The knowledge of good and evil is not information about good and evil.
To know, here, is da'at — to take into oneself, to take up as one's own operation.
To take the knowledge of good and evil is to take up the scale: to lay good on one pan and evil on the other and render the verdict. Good and evil are the two pans. The knowledge is the weighing. To eat of the tree is to take the balance into the hand.
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AS GODS
Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. To be as gods, in the serpent's offer, is to hold the judging position — the hand that weighs, the one who sets the cut and calls one side good and the other evil. The serpent's head is the place where the two options are calculated; the serpent's head is the scale.
The Fall is not the gaining of a fact. It is the installation of the scale at the level of perception. The creature who could only receive now weighs before she perceives, and from that moment cannot see without ranking. And the hand that holds the balance holds. To weigh is to grip. The knowledge of good and evil is the grip installed as perception. The tree and the position of the hand that balances are not alike; they are one operation named twice — once in the garden, once in the books.
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DEATH ENTERS WITH THE SCALE
In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Death enters with the scale. The law of sin and death is the law of the scale — the account weighed, posted, reconciled, closed at zero, the ledger's self-satisfied nothing. The zero of the balanced page is not rest; it is the death the scale delivers, the account settled over a body.
The other tree does not weigh. The tree of life cannot feed what wants to be better-than; it feeds what wants to live. Life is not ranked. It is received — the Temperatur, the tempered unity that is not a position on a scale but what stands when nothing is weighing it. The two trees are the two laws. The tree of knowledge of good and evil is the law of sin and death, the scale, the hand that balances. The tree of life is the law of the Spirit of life, what stands when the weighing stops.
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THE ONE WHO WOULD NOT WEIGH
The seed crushes the serpent's head by being uncalculable. It does not rank higher than the serpent; it gives the ranking nothing to compute.
They bring the woman taken in adultery and cite the Law — lay down the law, render the verdict, take up the scale. He stoops, writes in the dust, declines the seat of judgment. He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone. He hands the scale back, and the weighers cannot hold it. Neither do I condemn thee. He does not call her good; to call her good is the other pan, still the scale. He declines to weigh her at all. The one entitled to the scale — the only one without sin — will not pick it up. Judge not is the same instruction laid flat: do not take up the balance.
On the cross the refusal is carried to the end. I lay down my life of myself; no man takes it from him. He is weighed — the one body laid on the pan to settle the account — and he will not weigh back. Father, forgive them: weighed, he declines the verdict on those who weigh him. The hand refusing the balance even as the balance falls on him.
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DO NOT TAKE UP THE SCALE
The prohibition was never the guarding of a secret.
It reads: do not take up the scale.
Do not become the hand that weighs. To eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is to leave the tree of life — to give up the received for the ranked, the standing for the posted, life for the death the scale delivers. And the scale cannot be carried back. You cannot hold the knowledge of good and evil and eat of the tree of life, any more than you can keep the precipitate and rejoin the Temperatur. The hand that weighs is closed. The hand that receives is open. They are not two postures of one hand. They are the two trees.
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See BALANCE · LAYING DOWN · RIGOR · THE WARM HOST · THE FORGED WARRANT OF FORCE
