Attaining and Forfeiting Adam’s Immortality at Sinai

As part of making this argument, the rabbis read Genesis 3:20–21 as if it were displaced from the end of chapter 2. Moreover, in addition to reading the verses, other factors played a role in thinking Adam was created immortal. For example, one midrashic tradition reads the clothing that God dresses Adam and Eve with not as “garments of skin” (כתנת עור) but as “garments of light” (כתנת אור) symbolizing humanity’s original immortal state. In short, in the above I am merely pointing out the strictly textual markers that may have animated pieces of this rabbinic mindset but their reading actually flows from a larger complex of assumptions.

The midrash is a gloss on Exodus 23:20, God’s promise to send an angel along with the Israelites to conquer the land.

The translation is from the Soncino edition with some occasional tweaks where needed to clarify things or be a bit less archaic. Midrash Rabbah: Exodus, trans. S. M. Lehrman (London: Soncino, 1939), 404–405.

This reading builds upon the rabbinic understanding of Proverbs 3:18. While this verse from Proverbs describes wisdom as עֵץ חַיִּים הִיא לַמַּחֲזִיקִים בָּהּ, “a tree of life to those who lay hold of her,” in the rabbinic mind wisdom is just another name for Torah. Thus, Torah becomes associated with the tree of life and the gift of immortality. The synagogue liturgy surrounding the reading of the Torah on Sabbath morning makes these connections quite explicitly. Thus, Proverbs 3:18 is sung as part of the liturgy of returning the Torah scroll to the ark after the weekly Torah reading. Furthermore, each participant called to the Torah recites a blessing after his/her reading is completed which blesses God as the one “who has given us the Torah of truth and planted eternal life in our midst.” These prayers testify to the way in which the rabbis drew a complex set of connections between Torah, wisdom, the tree of life and immortality.

The midrash closes with an alternative explanation of Psalm 82:7b.

ד”א וכאחד השרים תפולו, א”ר פנחס הכהן ב”ר חמא אמר להם הקדוש ברוך הוא הפלתם עצמכם, לשעבר הייתם משתמשים ע”י רוח הקודש עכשיו אין אתם משתמשים אלא ע”י מלאך הוי הנה אנכי שולח מלאך לפניך.

Another explanation: R. Pinchas the kohen son of R. Chama said: “God said to them: ‘You have brought about your own downfall. In the past, you were served by direct inspiration; now however, you will be served only by an angel’—as it says, “Behold, I send an angel before you.”

It is likely that this verse fragment receives attention here because R. Pinchas’ explanation allows the midrashist to link his exegesis back up to Exodus 23:20 by showing that Israel needed an angel because she fell from her own angelic state.

This trope is explored at length in a brilliant midrash in Genesis Rabbah 19:9 that makes much of the fact that God’s question to Adam in Genesis 3:9, אַיֶּכָּה, “where are you?” and the first word in Lamentations share the identical consonants, aleph, yod, caph, heh.

^{1 Cor 15:20} But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. ^15:21 For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; ^15:22 for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. ^15:23 But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. ^15:24 Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. ^15:25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

It is not absolutely clear that Ben Sira was referring to Eve here, though this is the usual interpretation. See Jack Levinson, “A Contextual Analysis of Sir 25:24,” CBQ 47 (1985): 617–623. Sirach also contains other statements that indicate that Adam and Eve’s sin is much less problematic, such as 15:14–17. For some interesting reflections on these tensions within Sirach and other Jewish texts produced during the Hellenistic era, see John J. Collins, Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age, OTL (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1997) 80–96.

The translation is my own from the critical edition of the Sifre on Deuteronomy, ed. Louis Finkelstein (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1993), 340–341 (piska 306). The standard English translation is Sifre: A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy, trans. Reuven Hammer, Yale Judaica Series 24 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), see page 307.