Nebuchadnezzar's Fall (part 3)

Looking to Genesis then, it is not difficult to observe that the fall of Nebuchadnezzar well mirrors the fall of man.  How so?  Firstly, with the statements that are attributed to him, he appears to have assigned himself the place of the Creator God.  He effectively deified himself.  This, of course, was not all uncommon in that day.  Having previously spoken of Daniel’s God by declaring “How great are His signs!  How mighty are His wonders!  His kingdom will last forever, and His authority continues from one generation to the next” (Daniel 4:3), by his declaration concerning “the great Babylon that I have built for my royal residence by my own mighty strength and for my majestic honor” (4:30b), he re-assigned the words that had previously been offered up in recognition of the God of Israel, to himself.  This is hubris indeed.   

So how does this mirror the fall of man?  If one were to turn to the third chapter of Genesis, the reader would find the serpent speaking to Eve in regards to the “forbidden fruit” and saying, “God knows that when you eat from it your eyes open and you will be like divine beings who know good and evil” (3:5).  So what was the temptation that was offered to Eve?  Essentially, it would seem that she was being told that she could be like the Creator God. 

Moving forward then, efforts must be made to place flesh and blood on the story, imagining that, having taken the step of eating but not dying (at least not physically in that moment as she may have expected), she would have taken the next step of communicating similar information to that which she had heard from the serpent to her husband Adam.  Thus he also ate the fruit.  In this, he too, not satisfied with having been made as the divine image in and for the creation, and rather than humbly and faithfully serving as a steward of the creation over which he had been given dominion by the Creator, Adam desired to be like the Creator God.  In the eating of the fruit, in what was a likely a full knowledge of what it was that he hoped to attain (being like his Creator), like Nebuchadnezzar, Adam (and Eve) appropriated to themselves that which was not theirs. 

For Nebuchadnezzar, the awful announcement and execution of judgment came with rapidity.  The Creator God does not ultimately abide those that He ordains for a purpose transgressing their roles.  Thus, the voice from heaven rang out, informing the self-idolatrous king that had put himself in the place of the Creator God and was now thinking of himself along the same lines that he had previously thought of God, “that your kingdom has been removed from you” (Daniel 4:31b). 

It could certainly be said that Adam’s experience, as set forth in the Scriptural narrative, was no different.  Illustrating this, Genesis reports that “the Lord God said, ‘Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not be allowed to stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’  So the Lord God expelled him from the orchard in Eden to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken” (Genesis 3:22-23).  In Adam’s situation, it seems that the last thing that the Creator God wanted was for Adam to eat of the tree of life, and therefore, be able to live forever in his now corrupted and completely unintended state.