And the Lord God said
The Word of the Lord God, as the Jerusalem Targum; not to the
ministering angels, as the Targum of Jonathan but within himself,
or to the other two divine Persons:
behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and
evil;
which is generally understood as an irony or sarcasm at man's
deception by Satan, who promised man, and he expected to be as
gods, knowing good and evil; behold the man, see how much like a
god he looks, with his coat of skin upon his back, filled with
shame and confusion for his folly, and dejected under a sense of
what he had lost, and in a view of what he was sentenced to; yet
must be understood not as rejoicing in man's misery, and
insulting over him in it, but in order the more to convince him
of his folly, and the more to humble him, and bring him to a more
open repentance for affecting what he did, and giving credit to
the devil in it: though I rather think they are seriously spoken,
since this was after man was brought to a sense of the evil he
committed, and to repentance for it, and had had the promised
seed revealed to him as a Saviour, and, as an emblem of
justification and salvation by him, was clothed with garments
provided by God himself: wherefore the words are to be considered
either as a declaration of his present state and condition, in
and by Christ, by whose righteousness he was made righteous, even
as he is righteous, though he had lost his own; to whose image he
was conformed, now bearing the image of the heavenly One, though
he was deprived of that in which he was created, having sinned,
and come short of the glory of God; and was now restored to
friendship and amity with God, favoured with his gracious
presence, and having faith and hope of being with him for
evermore; the eyes of his understanding were enlightened by the
Spirit and grace of God, to know the good things which God had
provided for him in Christ, and in the covenant of grace, a
better covenant than that under which he was made, and which he
had broke; and to know the evil nature of sin, its just demerit,
and the atonement of it, by the death and sacrifice of the
promised seed: or else the words are a declaration of man's past
state and condition, and may be rendered, "behold, the man was as
one of us" {o}; as one of the Persons in the Deity, as the Son of
God, after whose image, and in whose likeness, he was made; both
as to his body, that being formed according to the idea of the
body of Christ in the divine mind, and which was not begotten,
but made out of the virgin earth; and as to his soul, which was
created in righteousness and holiness, in wisdom and knowledge,
and was like him in the government he had over all the creatures:
and besides, he was in many things a type of Christ, a figure of
him that was to come; especially in his being a federal head to
his posterity, and in his offices of prophet, priest, and King;
and being created in knowledge, after the image of him that
created him, and having the law of God inscribed on his heart, he
knew what was good and to be done, and what was evil and to be
avoided: but now he was in a different condition, in other
circumstances, had lost the image of God, and friendship with
him, and his government over the creatures; and had ruined
himself, and all his posterity, and was become unholy and unwise;
for being tempted by Satan to eat of the forbidden fruit, under
an expectation of increasing his knowledge, lost in a great
measure what he had:
and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the
tree of
life;
as well as of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; which some
take to be a continued sarcasm; and others, that it was in pity
to him, that he might not live a long life of sorrow; and others,
as a punishment, that having sinned he was justly deprived of the
sacrament and symbol of life; or else to prevent a fresh sin; or
rather to show that there could be no life without satisfaction
for the sin committed, and this in no other way than by Christ,
the antitype of the tree of life:
and eat, and live for ever;
not that it was possible, by eating of the fruit of the tree of
life, his natural life could be continued for ever, contrary to
the sentence of death pronounced upon him; or so as to elude that
sentence, and by it eternal life be procured and obtained; but he
was hindered from eating of it, lest he should flatter himself,
that by so doing he should live for ever, notwithstanding he was
doomed to die; and very probably the devil had suggested this to
him, that should he be threatened with death, which he made a
question of, yet by eating of the tree of life, which stood just
by the other, he might save himself from dying: wherefore to
prevent him, and to cut off all hopes of securing life to himself
in this way, it is suggested that something must be done, which
may be supplied from the following verse, let us send him out of
the garden.