I was reading and working through Bereshith recently and found an interesting commentary on Genesis 3:22. Clarks commentary states:

"Behold, the man is become as one of us - On all hands this text is allowed to be difficult, and the difficulty is increased by our translation, which is opposed to the original Hebrew and the most authentic versions. The Hebrew has היה hayah, which is the third person preterite tense, and signifies was, not is. The Samaritan text, the Samaritan version, the Syriac, and the Septuagint, have the same tense. These lead us to a very different sense, and indicate that there is an ellipsis of some words which must be supplied in order to make the sense complete. A very learned man has ventured the following paraphrase, which should not be lightly regarded: "And the Lord God said, The man who was like one of us in purity and wisdom, is now fallen and robbed of his excellence; he has added לדעת ladaath, to the knowledge of the good, by his transgression the knowledge of the evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live for ever in this miserable state, I will remove him, and guard the place lest he should re-enter."

I have to say I am intrigued by this concept. What stem is used with "hayah" in this verse? For instance, in looking at Strong's I see in the niphil stem it can mean: to occur, come to pass, be done, be brought about to be done, be finished, be gone

So, it is "possible" if it were in the niphil stem it could be saying "Behold, the man has become like one of us", but it could also say "the man is finished being like one of us"

Not ready to throw in the towel on all the traditional translations I have run across so far, but I am intrigued by the possibility of this alternate. Since I am not overly confident in my translation skills, would love to hear others views on this.

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As I thought about this possible "alternate" meaning in Genesis 3:22, it makes a bit more sense to me. Again, I am still very open to the possibility of being completely wrong. But, if Adam "stopped" being like elohym at that point, it makes sense that Adam got put out the garden, and thus introduced the "3rd option". In the garden there was an overwhelming possibility to live forever with Yahowah and a very, very, very narrow possibility of living forever in a "fallen" state. Adam and Chawah choose the "fallen" state. In compassion, Yah places them outside the garden as an act of mercy - to allow them to at some point cease to exist.

But, it is hard to understand if they "became like elohym" after eating from the tree. Before they ate from the tree with the nahash, eating from the tree of life was an option. So, Adam was in a state in which Yah wasn't opposed to him having eternal life. It makes expulsion from the garden the first and most amazing act of mercy - the 3rd option, simply ceases to exist.