The Discovery of Genesis (46 page)

The food also was not as delicious as before, as some plants were
bitter
to the taste. Thus when the two characters
are written together, as they often are, to designate sorrow, one sees depicted the
sorrow
of both Adam and Eve.

God, the loving Creator, knew man’s frame, his weaknesses, his bent to sin since Lucifer had filled his mind with unholy desires. Therefore the restrictions and apparent punishments that were placed on Adam and Eve were to be blessings typical of God’s long-range, eternal love-disciplines to help remold their injured characters. God also advised them of the death process. The warning, “You will die,” is better translated, “dying, thou shalt die.” Death was not necessarily a visible terminal cessation of life but a gradual deterioration and degenerative process which would affect many aspects of life. For Eve, and all womankind, the change would somehow affect the bearing of children, which doubtless God had originally planned to be a totally joyful experience. By Eve’s disobedience, her original status as an equal with her husband would be changed; in general, women through the succeeding generations have suffered an inferior consideration.

So God pronounced the penalty coming upon the first man and woman as an inevitable result which they had brought upon themselves. The word
to punish
shows that
two people
were involved and that there were
two offenses.
The radical for
offend
is doubled
in order to show that there were two indicted.
is a
knife
, suggesting the “serious type of punishment.

A similar character
meaning
united, together
, and indicating their partnership in rebellion, appears to have the same origin. Note that the
points
of “anointing” in the ancient writing for this symbol
, represent
two persons
who are
offenders
. Ancient ideograms for
to punish
are similar:
, where
pictures a
knife
. One venerable calligrapher was even more explicit:
, adding
dust
, which portrays the ultimate fate of the offenders as well!