The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad

(Ge 2:16, 17) And Jehovah God also laid this command upon the man: "From every tree of the garden you may eat to satisfaction. But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die."

Knowledge is experience

KKnowledge in scripture is more than information. It is familiarity gained through experience. Before any creature had sinned, free will was a stated truth that had never been tested. Every choice ever made had been good. No one, including the cherub who became Satan, had knowledge of bad in the sense of having done it. Free will had never been used to its full range.

The event the tree represented

Jehovah sees the events on our timeline without looking at the individual choices that produce them; that is why prophecy is given in symbols, so that events can be foretold without predetermining the people involved. The tree in the garden was that kind of symbol. It stood for the moment when a creature would first use free will to choose bad. That moment arrived when Satan told Eve, "You positively will not die" (Genesis 3:4). James says that desire, once fertile, gives birth to sin (James 1:15). Satan's ambition became sin when it produced the first lie ever spoken, and Jesus identifies that lie as his defining act (John 8:44).

Why it was not named for Adam and Eve

After Satan sinned, Adam and Eve still had a free choice. Had they refused the fruit, the tree would still have been the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, because the event it stood for had already happened. The tree marked Satan's fall. Adam and Eve's sin followed, Eve deceived by a lie she had no category for, Adam not deceived but unwilling to live without the woman given "to be with" him. Death entered the human family through their choice; sin entered the universe through Satan's.

What it does not mean

None of this makes sin God's doing. A gift that can be broken is still a gift. Free will was given in love, and the certainty that someone would eventually misuse it was met in advance by the Sacred Secret, formed before creation. Proverbs 16:4 says Jehovah made "even the wicked one for the evil day," not because he created anyone to be wicked, but because everything, including the day free will would be misused, was already inside his purpose.