Is God all-knowing? Did he know Eve would bite the apple? Why then did he bother telling her not to...?

Question

...when he knew she would? For that matter, why even issue the ten commandments if he's known forever whether or not we would follow them?
Isn't it kind of like telling a hungry dog "don't eat the dog food", then punishing it when it ultimately does so.
I am NOT trying to insult, it's just that questions like these have always made me think.

I admit my dog analogy was a poor choice, again no offense meant. The point was simply - why tell someone not to do something you KNOW (not just suspect) they are going to do?

I couldn't possibly decide a best answer on this one - I'll leave this to a vote to be fair.

Answer 1

.

That is why you can NEVER EVER EVER understand grace for all eternity!!! Perished in your own conceit!

.

Answer 2

God gave humanity free will. The choice to Love him or to completely turn their backs on him (as the Devil did). You wouldn't want your girlfriend to love you just cause you buy her many presents. You want that love to be genuine, unconditionally. We are made in God's image, he wants our love to be real, not bought.

As for him knowing.....Its like a loving father that wants to give his daughter or son an opportunity to live, Love, enjoy life....
His ALL KNOWING, but he is also ALL POWERFUL, and chooses how to use his knowlege and power to his will.
That also includes what he wants to know about our future destiny (influenced by the actions we do in the present).

His Love is the most distinguished quality he has, not the knowledge. Love is the only quality that is compared directly with him in the Bible (1 John 4:8)

Eve had a big opportunity to continue to know AND Love God. And as allready mentioned, God gave them other trees for them to feed off. There is no indication that this fruit was something different. There were most likely other trees that had the same fruit. - So its like telling some one not to eat a pepperoni pizza, but they have another 20 pizza's to eat from.
That's not injust, its just Eve decision to take what wasn't hers - or the old way of thinking "We want what we can't have"..But it came with a huge price.....us included.

Genesis 3:15 (the solution)

Answer 3

Making you think is what it is all about. The Adam story is a story, or rather a myth, designed to encapsulate human truths. If you look at scriptures literally and dogmatically, you lose out on the teaching. It is a matter of maturity and learning, scholarship and research combined with a knowledge of humanity. Reading the scriptures with a measure of understanding is the way to do it and then you can perceive why it was presented so.

Answer 4

God may have decided to deliberately not know what would happen to Eve .After all God being God can do anything, right?
It is the same with Jesus today. He does not know who will go to heaven and who will not.This is the way he wanted it to be .He is hoping that sinners will repent before they die.Of course God the Father knows everything.

Answer 5

Have you actually read the Bible? Read the story about Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis. No, actually don't just read it, STUDY it!!
Of Course God is ALL KNOWING!!! He knows the very number of your hair strands - imagine that!!! Before you were born, He knew you! Believe it or not - God knows YOU. The question is, DO YOU KNOW HIM? Do you want to know Him? He wants you to know Him. He knows your name. He knows when you are happy, excited, sad, etc.
God has given us a FREE WILL. You have the choice to LOVE Him or NOT - to KNOW Him or NOT - to OBEY Him or NOT.

Answer 6

Friend,

These are big, honest questions that deserve more than a few lines of answer (at least, I can't conceive of a good short answer).

One thing I can do is point out the following. Adam and Eve's disobedience led to the circumstances that God would use to come in human form to us, as Jesus Christ, and save us from our otherwise doomed state. In other words, God has shown us love and mercy despite what we have done against Him. But He wouldn't have had occasion to do this if there had been no disobedience, no sin worthy of judgment.

It reminds me of the passage in Genesis, Joseph's words to his brothers that sold him into slavery: "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today." (Genesis 50:20 ESV)

See, Joseph was sold into slavery, but he ended up becoming second-in-command to the king of Egypt because of God's mercy toward him.

Of course, as I mentioned, this question begs for a fuller answer. So for the most thought-out response, I advise the following page, and the several pages linked to it:

http://www.christian-thinktank.com/gutripper.html

May God bless you.

Answer 7

It's like a code book brother. Symbols, metaphors, you either get it or you don't. There was no stupid boat with 2 pairs of every animal on it. Just like I am not actually spitting in the eyes of the blind when I say God is real.

Answer 8

actually God told them both,but "off the record "meaning the bible. I think maybe eve thought the serpent was a god and all reality if you stop and think if you saw a snake talking to you I think you would do whatever it told you...but if god told them about the serpent a head of time then I believe eve would turn the serpent down.to eat the tree of good and evil..

Answer 9

If He didn't tell her not to, she wouldn't have the choice to disobey. Notice, though, that this tree was not the only fruit-bearing tree in the Garden. So, its not like your hungry dog analogy.

Answer 10

He wanted to show that we have free will. If he didn't tell her not to, how would she know if she wasn't suppose to eat it? In turn, how would she be able to make her own decision to follow what god told her to do or not? Good Question.

Answer 11

It's part of God's ultimate plan for humanity and to all of creation, and what that plan is, really could not grasp and fathom, for i believe that to know God as he really is takes me eternity, and i am just a limited being...So for me it's part of God's big plan for all of creation....