JOBNAME: No Job Name PAGE: 1 SESS: 18 OUTPUT: Fri May 5 13:01:55 2006 SUM: 4CD2D9F6 /cambridge/wts/wtj/spring2006/4wilder BIBLICAL STUDIES ILLUMINATION AND INVESTITURE: THE ROYAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TREE OF WISDOM IN GENESIS 3 WILLIAM N. WILDER A ccording to Gen 1–2 Adam and Eve were created to be rulers—under God, over the world, and with each other. It also seems best to understand their obligations before God within a covenantal framework, one that antici- pates the coming covenant with Israel in both its structure and its sad outcome. 1 As we shall see, the covenant with Adam and Eve is concerned with much more than retaining whatever rulership they already enjoyed; it offers in addition the prospect of a full accession to the viceregal throne of which God has made William N. Wilder is Director of Educational Ministries at the Center for Christian Study in Charlottesville, Va. 1 According to Gordon P. Hugenberger, Marriage as a Covenant: Biblical Law and Ethics as Developed from Malachi (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), 171, ‘‘The predominant sense of tyrb in Biblical Hebrew is an elected, as opposed to natural, relationship of obligation established under divine sanction.’’ The particular obligation and sanction in Gen 2:17, along with the potential blessings further discussed in this article, seem to have the nature of a special, covenantal arrangement within the web of natural obligations and blessings inhering in creation. The correspondence between Adam and Israel is recognized and traced in numerous places in the Bible as well as in non- canonical Jewish and Christian writings. See N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (vol. 1 of Christian Origins and the Question of God; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 266, for example, who notes that ‘‘the Israel-Adam link, which simply focuses the meaning of the covenant, seems to have been woven so thoroughly into Jewish thought and writing that it emerges in one form or another practically everywhere we look.’’ Jacob Neusner, What is Midrash? (GBS; Philadelphia: For- tress Press, 1987), 84, also notes the correspondence, though he is much more positive about the role of Israel vis-a `-vis Adam: ‘‘Israel’s history forms the counterpart to Adam’s. Israel then is humanity incarnate.... So Israel’s history serves as a paradigm for human history, and vice versa. But there is a difference between Israel and Adam. Israel obeys God’s Word, and Adam did not, so Israel will be saved, as Adam fell.’’ See also William J. Dumbrell’s comments in ‘‘Genesis 1:1-17: A Foreshadowing of the New Creation,’’ in Biblical Theology: Retrospect and Prospect (ed. Scott J. Hafe- mann; Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 61-62; and Dumbrell, ‘‘Genesis 2:1-3: Biblical Theology of Creation Covenant,’’ Evangelical Review of Theology 25 (2001): 225-28. Furthermore, verbal clues establish a connection with the coming Mosaic covenant. As Dexter E. Callender, Jr., Adam in Myth and History: Ancient Israelite Perspectives on the Primal Human (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisen- brauns, 2000), 72, notes with respect to Gen 2:17, ‘‘The use of the verb s I wh ‘to command’ appears to be significant and conscious. The command is both to eat and not to eat, and the phrase lo ¯ < to ¯ <kal recalls the apodictic legal formulae found elsewhere in the Pentateuch, such as in the Decalogue.’’ Printer: Position pages per crop marks provided. Margins have been adjusted intentionally. WTJ 68 (2006): 51-69 51