Page 255 - Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew

COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW
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234 COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW
all change beast for beast, then it and its substitute shall be holy” (Lev.
27:9–10)—meaning, “‘Good’ and ‘bad’ relate only to judging quality of
the offering in terms of conformance to specifications .”

• “And your little ones, concerning whom you said they should be a prey,
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and your children who in that day had no knowledge of good [tov ] and
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evil [ra ], they shall go in there, and to them will I give it” (Deut. 1:39)—
meaning, “Kids have no knowledge of God’s moral requirements.”
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• “Woe to them that call evil [ra ] good [tov ] and good evil” (Isa. 5:20)—
meaning, “Woe to those not meeting, out of free will, God’s moral
requirements.”
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• “Hate the evil [ra ] and love the good [tov ], and establish justice in
the gate: it may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious to the
remnant of Joseph” (Amos 5:15).
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• “But when I hoped for good [tov ] then the bad came” (Job 30:26)—
meaning, “Nonconformance to my expectations has taken place,” with
no moral element insinuated.
• “For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing,
whether it be good, or whether it be evil” (Eccles. 11:14).

The terms “good” and “bad”—which the eating of the tree of knowledge is
supposed to help discriminate between—now assume an altogether different
interpretation.
Knowledge implies acquaintance with God’s requirements. This may assume
two different modes, corresponding to how God is perceived: as the creator of the
world, or as the origin of the human moral code.
According to the first mode, telling the good from the bad implies distinguishing

the world’s specifications from nonspecifications. In other words, since God is the
creator, knowing his design means to know how the world really is: revealing

the laws of nature. Amassing knowledge is thus tantamount to separating truth
from falsehood, separating the real from the unreal, putting it all in order, and
identifying the design embedded in the world around us.
This is the regular sense of knowledge, as commonly used today. This is what

science is about—revealing the world’s specifications.
The second mode of being able to tell the good from the bad as a result of
eating from the tree of knowledge regards the perception of God as the source of
sovereignty of the human moral code. The thirteen features of divine conduct, as

enumerated by Moses (Exod. 34:6–7), indeed present the requirements of God
from humankind, within the realm of the latter’s free will. This type of knowledge,