There are some translators and commentators who translate the Hebrew ra’ as bad instead of evil. Strong’s includes the following: disagreeable, malignant, unpleasant, giving pain, unhappiness, misery, wickedness, etc. It includes but is not limited to moral determinations.
As 2:9 says, there were trees in the garden that were good for food. Eve saw that the tree of knowledge was good for food (3:6). That a tree is a good source of food is not a moral determination. This suggests that we not be too quick to assume that the knowledge of good and evil or good and bad is limited to moral knowledge.
Belindi:
Because nothing in the world is absolutely this or that, round or oval, tall or short, good or evil . That is the natural world, relative.
I agree with this and in my opinion it informs the view of man and the world as presented by the biblical authors. Nothing is either solely this or that. Genesis 1 and 2 brings to light a plurality of dynamic dualisms, wherein the truth is neither this or that but lies somewhere in the tension between them.
Genesis 1 begins with a world in flux where nothing is separate and distinct. God begins by a series of acts that differentiate, starting with dividing the light from the darkness (1:4), day and night (1:5), evening and morning (1:5)*, waters from waters (1:6),dry land from waters below (1:9) etc.
Genesis 2 begins just the opposite condition, a dry world in which nothing happens until God causes the rain and things begin to grow.
Genesis 1 takes motion as primary and Genesis 2 takes rest or stasis as primary.
In Genesis 1 there is a common refrain in which God saw what he had done and pronounces it good. And yet, when it comes to man that refrain is conspicuously absent. God did not see that man was good, and yet he saw that the whole of what he had done was very good (1:31)
Man is the dust of the ground and breath of God (2:7) Man is male and female (1:27), separate but of the same (2:23), to cleave, that is, both to separate and join together (2:24)
Good and bad (2:9).
Life and death (2:9 and 2:17)
The blessing to be fruitful and multiply (1:28) is inextricably tied to Eve’s burden:
Multiplying I multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, in sorrow dost thou bear children … (3:16)
* Evening and morning, the twilight times stand in contrast to day and night in that the distinction between day and night is clear but evening and morning are the times where it is not clearly one or the other, they are not clearly distinct from each other, and nothing is clearly what it is and can be mistaken for other things in twilight.
What is describes is a world that is neither this or that but both this and that. It is radically open-ended. This is the story of Genesis, the story of man’s ways, of the paths he walks, of the good and bad he is capable of. Not even God seems to know what man will do:
The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. (6:5-6)