God’s warnings are invitations to freedom

In the biblical story of humanity’s beginning, there’s a curious and often overlooked detail. When God speaks to Adam in the garden, He doesn’t begin by issuing a command. Instead, He gives a warning: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17). At first glance, this seems like a straightforward prohibition. But in Jewish tradition, the interpretation leans another way: God isn’t laying down the law. He’s offering a word of caution.

This distinction matters. In the Hebrew Bible, the God of Eden is not yet the lawgiver of Sinai. He isn’t laying out statutes or penalties. He is describing consequences. “If you eat this fruit,” God says, “this is what will happen.”

It’s not the voice of a judge imposing a sentence, but that of a parent explaining the natural outcome of a choice, similar to if you put your hand on the hot stove, you will get burned.

Ancient rabbinic sources underline this. Genesis Rabbah 15:7 interprets God’s words not as a commandment but as advice. The Talmud, too, makes careful distinctions: Avodah Zarah 5a explains that “the righteous are told what will befall them, but they are not coerced.” In Sanhedrin 29a, we find that a warning doesn’t necessarily imply a prohibition. Even Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish philosopher and legal thinker, echoes this in his noted Mishneh Torah (Hilchot Teshuvah 5:1–3): Divine punishment isn’t about retribution — it’s about natural consequence.

When we act out of sync with divine wisdom, we suffer not because God lashes out, but because we’ve turned away from what gives life.

This view reveals something vital about freedom and how God works with us. The first humans weren’t micromanaged. They were warned, not shackled. They had real freedom, and real consequences.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms this dynamic: “God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions” (CCC 1730). In other words, we’re not meant to be puppets pulled along by divine strings. We are partners in freedom, capable of love because we are capable of choice.

This early biblical moment shows us a God who does not dominate but invites. Who does not threaten but teaches. A God who, even before the Law was given, cared enough to warn humanity of danger, not to trap them, but to help them live.

Seen in this light, divine warnings aren’t about fear — they’re about wisdom. They’re not the bars of a prison but the signs along a cliff’s edge. They remind us that God, in all His holiness, still honors our agency. The choice is ours, always. But God, like any loving Father, makes sure we know what’s at stake.