Kohelet a Map to Eden

Why, then, was God pleased with Shlomo’s request? The reason is that Shlomo wanted that knowledge in order to serve God, whereas Adam and Ĥava desired it in order to be like God

I have seen it all in the days of my futility: righteous men who die in spite of their righteousness, and wicked ones who live long in spite of their wickedness. (Kohelet 7:15) The phrase “in the days of my futility” can be read as “in the days of my Hevel.” Adam learned, in the days of his Hevel, that sometimes the righteous perish and the wicked endure.

Like Adam, the spies veered from a justified quest for knowledge of “true and false” to a subjective determination of “good and bad.” And as in the story of the Garden, they acted like God, deciding on their own whether the mission to conquer the land would succeed. They were thus barred from entering the land, like Adam; but their children, who did not fail in the same sin – that is, determining good from bad – would enter:

Shlomo asked for wisdom from God to properly judge his people, and his first test of that wisdom (the case of the two mothers) showed the nation that he was indeed a wise judge. However, over time, Shlomo’s wisdom came to be attributed to him, not to God, and Shlomo began to judge the validity and relevancy of God’s commandments. By usurping God’s role as ultimate Judge, Shlomo failed in the role assigned to him. ... Shlomo was not the first to fail in this regard. As we have seen, the spies also did not understand the scope of their mission. They acted as judges, deciding what was good and bad, even when God had already determined the land to be good. This trend of humans to act as judges instead of accepting God’s judgment goes all the way back to the Garden. When Ĥava examined the tree, the Torah notes that “The woman saw that the tree was good (ki tov) for eating” (Bereshit 3:6). She and Adam acted as judges, deciding that the tree was “good for eating,” despite the decision by God that of all the trees, this one was specifically not intended for them to eat.

Why did God place a forbidden tree in the Garden in the first place? Wasn’t this a form of entrapment, a setup leading to the inevitable transgression by Adam and Ĥava? Therein lies the difference between animals and humans. Granted, in some ways, they are remarkably similar. As Kohelet states, “The preeminence of man over beast is nothing” (3:19). All animals (including humans) follow their desires – their hearts and eyes – and instinctively focus on short-term benefits. But only humans also have the advanced brain capacity to defer immediate satisfaction in order to achieve long-term goals.23 God wanted Adam and Ĥava to think rationally about the future, not just to react; God wanted them to be human. That required the opportunity to pass up the short-term benefit of eating the forbidden in order to remain in God’s special place. They needed the ability to make that choice. While Adam and Ĥava failed that test in the Garden,24 their descendants are faced with this same challenge daily. This is one of the lessons of Kohelet – not to focus on the futility of our daily toil, but to recognize that the benefits of long-term allegiance to God will pay off

The Tzeror Hamor notes that Nadav and Avihu’s lack of garments was comparable to Adam and Ĥava’s situation, of whom it was also stated, “the two of them were naked” (Bereshit 2:25). By removing their priestly garments, and (or) being intoxicated, Nadav and Avihu were also trying to return to the primordial state of the Garden by reversing Adam’s steps. Like Noaĥ, Nadav and Avihu’s attempt to return to the pre-sin state was unsuccessful, primarily because their actions were not commanded by God.

Later in the Yom Kippur service comes the taking of the two goats, and letting God decide (by lottery) which should be sacrificed. This is a rectification of the sin of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of good and bad. Normally, if there are two animals where one will be sacrificed and the other not, the human making the sacrifice will determine which is “good” and which is “bad.”3 But by leaving the decision to God, we acknowledge that He is the ultimate source of our values and morality