And the LORD God commanded the man, saying,
Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat:
All Commentaries on Genesis 2:16 Go To Genesis 2
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
God, referring to the forbidden fruit, said to the first man whom he had established in paradise: “In the day that you shall eat of it, you shall die the death.” His threat included not only the first part of the first death, that is, the soul’s deprivation of God; not only the second part of the first death, that is, the body’s deprivation of the soul; not only the whole of the first death in which the soul, separated from both God and the body, is punished; but whatever of death is up to and including that absolutely final and socalled second death … in which the soul, deprived of God but united to the body, suffers eternal punishment.
