‘And the Lord God commanded the man saying, “You may freely eat of every tree in the Plain, but concerning the tree of knowing good and evil you shall not eat of it, for in the day that you eat of it you will surely die”.'
God's provision is wide and generous. The man may eat of anything grown in the Plain, including the Tree of Life. One tree only is forbidden to him, the tree of knowing good and evil. This tree is a symbol to him of God's over-lordship. It is like a sacrament. Every time he sees the tree it will remind him that there is One Whom he must obey, One Who is his Lord. Though man is lord of the earth, he will recognise that he is subject to the Lord of Heaven.
The tree was not intended to be a temptation. As ‘lord' over the whole world how easily Adam might have forgotten God, but this tree was a reminder to him that his lordship was subject to God, and the fruit a reminder that all his provision came from God. It said, ‘remember that there is One by Whom you can be called to account, and Whom you must continually obey'. The tree and its fruit were a sacred symbol, something to br regarded with awe.
Indeed he can come to the tree and ponder on the goodness of his Creator. From this point of view it was a gift of grace. And by continuing in obedience man would gradually grow in an understanding of goodness, which would be a great blessing. But to eat of it would be an act of rebellion, for he would be apprropriating to himself what was God's. And the man would then experience evil, and thus become experimentally aware of good and evil in a catastrophic way. The verb ‘to know' never for the Israelite means to know intellectually. It means to know by experience. The man would know evil in contrast with good because he would experience it.
We need not see it as meaning that there was anything magical in its fruit. It was simply that it was the test of man's willingness to obey God. The consequence of disobedience would be death, for it would signify that he had rebelled against God, and in such a state he could not be allowed to live for ever.