‘And the woman said to the snake, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. But God has said ‘you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, nor shall you touch it, lest you die'.”.'
The woman's conscience is struggling to be fair to God. But she cannot help but think of THAT tree, and she slightly ameliorates God's warning and slightly exaggerates His demands. God had not said ‘lest you die', He had said ‘you shall surely die'. Dangerously she has in mind the possibility that it might not be true. It is always unwise to ‘improve' the word of God. Nor had He said, ‘you shall not touch it'. But in the latter she was interpreting God perfectly correctly. To touch it was to be half way to eating it. (Here we have an indication that the man and the woman saw the tree as ‘sacred'. It was ‘untouchable'). Possibly she is also trying to build up her protection against the temptation she is now experiencing.
Some have tried to see in the reference to this tree as ‘the tree which is in the midst of the garden' (which was how the tree of life was previously described by the writer) an indication that the story originally only contained one tree, the tree of life. Others have suggested that the woman only knew of one tree, because the tree of life had not yet been revealed to man. But neither is necessary. To the woman in her condition there was only ONE tree, that which was forbidden to her. Her concentration on that tree is intended by the writer to demonstrate the seeds of doubt in her mind. Whereas the most important tree to the writer and to God was the tree of life, which offered continuing life and was therefore central, to the woman the most important tree was the one which was she was unable to partake of, and in her thinking that was central.