Q. Why did God put a tree in the Garden of Eden that was not to be eaten or touched by Adam and Eve?
Within the Genesis account of the Garden of Eden, this tree plays a very specific role. Basically, its purpose is to establish for the man and woman that while they have been given authority over all the other creatures, they themselves must submit to the authority of God. In effect, God gives them one rule that they must follow in order to obey him.
Personally I do not believe that within this account, we are meant to understand that eating the fruit of the tree conveys any special power. Even though it is called “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” I believe it was only given that name after the fact. It is characteristic of Hebrew narrative to use the names that things and places later got when introducing them in the first place, before they got those names. For example, the story of Gideon in the book of Judges says that his soldiers “killed Oreb at the rock of Oreb, and Zeeb at the winepress of Zeeb.” Clearly these places got their names later, as a result of the events narrated here. But the story is told as if the names were already in use at the time of these events. Similarly, the narrator says early in the book of 1 Samuel that “the Israelites camped at Ebenezer.” We only learn later in the book how that place got its name. The narrator means that “the Israelites camped at the place that later became known as Ebenezer.”
I think the same thing is happening in Genesis when the narrator relates that God said to the man, “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” The narrator means that God told the man not to eat from a certain tree, which became known as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When the serpent asks the woman whether God has forbidden them to eat the fruit of any tree in the garden, the woman replies that God only told them not to eat the fruit of “the tree that is in the middle of the garden.” If the tree already had its name, it would have been clearer and more straightforward for her to have used that name.
So where did the name come from? I think it refers not to knowledge in the sense of understanding (that is the claim that the serpent deceptively makes about the tree) but experiential knowledge. In other words, we are to understand that the man and woman “knew good and evil” not as God does, administering justice perfectly, but that they knew what it was to do something evil and what it would have been to do something good instead.
So there is nothing magical or powerful about the tree itself or its fruit. It is simply a boundary marker, the boundary between obedience to God’s authority and assuming the authority to rule one’s own life completely, with no exceptions. Here is an illustration that I hope will be helpful. When young children first go to the dentist, it can be helpful for one of their parents to accompany them. But sometimes children do not follow the dentist’s instructions because they aren’t certain whether the parent also wants them to do what the dentist is telling them to do. I have been told that dentists are trained to address such situations in this way. They say to the parent, “Mr. Jones” or “Mrs. Jones,” “go and sit in that chair.” When the parent does what the dentist says, the child realizes that the dentist is the authority in the room and after that complies with instructions.
There’s nothing magical about the chair or sitting in it. It’s just a vehicle for responding to authority. The dentist could just as easily say “open the window” or “get a magazine from the waiting room and come back here.” Similarly, at least as I understand it, within the Genesis account, there is nothing magical about eating the fruit of the tree. Not eating it is essentially a vehicle for acknowledging God’s authority.
Incidentally, God does not tell the man and woman that they cannot touch the fruit. That is something the woman says in her response to the serpent. But if we want to apply the moral lesson of this account to ourselves today, it’s probably a good idea to stay as far as possible away from things that God has forbidden. Over the course of the entire Bible, God prohibits other things that do have inherent consequences. Many actions are destructive to others and to ourselves. God wants us to flourish and to help others flourish, and so he forbids these things. Not doing them is both an acknowledgment of his authority (since he has forbidden them) and a means of bringing blessing rather than harm to others and ourselves. Instead, we do those things “against which there is no law,” as Paul writes to the Galatians about actions that flow from love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Our lives are supposed to be so full of doing those things that there is no room for actions that harm others.
Good Question 