The use of the word day in such a sense, meaning an indefinite period of time, is of frequent occurrence in the Scriptures. An instance in point occurs in 1 Kings 2:36-46. King Solomon bound Shimei by an oath to remain in Jerusalem, under the sentence that on the day he went out in any direction, he should be slain. After three years, two of his servants ran away to Gath, and he went after them. It was then told Solomon that Shimei had been to Gath and returned. Solomon sent for him, reminded him of the conditions on which his life was suspended, and the oath he had broken, and then commanded the executioner to put him to death.
Gath was some twenty-five miles from Jerusalem. That Shimei could go there and get his servants, return, be sent for by Solomon, and be tried and executed, all on the same day, is a supposition by no means probable, even if it is possible. Yet in his death the sentence was fulfilled, that on the day he went out he should be slain. Because on the very day he passed out of the city, the only condition that held back the execution of the sentence was removed, and he was virtually a dead man.
So with Adam. He was immediately cut off from the tree of life, his source of physical vitality. So much was executed on that very day. Death was then his inevitable portion, to be accomplished within the limits of that period covered by the word, day.
We are very well aware of the method adopted to evade the conclusion which naturally follows from the language of the sentence in Gen. 3:19. This, it is claimed, was spoken only of the body, not of the soul. The poetry of Longfellow,
“Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul,”
takes much better with most people than the plain language of inspiration itself.
To whom, then, or to what, was this sentence addressed, “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return”? Admitting that there is such a creature of the imagination as the popular, independent, immortal soul, was the language addressed to that or to the body? If there is such a soul as this, what does it constitute, on the authority of the friends of that theory, themselves? It is the real, responsible, intelligent man. Watson says, “It is the soul only which perceives pain or pleasure, which suffers or enjoys;” and D. D. Whedon says, “It is the soul that hears, feels, tastes, and smells, through its sensorial organs.” The sentence, then, would be addressed to that which could hear; the penalty would be pronounced upon that which could feel. The body, in the common view, is only an irresponsible instrument, the means by which the soul acts. It can, of itself, neither see, hear, feel, will, or act. Who then will have the hardihood to assert that God addressed his sentence to the irresponsible instrument, the body merely? This would be the same as for the judge in a criminal court to proceed deliberately to address the knife with which the murderer had taken the life of his victim, and pronounce sentence upon that, instead of the murderer himself. Away with a view which offers to the Majesty of Heaven the insult of representing that he acts in this way!
In the sentence, the personal pronoun, thy, is once, and the personal pronoun, thou, is five times, applied to the Adam whom God addressed. “In the sweat of thy face, shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” When we address our fellowmen by the different personal pronouns of our language, what do we address? The conscious, intelligent, responsible man, that which sees, feels, hears, thinks, acts, and is morally accountable. But this, in popular parlance, is the soul; these pronouns must every time stand for the soul. The pronouns thy and thou, in Gen. 3:19, must then mean Adam’s soul. If they do not mean it here, how does the same pronoun, thou, in Luke 23:43, mean the thief’s soul, when Christ said to him, “This day shalt thou be with me in paradise”? or the I and my in 2 Pet. 1:14, refer to Peter’s soul, as we are told they do, when he says, “Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle.” Our friends must be consistent and uniform in their interpretations. If in these instances the pronouns do not refer to the soul, then these strong proof-texts, to which the immaterialist always appeals, are abandoned: if they do here refer to the soul, they must likewise in Gen. 3:19, refer to the soul. In that language, then, God addresses Adam’s soul; and we have the authority of Jehovah himself, the Creator of man, against whose sentence, and the sunlight of whose word, it does not become puny mortals to oppose their shallow dictums, and the rushlight of human reason, that man’s soul is wholly mortal, and that in the dissolution of death it goes back to dust again! There is no avoiding this conclusion; and it forever settles the question of man’s condition in death. It shows that the intermediate state must be one in which the conscious man has lost his consciousness, the intelligent man his intelligence, the responsible man his responsibility, and in which all the powers of his being, mental, emotional, and physical, have ceased to act.
No further argument need be introduced to show that the Adamic penalty was literal death, and that it reduced the whole man to a condition of unconsciousness and decay. But a few additional considerations will show that the popular view is cumbered with absurdities on every hand so plain that they should have proved their own antidote, and saved the doctors of theology from the preposterous definitions they have attached to death.