The tree of life restored

The tree is not cut down. The way to it is guarded. That distinction gives the closing sentence of the chapter its particular severity: life has not vanished from creation, but access to it is no longer Adam's to take. The sentence closes a route, not an argument about whether the tree exists.

The reason has already been stated in verse 22. After taking from the forbidden tree, the man must not also take from the tree of life and live for ever. These are two different trees. Confusing them blurs the movement from disobedience to exclusion. The life-giving tree was not the tree whose fruit had been forbidden in Genesis 2:17.

God has clothed the man and his wife in verse 21, but clothing is not readmission. Care and expulsion stand in the same chapter without cancelling each other. Nor does the final verse describe an angel brandishing a sword in his hand. It names cherubim and a turning flame of a sword, without explaining how they are arranged. The Book of Genesis ends the scene with guarded access. The tree remains. The way is barred.

Even the leaves have work to do. The fruit supplies one image of abundance; the foliage supplies another, and its reach is explicitly the nations. The tree of life is not described as a private possession tucked away for a few distinguished residents. Its healing belongs in the city's account of life together.

There is a striking contrast with the leaves in Genesis 3:7. Those were fig leaves, sewn into coverings after disobedience. These are the leaves of the tree of life, associated with healing rather than the effort to cover nakedness. The books do not claim that one kind of leaf turns into the other. The contrast lies in what leaves are doing at the two ends of Scripture.

Healing must also be read beside Revelation 21:4, which has already excluded death and pain. The image does not require a hidden population of patients in a city otherwise described as free of suffering. It draws on Ezekiel's life-giving river and medicinal leaves to depict restoration. Nor does the word nations disappear once judgment is over. The peoples whose glory enters the city are not erased from its final landscape. They are named among the recipients of life.

The movement is through the gates, not around the guards. Genesis ended the garden scene with access denied; this blessing names people who have right to the tree of life. The contrast is not between a well-defended garden and a poorly defended city. It is between exclusion and authorised entrance.

The King James wording places obedience directly in that blessing: they that do his commandments. That belongs beside Revelation 14:12, where the saints keep God's commandments and the faith of Jesus. It should not be diluted into a statement that conduct no longer matters. Neither should the sentence be detached from 22:17, where the water of life is offered freely. The chapter does not describe a purchase, even while it distinguishes the blessed from those outside.

The tree also completes a promise made near the beginning of Revelation. In 2:7, Christ promised the overcomer food from the tree of life in the paradise of God. Here the promised access stands beside entry into the city. The image reaches back further than the book's opening churches, to the guarded way in Genesis. The final blessing does not pretend that expulsion never happened. It announces a right of entrance where there had been a barrier.