Genesis 3:22-24

The Expulsion from the Garden

22. as one of us It is not stated to whom Jehovah addresses these words. Two explanations are possible. Either (1) He speaks to the Heavenly Beings by whom the throne of God was believed to be surrounded. See notes on Genesis 1:26 and Genesis 3:5; Genesis 6:1; Genesis 11:7. "As one of us" will then mean, not "like unto Jehovah personally," but "like to the dwellers in Heaven," who are in the possession of "the knowledge of the distinction between good and evil." Or (2) the words are used in the language of deliberation, and represent the Lord moved, as it were, by apprehension or displeasure, because the eating of the Tree of Knowledge had conferred upon man an attribute to which he was not entitled.

According to either line of explanation, the sentence is one which is most easily understood as one of the few survivals of the earlier myth form of narrative.

The Targum of Onkelos, to avoid the phrase "as one of us," renders "is become one from himself."

and now, lest, &c. Man must be prevented from eating of the Tree of Life, and so obtaining another prerogative of Divinity, that of immortality. Man is created mortal. Immortality, obtained by disobedience and lived in sin, is not according to Jehovah's will.

The verse contains a survival of the naïve trait in the primitive story, which represented Jehovah as jealous of the possible encroachment by man upon the prerogatives of Divinity. The serpent had referred to this (Genesis 3:5); and it appears again in Genesis 11:5.