How Adam and Eve Sinned Without an Evil Inclination

The Aish Rabbi Replies

Thank you for raising your profound issue. Your premise appears correct. Man had no inherent desire for evil before he ate of the Tree of Knowledge. As the Torah attests, Adam and Eve didn’t even wear clothes before they sinned (Genesis 2:25). At that time, they didn’t even have the capacity to desire evil. There was not even the slightest possibility that they would be tempted to use their bodies in any way other than God’s intended purpose. Their bodies were as sacred as their souls. There was therefore no need to cover the body to downplay man’s physical side and limit temptation – since for that very brief period of world history there was no temptation.

And this brings us to the question you raised. If Adam and Eve did not have an evil inclination, how could they have possibly disobeyed God and eaten from the Tree of Knowledge? Without a desire for sin luring them from the good, how could they have acted in such an irrational manner – rebelling against the God who had just given them life?

The first point we should make – although it doesn’t truly answer the question – is that this does explain the existence of the primordial Serpent. Since Adam and Eve had no evil inclination themselves, God charged an outside being – the Serpent – with the mission of luring them to sin. This, however, merely backs up our question: How could the Serpent have possibly been successful? Adam and Eve had no desire for sin. How could an outside creature convince people with no evil inclination to choose wrong?

The answer to this is quite deep, but I’ll offer a very brief synopsis here. We can discern a critical clue to solving our dilemma by examining the precise tactic the Serpent took in tempting Eve to sin. He told her that the Tree would make them “as gods knowing good and evil” (3:5). What does that even mean? Is knowing good and evil a quality of God? And how would that have tempted Eve, who did not yet even contain the capacity to desire evil, to sin?

The answer to this goes to the very heart of man’s struggle in this world. Although Adam and Eve were not challenged with the struggle between good and evil that we have today, there was a deeper challenge which did apply to them: the drive for existence. The deepest and most profound desire a human soul has is to feel it exists. Now, this is not a feeling we have automatically – just because we were born and are alive. Our lives were handed to us – by God and our parents; we did nothing to earn them. I am just a passive, created being, the handiwork of God, without true independent existence. Merely being created makes me no more real than a picture painted by an artist – or in today’s terms an app created by a programmer. I may have a beating heart and impressive sentience, but I am only a creation – a magnificent one, to be sure – but only the handiwork of others. And in a very profound sense, that is not true existence. And if a person truly allows himself to think about this, it will haunt him to the core.

This dilemma is actually the source of some of man’s strongest ambitions. It drives a body to accomplish, to make some difference in the world and give himself the sense he exists longer than his fleeting lifespan. It brings a person to devote himself to a career, to live for a cause, to raise children who will outlast him, to do something extraordinary, to get his name in the paper. And it can equally drive a person to evil – to become known for his wickedness if not his goodness. If people have heard my name – if I appear in the news, in history books, in social media – then I must truly exist. I am not just an anonymous passive being who lived and died following some predetermined heavenly script. I am someone who has made a difference. I made an imprint on the world beyond myself – at least for the bad if not the good.

This too explains the challenge Adam and Eve were faced with in the Garden of Eden. They did not desire evil, but they did crave existence. And to a small degree, they felt they lacked this upon their creation. As they were initially created, Adam and Eve were virtually perfect. They were the perfect handiwork of God, who lived with all their needs provided for. They were given a single challenge alone – the single mitzvah not to partake of the Tree of Knowledge. And as explained above, nothing about their original creation gave them reality – as all they were was handed to them by God. The only opportunity they had to accomplish and grant themselves existence was passing their single challenge of not eating from the Tree. And then there would be nothing more for them to do.

And then came the Snake. He told Eve that by eating from the Tree they would become as gods, knowing good and evil. What does it mean to be a “god”? The idea is that God is the only being with true existence – whose infinite reality does not depend upon anyone or anything else. And if they too would partake of the fruit, they too would gain existence, so claimed the Serpent. They would know and desire evil – and that would give them new challenges. They would then truly be able to accomplish and make themselves real – rather than being the near-passive beings they were at their creation. Life would be an endless array of difficult challenges. They would desire evil and have to overcome it – if they could, of course. And every win, every victory would be theirs. They would face and overcome true and difficult challenges – and that would at last give the reality they so deeply craved.

It is beyond the scope of what was supposed to be a brief response to explain what was wrong with Adam’s and Eve’s reasoning – how they would have accomplished even more by not partaking of the fruit. But this answers our basic question above. Even though Adam and Eve had no desire for sin, they did want reality. And this is precisely what the Serpent deceitfully made them think the Tree would offer them.

(Based in parts on thoughts heard from my teacher R. Yochanan Zweig.)