This is an entry in the “Acrostic Contemplations.”
Knowledge is a flexible term. In some languages, like German, you can have several different words which all track to a single, meager, “to know” in English. You might know a person at work, you can know a fact about the world, or you might even know your spouse in, as they used to say, “the biblical sense.” To know something or someone implies a deep understanding, which doesn’t always require comprehension.
To take the obvious, I know that the sun will rise in the eastern portion of the sky, every morning. I have experienced that every day of my life. I have heard teachers and scientists explain why that is the case, even as they point out it does not literally “rise in the east” but is instead a function of the rotation of the earth about its axis. I know all this, I know that this will happen and that it is the nature of our little portion of the universe that it is perceived in this way. I also know my wife, not only in the biblical sense, but in the way in which I have an understanding of who she is, what her interests and convictions are, what her past has been and what are her goals and dreams for the future.
When the Woman ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and give it to her husband עִמָּהּ “who was with her” (an important bit, oddly missing from some English translations), they knew something they had never before even conceived of and they knew it to the very core of their being. The knew they had disobeyed God.
“Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.” There is no need to quibble about what exactly nakedness has to do with evil or innocence, what it stands for is their understanding, the comprehension that things were no longer as they were; their eyes had been opened, or perhaps altered, and now they saw that the whole world was different.
We seek knowledge, we are told that it is one of the highest pursuits of humanity and some of us have dedicated our lives and careers to this endeavor. The opposite of knowledge, we assume, is ignorance. Were the Man and the Woman ignorant or innocent? Is there a difference? And what about wisdom, what role does it play in our lives?
To know something is not to understand it, to understand something is not to comprehend it, to have knowledge of Good and Evil is not sufficient. One needs wisdom.
And he said to humankind,
“Truly, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom;
and to depart from evil is understanding.” (Job 28:28)
