After God created man, He placed Himself as the tree of life and Satan as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in front of man, who had the highest life of all His creatures, so that man would choose according to his own will. Man could choose God and receive life, or choose Satan and receive death. The tree of life signifies God, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil signifies Satan. God put these two trees in front of the man whom He created, allowing man to choose.
Although man has the highest life in God’s creation, he does not have the highest life in the universe. The highest life in the universe is God. In His creation God did not put Himself into man; the created man did not have the uncreated life of God within him. Instead, God placed Himself in front of man as the tree of life in order to be received by man. God, however, also warned man that there was a third party in the universe besides God and man—Satan, as signified by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He also warned man that if he ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would surely die. God placed these two trees in front of man because He wanted man to receive Him as life; He did not want man to touch Satan and receive death.
Genesis 3 shows us that man was deceived by Satan and partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and thus fell into death. From this point on, the entire account of the Old Testament speaks of man turning away from the tree of life to touch the things outside of God, as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We usually divide the Old Testament into three parts: the section on history from Genesis to Esther, the section on experience from Job to Song of Songs, and the section on prophecy from Isaiah to Malachi. Let us look at the line of life in these three sections.
The historical record from Genesis 3 to Esther shows how man turned away from the tree of life to touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When man turned away from God, he lived according to evil. In Genesis 3 Adam and Eve rebelled against God; they were short of love and even spoke lies. In Genesis 4 a person killed his own brother. At the end of Genesis 4, evil things such as taking many wives, having multiple marriages, indulging in the flesh, and brutal murders were occurring. The earth was filled with violence prior to the flood. At the tower of Babel, mankind collectively rebelled against God and worshipped idols. This continued with Sodom’s evil and fornication and Egypt’s rebellion against God. Even the children of Israel worshipped idols, and in their midst there was an abundance of wickedness. From 1 and 2 Samuel through Esther, sin is present among all the people. The seventeen books of history are a record of man leaving the tree of life and touching the evil aspect of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; man left God and lived in sin.
In this period of history, there was a small number of godly men like Abel, Enosh, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and some among the children of Israel, who were shown God’s mercy and saved by God from the evil of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They learned to live in the principle of the tree of life, which was to turn away from sin and to live before God. However, this was only a small number of people.