Biblical Concept of Hell. William Hyland
and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:17–19)
From then on, living was a picnic no more; all they needed to survive on now had to be produced by arduous physical labor. Thorns and thistles they encountered in their work symbolized the ground’s curse in at least two ways: 1) harvesting of any edible plant became tedious and slow by the invasion of these weeds, and 2) the grazing of thistles was lethally dangerous for their cattle and the like to ingest. The meaning of “die to die” became rather clear to them: “return to dust.” Death and its consequences are included in Yahweh’s creation plan inasmuch as the ground out of which He formed the first man (Genesis 2:7) is the exact same medium into which his body decayed after his last breath. Death’s process is the mirror-imaged reversal of God’s creation procedure: visible weakening and shrinking, then the last breath’s exhausting and finally flesh and bones reverting back into the ground, from the perspectives of substance as well as of locality.
Whether or not they had assumed they would live eternally, and not “die to die,” is uncertain, but verse 22 indicates they had the opportunity, but not necessarily the knowledge of that opportunity for eternal life. But regardless of any awareness of that chance, they could have accidentally overridden the adjudicated consequence of their eating fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In anticipation of that possibility, Yahweh expelled the first couple from the garden forever.
Adam had been formed by the hand of Yahweh as a sinless {cf. Genesis 1:31} image (Genesis 1:27) of Himself; Eve too was sinless inasmuch as He had formed her out of a rib belonging to Adam. Though only creatures, not divine, they were initially created with the Christ-like character: “in (them) there (was) no sin” (1 John 3:5); they “knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21); they “committed no sin.” (1 Peter 2:22) While God’s decree of Genesis 2:27 might not have been the only prohibition He had given them, through the serpent’s deceit, the prohibited fruit became for them too great an allurement to resist. Eve, followed by Adam, bit into that fruit, thereby instantly becoming sinners endowed with the knowledge of good and evil. The penalty for their sin, as Yahweh had warned, was a death sentence for each. (Genesis 3:19) By this “foundational” sin, Adam and Eve abruptly altered their relationship with Yahweh {cf. Romans 2:5, 5:16, 8:20} as well as precluded for all humanity the opportunity for eternal life (Genesis 3:22–24):
Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Genesis 6:5)
…through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, ἐφ’ ᾧ all sinned. (Romans 5:12)
The interrogative ἐφ’ ᾧ is comprised of ἐπί and the dative of ὅς, which The Analytical Greek Lexicon translates “wherefore, why.” Then the inference here is: in Adam “all sinned” {cf. 1 Corinthians 15:22}, which is a statement of result, not of causation. In other words for Romans 5:12, through the first couple’s defiant deed, every human was, is and