Here Eve would assure the tempter that she was not mistaken in regard to the prohibition. “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, _neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die_.” Notice the Italic words are added by Eve to the command of God concerning the tree. No doubt, as she stood there admiring the tree, the monitor of her heart kept saying, “Don’t touch it, don’t touch it,” and, in her guileless simplicity, she adds the words to the prohibition. And yet by this very addition does her first wavering disguise itself under the form of an overdoing obedience. The first failure is her not observing the point of the temptation, and allowing herself to be drawn into an argument with the tempter; the second, that she makes the prohibition stronger than it really is, and thus lets it appear that to her, too, the prohibition seems too strict; the third that she weakens the prohibition by reducing it to the lesser caution. God had said, “Thou shalt surely die.” She reduces it to “_lest ye die_,” thus making the motive of obedience to be predominantly the fear of death. Her tempter, who could quote Scripture to our Lord in his second temptation, after he had failed in the first, was quick to take up the woman’s rendering of the prohibition, and makes answer, “Ye shall not surely die!” What an advance over the first suggestion, “Yea, hath God said.” No doubt he had noted her wavering, and, instead of turning promptly away from the author of her wavering, saw her disposed to inform him of what God had said concerning this “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” and he promptly steps out from the area of cautious craft into that of a reckless denial of the truth of God’s prohibition, and a malicious suspicion of its object. Eve had not repeated the words of the prohibition, and of the penalty, in its double or intensive form, but Satan repeats it, in blasphemous mockery, as though he had heard it in some other way, and stoutly denies the truth of the threatening, that is, the doubt becomes unbelief. The way, however, is not prepared for the unbelief without first arousing a feeling of distrust in respect to God’s love, His righteousness, and even His power. So the tempter denies all evil consequences as arising from the forbidden enjoyment, whilst, on the contrary, he promises the best and most glorious results from the same. “Instead of your eyes closing in death,” he said, “they shall be opened.” The tempter would have the woman believe that, in eating of the fruit, she would become wonderfully enlightened, and, at the same time, raised to a divine glory--“shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And so, in like manner, is every sin a false and senseless belief in the salutary effects of sin.