@BigDoggProblem
I think you may have meant to write, "Not all warnings of impending harm are threats".
"All warnings are not threats" or " Not all warnings are threats " appears to be only a difference in where the "not" is placed. It be interesting to diagram it out on a truth table. The second may be clearer. In "All warning are not threats" Some warnings would be, is what I meant at the time.
I think on further consideration I think HOW ones receives the warning has much to do with it. Two definitions I noticed of "threat"
threatDictionary result for threat
/THret/Submit
noun
1.
a statement of an intention to inflict pain, injury, damage, or other hostile action on someone in retribution for something done or not done.
"members of her family have received death threats"
synonyms: threatening remark, warning, ultimatum, intimidating remark; More
2.
a person or thing likely to cause damage or danger.
"hurricane damage poses a major threat to many coastal communities"
Was what God told Adam about the two trees (especially the forbidden one) taken as
1. or
2.?
And how do we the readers take it?
I think it is a threat in the second sense.
You bring out a very interesting point below.
Genesis is not clear as to why the humans die.
I'd agree that in the account alone it is not too clear. Many things need further revelation to make the matter clearer.
I think the first question I had upon reading Genesis for the first time was about why there should be a lying, conniving, subtle, deceiving serpent in what was described as a paradise. Everything in me thought that paradise should exclude such an evil being.
Only subsequently does the Bible fill in more facts to make the matter clearer.
But was Adam and eve's dying inflicted punishment or embraced misfortune or both?
You know in an older book of
Job terrible things were done to
Job by Satan in a contest between God and Satan. [bJob[/b] however seemed to have no doubt that God was the one responsible for his suffering.
" ... in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." (2:17b) could only be permitted to happen in God's providence. I still though lean on "threat" in the second sense being more the indication up to that point.
Was it because the fruit itself was deadly to them in some way,
I believe that this should be the case. But it becomes clearer to me as the revelation of the Bible unfolds further.
They actually came into union with Satan the Devil. I don't understand everything about this.
Sometimes I point out that when Judas ate the morsel of food, we are told that Satan entered into him in some special way.
Jesus answered, It is he [the betrayer] for whom I will dip the morsel and to whom I will give it; And dipping the morsal, He gave it to Judas Isacariot, ... And at that moment, after the morsal, Satan entered into him.
Jesus therefore said to him, What you do, do quickly." (See John 13:26,27)
I do not understand everything about that fruit. But I think it was a kind of "line in the sand" over which Adam was not to step. When he did in disobedience a union between him and Satan came about. He stepped out from under God's reign into the kingdom of darkness.
It is not until the book of
Romans that this is made that clear to me. But we know God's word was true. He died. And his descendants each - died. It impresses me the way the Bible repeats it about his descendants
"and he died .... and he died ... and he died"
or was it because God was going to punish them by killing them? If the former, then the warning was not a threat; if the latter, it was.
Interestingly, the end of Gen. 3 shows that it was by no means certain that the eaters of the tree would die:
I'd like to comment latter.
Genesis is not clear as to why the humans die. Was it because the fruit itself was deadly to them in some way, or was it because God was going to punish them by killing them? If the former, then the warning was not a threat; if the latter, it was.
Interestingly, the end of Gen. 3 shows that it was by no means certain that the eaters of the tree would die:
From the whole revelation of the Bible I have decided that
"the tree of life" stood for more than just an endless human life. In light of the rest of the Bible it means God living in man.
Neutral man was placed between two sources to which he could be joined.
He could take into himself God.
Or he could take into himself God's enemy Satan.
The two sources were mutually exclusive. If he took into himself Satan he could not receive God as life (apart from Christ's redemption which unfolds much latter).
If he took into him the tree of life he would be mingled with God.
There is not a warning that he would die if he FAILED to eat of the tree of life.
There was a warning that to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would cause him to die.
I have never been able to locate any other reason for man dying accept this being in union with Satan through eating of that forbidden tree.
But your point is noticed and I could be wrong. But it always appears to me, the way it is written, that there was no other reason Adam would physically die except that forbidden tree.