Why Isn’t It Called the Tree of Death?
Two trees stand at the center of the garden. The tree of life is set “in the midst” (Genesis 2:9), and when the woman later points to the forbidden one, she calls it, too, “the tree that is in the midst of the garden” (Genesis 3:3). Both at the center — close enough that the whole choice gathers into a single spot. Not a temptation off in some corner of Eden, but the center of everything, with two trees standing in it.
Read just their two names, side by side, the way you would read any two labels — and something does not match.
The tree of life. The name is the thing. Life is what the tree is, and life is what it gives; there is no gap between the tree, its fruit, and its result. One word covers all of it, and nothing about it needs explaining — reach out, take, eat, and live (Genesis 3:22). Simple, and whole.
Now read the other one the same way. We know what it gives, because God says it plainly: “in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17). Death is the fruit. So why is it not called the tree of death? That would be the matching name — tree of life, tree of death, result against result. But that is not what it is called. Its name is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Death is the result; death is nowhere in the name. The name points one step upstream — past the fruit, to the thing that produces it.
And notice the shape of the two names. Life has no seam in it; it is one thing. Knowledge of good and evil carries an “and” — the two folded right inside it, the splitting, the sorting of everything into this pile and that. One tree is undivided. The other is the entrance of the division: the taking-up of a judging that cuts the world in half. “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:22). The serpent never lied about the outcome. He lied about whether it was good.
The two trees are still standing, still at the center. One was never complicated — it simply gives life, and it is still on offer. The other we reach for every time we take up the verdict ourselves, certain we can tell good from evil and handle the telling.
So it is worth asking where else in Scripture we meet a whole system whose business is the naming of good and evil. And worth asking something closer in: when we take up that judging, who is the first one it falls on?
Which tree are we eating from today?
