Genesis 2 · a question people ask
God said "in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die". Why don't they die that day?
The Hebrew doubles the verb, literally "dying, you will die" (mot tamut). The man lives on for years after chapter 3 (5:5). Protestants explain this in more than one way.
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
Death began that day
They died spiritually at once, cut off from God: they hide from him (3:8) and are sent out of the garden (3:23-24). Paul speaks of being "dead in transgressions and sins" (Ephesians 2:1).
Genesis 3:8 · Genesis 3:23-24 · Ephesians 2:1
They became mortal that day
From that day they were on the way to death, and the way to the tree of life was closed. The doubled verb stresses that death was now certain.
Genesis 3:19 · Genesis 3:22-24
"In the day" means "when"
The phrase can mean "when", as in 2:4, where "in the day" covers the whole of creation. God keeps his word, and in mercy the sentence is carried out later.
Genesis 2:4 · Genesis 5:5
The verses
“but you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.””
“All the days that Adam lived were nine hundred thirty years, then he died.”