But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
(Genesis 2:17, 3:4)
When Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil they didn’t immediately drop dead. Does this mean that there’s a contradiction in the Bible?
The consequence of the act of disobedience was God withdrawing his physical presence from the world. This caused nuclear decay to begin and the world fell into its corrupted state.
Adam and Eve began to age. In biology this is called senescence. Their cells began to die and had to be be replaced through cell division (mitosis) which is prone to errors in DNA replication. Radioactive decay caused ionizing radiation which caused mutation. The mutations were copied along with everything else. Adam and Eve’s bodies began to die.
As it turns out, this is exactly what God said would happen, we will deal with this in the post Dying Thou Shalt Die: מ֥וֹת תָּמֽוּת.
Matty (Headwind) 