What Actually Died

This chapter runs one exegetical argument. It runs it through five steps. Each step builds on the last.

A note on method before we begin. This is not a seminary commentary. The original languages are engaged where they are load-bearing, and then set aside. The footnote apparatus stays in the background. What you will get here is what an engineer would call a structural analysis — identify the assumption, find the weight it is carrying, test whether it can bear that weight, and then examine whether a different assumption handles the load better. If the argument holds, you will see it. If it does not, you will see that too.

The argument holds.

Step One: The Friction

Open your Bible to Genesis 2:17. Read it slowly.

"But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will surely die." — Genesis 2:17 (NET)

The Hebrew behind "you will surely die" is muth tamuth — dying you shall die. It is a doubled verbal construction, the Hebrew equivalent of italics and underlining at the same time. It is not a possibility. It is not a warning about a gradual process. It is an emphatic declaration about what will happen on a specific day: the day of eating.

Now read Genesis 5:5.

"So all the days Adam lived were 930 years, and then he died." — Genesis 5:5 (NET)

Adam ate. Adam did not die that day. Adam died 930 years later.

Sit with that. Do not rush to the solution. The friction is not a problem to be managed. It is a door. The door will not open until you have stood in front of it long enough to feel what it is actually asking.

The text is not confused. The text is not in error. The text is using the word "die" to mean something, and what it means is the question this chapter is answering. But before we answer it, we need to see clearly what assumption most of us have been carrying when we read those two verses — because the assumption is what has been producing the confusion, not the text.