Why didn’t Adam and Eve die when God said they would?

“but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” Genesis 2:17 (ESV)

Either God is a liar, or our interpretation is wrong. Since Scripture is clear that God cannot lie (Heb. 6:18), then let’s take a closer look at our interpretation. Part of the confusion here is that many think this passage says that Adam and Eve would “die” the very day they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The text doesn’t say that Adam and Eve would have died that exact day disobeyed God. The Hebrew (muwth muwth) translated “surely die” in the ESV can be literally translated “dying you shall die”, indicating the beginning of death and its final implication. When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they began to die and then would eventually return to the dust (Gen. 3:19).  This is how the original audience would have understood the phrase “muwth muwth” in Genesis 2:17. If God intended to say that they would have died right there and then He would have only used “muwth” one time as it is used in Hebrew to indicate “die”, not “surely die”.

A similar phrase is used in 1 Kings 2:37 (ESV), “For on the day [yom] you go out and cross over the brook Kidron, you will know for certain that you shall surely [muwth] die [muwth] ; your blood shall be on your own head.””. The Hebrew word for “day” (yom) indicates the time of action. In 1 Kings 2:37 the time of action is crossing “over the brook Kidron”. In Genesis 2:17, the time of action is eating.

In other words, because of their actions (crossing over the brook Kidron), at some point death was surely going to come. The same goes for Genesis 2:17. In the time that Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, death was surely going to come to them, but not necessarily that exact day.

Think of it like this. If I said to you, “The day you stop paying your mortgage, you will surely lose your house.” You wouldn’t take my words to mean that the very “day” you don’t pay your mortgage that someone is going to evict you. Rather, you would understand that what I’m saying is that if you stop paying your mortgage, it is inevitable that you will eventually lose your home. God told Adam and Eve that when they disobeyed His command, then death would inescapably come to them at some time, but not that they would die the exact day they disobeyed.

In Him,
Miles