Genesis 2:16

16. The Lord God commanded the man The Hebrew form of expression, ויצו על האדם , and put a commandment upon the man, suggests the thought of an authoritative law coming down upon him from above . The word man is to be understood here as in Genesis 5:2, of the man and his wife, and not as excluding the woman from the obligation of the law . The woman herself acknowledges this in Genesis 3:2-3. The commandment might, indeed, have been given first to the man, and afterward repeated to the man and his wife together, thus intensifying in them both a sense of its importance . An exact chronological order of particular events is evidently not exhibited in this chapter . Here is the first revelation of moral law . The divine commandment appeals to man’s intellectual and moral nature, recognising him as a thinking religious being . The commandment is simple, specific, positive, and so adapted to test the free and responsible nature of the being to whom it was addressed .

Observe that the first great commandment, which served to test man’s moral life, was of a negative form a prohibition. See next verse.

Freely eat The intensified form of expression (Hebrews, eating thou mayest eat) confers the most unrestricted enjoyment of all the fruitage of the garden. Many understand from this reference to the fruit of trees, as also from Genesis 1:29, that man at first subsisted on the fruit of trees alone. This, taken in connexion with the absence of any allusion to the use of animal food in these first records of the race, may be a legitimate inference, but is nowhere clearly asserted.