The key verse for understanding the punishments associated with
eating from Tree of the Knowledge and Good and Evil is Genesis
2:17. In English: 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.” Much ink has been spilt over the question of
why that death was not immediate. For purposes of this argument,
I will fall on an assumption that God's mercy was on display
here, and he withheld that execution for hundreds (at least in
Adam's case, 930) of years. That God continually doesn't kill
people who deserve it in Genesis (Cain - not killed; Lamech -
not killed; World before the Flood- not killed for 120 years;
World at Babel - not killed) shows that God's mercy is evident
even in the first 11 chapters of Geensis. What is important in
this context, however, is the nature of death and life, as used
in Genesis 2:17 and 3:22. In Hebrew, the key phrase of death
centers around the "m-t" מוֹת מוֹת תָּמוּת = "in that day you
shall surely die" In