And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
Ye shall not surely die. Sensible of the advantage he had gained in arresting her attention, the tempter lost no time in continuing his assault; and, having found that she was firm in her belief as to the certainty of the prohibition, he shifted his ground, and pressed her with an idea of the stern severity of the threatening-a threatening so cruel, so tremendous, so utterly disproportionate to the eating of a little fruit, that he boldly professed his inability to believe it: "Ye shall not surely die." This was an appeal to Eve's self-love. The argument, put in the way the tempter expressed it, was strong; because her understanding could not certainly perceive any just or reasonable proportion between the sin and its punishment; and it was armed with additional strength when followed by the strong asseveration, "God doth know." It was, however, a direct, infamous lie-a lie told in opposition to his own dire experience; but he concealed his own wretched degradation, so that he might have the malignant satisfaction of seeing the human pair involved in the same perdition. Nay, he not only assured his eager listener of perfect impunity, but even held out the assurance of great and invaluable benefits from partaking of that fruit.
Your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods - [Hebrew, kee-'Elohiym (H430), 'like God']. His words meant more than met the ear. There was a sense in which the words of the tempter were true; but it was a sense very different from that in which the simple unsuspecting mind of the woman received them.
She, justly setting a high value upon knowledge, probably thought of nothing but acquiring the enviable privilege which was enjoyed by angelic creatures of knowing what was good and what was evil:-He meant that they would have dire and practical experience of the difference between good and evil, between happiness and misery. But he studiously concealed this truth from Eve, who, fired with a generous desire for knowledge, thought only of rising to the rank and privileges of her celestial visitants. The whole conversation of the serpent indicates a vile scheme of seduction, designed to make the human pair discontented with the wisdom and goodness of the divine arrangements as to their condition, and to fill them with an ambitious desire to make themselves higher than what God seemed to wish that they should be. Nay, it was full of the most audacious falsehoods, expressing open and undisguised infidelity in the divine word, and, by the novelty as well as reckless hardihood of his assertions, claiming credit superior to that of God; and, alas, he succeeded in seeing that claim acknowledged.