Don't Touch?

The woman said to the snake, “We may eat the fruit of the garden trees but not the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden. God said, ‘Don’t eat from it, and don’t touch it, or you will die.’” –Genesis 3: 2-3 (Common English Bible)

That’s not what God said. God did not tell the woman (later named Eve) that she couldn’t touch the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden. If you look back to Genesis 2:16, what God commanded was that the man not EAT from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; God said nothing about not touching it.

So why does the woman tell the serpent that God said not to touch the tree? I see two possible reasons. One, it’s the man’s fault for giving her bad directions. If you look back at the text, when God issued the command about not eating of the tree, the first woman hadn’t even been created yet. So perhaps the first man was telling the first woman about the command after she was created. The first man, like men still do today, couldn’t remember the directions and refused to ask God for help.

The second possible reason that the woman, despite what God actually said, tells the serpent that they can’t touch the fruit is that she has learned the importance of boundaries in life. You see, God had warned that, if they ate the fruit from this particular tree, they would die. Perhaps the woman rightfully observed that the fruit was beautiful and looked delicious. Perhaps she also realized that to actually touch the fruit would be one step closer to actually eating the fruit, something the man and woman had been prohibited to do. Perhaps the woman decided that the best way not to EAT the fruit was not to TOUCH the fruit.

Being a man and not ever wanting to be wrong and virtually incapable of giving bad directions (yeah, right), I like option number two. Eve knew the importance of setting boundaries. Touching the fruit wasn’t prohibited but she realized that touching it may lead to something that was prohibited (and it eventually did).

Do you need some better boundaries in your life? Maybe what you’re doing isn’t exactly wrong or hurtful in and of itself. But could it lead to something wrong or hurtful? Is what you’re doing today, as innocent as it might appear on the surface, worth the price that you might have to pay somewhere down the road?

It can be tough to create and maintain appropriate boundaries in life. But we must be vigilant in trying. May God grant us the grace to prayerfully discern what boundaries are most needed in our lives in order that you can avoid hurting God or someone else that loves us.