Genesis 3:5

For God doth know,.... Or "but (k) God doth know", who knows all things, and has foreknowledge of all future events; he foreknows what will be the consequence of this event, eating the fruit of this

For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. No JFB commentary on this verse.

If you would have the whole truth of the matter, and God’ s design in that prohibition, it is only this, He knoweth that you shall be so far from dying, that ye shall certainly be entered into a new and more noble kind of life; and the eyes of your minds, which are now shut as to the knowledge of a world of things, shall then be opened, and see things more fully and distinctly. Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil, or, as God, like unto God himself in the largeness of your knowledge; the very name that God hath put upon the tree may teach you. But this is a privilege, of which, for divers causes best known to himself, some of which your own reason will easily guess at, he would not have you partake of.

Genesis 3:5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.Ver. 5. For God doth know, &c.] It should take care of itself because nothing is hidden with God. It is remarkable that the devil here charges God with envy, which is his own proper disease; for ever since he himself fell from heaven, he cannot abide that any should come there; but of pure spite hindereth them all that may be. Here he envied that God should be served by man, and that man should be gifted and graced by God. So that he points out, and paints out himself, in saying that God envied man the gift of wisdom. There is nothing more usual with the wicked, than to muse as they use, and to suppose that evil to be in others that they find to be in themselves. Caligula, that impure beast, would not believe there was any chaste person upon earth. And, I dare say, said Bonner to Hawks, the martyr, that Cranmer would recant, if he might have his living - so, judging others by himself, for Papists apply themselves, said our protomartyr, Mr Rogers, to the present state; yea, if the state should change ten times in the year, they would ever be ready at hand to change with it, and so follow the cry, and rather utterly forsake God, and be of no religion, than that they would forego lust, or living, for God or religion. Then your eyes shall be opened.] There is an opening of the eyes of the mind to contemplation and joy. There is also an opening of the eyes of the body to confusion and shame. He promised them the former, but intends the latter, and so cheats them, as he doth thousands now-a-days, by the cogging of a die, as St Paul hath it giving them an apple in exchange for paradise. Thus of old he cheated Ahab and Croesus with promises of victory; which, when it fell out otherwise, he had a hole to creep out, and save his credit by an equivocation. Thus of latter time he begiled Pope Sylvester II., assuring him that he should never die, till he came to say mass in Jerusalem; he, resolving never to come there, made no reckoning but to live a long time. But it fell out somewhat otherwise; for as he was saying mass in a certain church in Rome, called Jerusalem, fearing nothing, the devil claimed his due, and had it. For he was there and then taken with a strong fever, and lying on his deathbed, he sent for all his cardinals, and declaring before them what a wretched bargain he had made with the devil, selling his soul for the popedom, and deceived by him with promise of long life, he bitterly bewailed his own folly, and advised them to beware by his example.

(5) Ye shall be as gods.—Rather, as God, as Elohim himself, in the particular quality of knowing good and evil. It was a high bait which the tempter offered; and Eve, who at first had answered rightly, and who as yet knew nothing of falsehood, dallied with the temptation, and was lost. But we must not comment too severely upon her conduct. It was no mean desire which led her astray: she longed for more know ledge and greater perfection; she wished even to rise above the level of her nature; but the means she used were in violation of God’s command, and so she fell. And, as usual, the tempter kept the promise to the ear. Eve knew good and evil, but only by feeling evil within herself. It was by moral degradation, and not by intellectual insight, that her ambitious wish was fulfilled.

Verse 5. Your eyes shall be opened] Your understanding shall be greatly enlightened and improved; and ye shall be as gods, כאלהים kelohim, like God, so the word should be translated; for what idea could our first parents have of gods before idolatry could have had any being, because sin had not yet entered into the world? The Syriac has the word in the singular number, and is the only one of all the versions which has hit on the true meaning. As the original word is the same which is used to point out the Supreme Being, Genesis 1:1, so it has here the same signification, and the object of the tempter appears to have been this: to persuade our first parents that they should, by eating of this fruit, become wise and powerful as God, (for knowledge is power,) and be able to exist for ever, independently of him.

5. for God doth know, &c.] Having denied the fact of the penalty, the serpent proceeds to suggest that there is an unjust motive for the threat. It is not, he says, for the good of the man and the woman, but in order to exclude them from their privilege and right. No reason had been assigned: the serpent suggests one, that of jealous fear, lest men should be as God. According to the story, there is a half-truth in each utterance of the tempter; (1) “ye shall not surely die”: and it is true that the penalty of Gen 2:17 was not literally carried out. The man did not die in the day that he ate of the fruit: (2) “in the day ye eat thereof your eyes shall be opened”; the prediction is verified in Genesis 3:7 : (3) “Ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil”: the prediction is confirmed by the words of Jehovah Himself, Genesis 3:22, “Behold the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.” These three assertions, the denial of penalty, the promise of knowledge, and the prospect of independence, therefore, are not lies capable of direct refutation, but half-truths requiring explanation. your eyes shall be opened] An expression denoting the sudden acquisition of discernment to apprehend that which before had been hidden from ordinary sight. Cf. Genesis 21:19; 1 Samuel 14:29; 2 Kings 6:17. as God] or as gods. Both translations are possible, as in the Hebrew the word for God, Elohim, is plural; and consequently it is sometimes impossible to say whether “a god,” or “gods,” is the right translation: e.g. 1 Samuel 28:13, “and the woman said unto Saul, I see a god (or ‘gods’) coming up out of the earth.” In favour of the plural “gods” is the expression in Genesis 3:22, “the man is become as one of us.” The word “Elohim” may be used of the Heavenly Beings, “Sons of God,” who living in the presence of God are spoken of as sharers in His Divinity; see note on Genesis 1:26. But as the purpose of the serpent is to implant distrust of, and disaffection towards, the Lord who had made the man and woman, the singular, “as God,” is to be preferred.

5. For God doth know — The Satanic utterance here recorded is a specimen of blasphemously changing God’s truth into a lie. The deceiver would make the woman believe that God was keeping her in ignorance of some great good.