The Tree of Life and the Nature of Satan’s Curse

The question moves into an area Scripture does not answer directly, so the response must remain tentative and built from inferences. Still, certain biblical data allow a reasonable construction.

Satan is identified as a cherub in passages like Ezekiel 28, a class of heavenly beings distinct from ordinary angels but nonetheless created, personal, and capable of interaction with the material realm. Scripture shows that angels, when appearing in bodily form, can eat. In Genesis 18:1-8, the visitors who come to Abraham eat the food he prepares for them. We have no explicit example of cherubim eating, but it is not unreasonable to assume that, when manifest in a tangible way within the created order, they could.

If Satan, as a cherub, can interact with material things and even eat, there seems to be no physical impediment to his eating from the tree of life. In Genesis 3, he speaks knowledgeably of trees and fruit and uses the act of eating as the focus of his temptation. It would be odd for Eve to be persuaded about eating by a being entirely incapable of eating. This supports, at least conceptually, that he could have eaten.

The more significant issue is whether it would have mattered if he had. The tree of life is presented in Genesis 3 as central to human immortality in the created order: after Adam’s sin, God bars access to the tree lest man “take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever” Genesis 3:22. This suggests that, for humanity under the Edenic arrangement, continued access to that tree was the means by which physical life was perpetuated.

However, Satan’s situation is not described in these terms. His judgment, as presented in Scripture, does not rest on a death-curse parallel to Adam’s. God pronounces a curse on the serpent in Genesis 3, and later revelation speaks of his ultimate doom in the lake of fire Revelation 20:10. There is no indication that his existence is sustained or terminated by access or lack of access to the tree of life. In other words, the human connection between the tree of life and physical perpetuity is not stated for cherubim.

Further, the resurrected saints are said to be “equal unto the angels” in that they “can die no more” Luke 20:36. While this is about glorified humans, it implies that angelic beings, as such, are not under the same kind of mortality as fallen humanity. If angels (and, by reasonable extension, cherubim) are not subject to death in the human sense, then eating from the tree of life would not function for them as a life-or-death issue.

It is therefore plausible to say Satan could have eaten from the tree of life, and perhaps even did, without that act altering his destiny. After Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, cherubim were stationed to guard the way of the tree of life Genesis 3:24. Whether fallen Satan, himself a cherub, was excluded along with mankind or whether the barrier’s primary function was to keep humanity away is not explicitly stated. Either way, the text never ties his fate to the tree.

A helpful analogy is the relation of the gospel to non-human creatures. The saving message of Christ is designed for humanity. One could hypothetically train a parrot to recite a perfect sinner’s prayer, but the parrot’s vocalization of gospel language would have no salvific effect, because the provision was not made for that category of being. Likewise, the tree of life is revealed as God’s provision for humanity’s earthly life. Even if a cherub could physically partake, Scripture gives no warrant to assume it would confer upon him what it confers upon man.

In summary, a reasonable construction is: yes, Satan, as a cherub capable of bodily interaction, could have eaten from the tree of life; he may even have done so. But this would not affect his standing or destiny, because he is not under the Adamic death-curse that the tree of life addressed, and his ultimate judgment is determined by another set of divine decrees, not by access to that tree.

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