them to now seek a prosperous life on their own account, with death as an inevitability.
Kathleen's Theology Blog 