Lehi moves his discourse from the general principles to the specific enactment of those principles. He moves from the general theology to the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden. He had mentioned that God created the earth, and now Lehi will explain how that creation enabled the conditions of agency.
Lehi had preached that there should be an opposition in all things in verse 11, and now uses that concept to describe the Garden. In Lehi’s description, however, the trappings of the Garden itself are ignored. For Lehi, it is a story of two trees, and two trees that stand in opposition to each other. The creation of our first parents is mentioned, but along with that creation “it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life.” At the very beginning, the essentiality of potential duality and agency was built into our existence. Remember that Lehi had recently noted that without this duality and agency there would be no purpose in the creation of the earth or the plan for the earth. Thus, it is consistent that this principle of agency be embedded from the very beginning, simultaneous with the creation of our first parents.
The point of the opposition of the two trees was to create within the Garden the possibility of choice. At the very beginning, the opposing trees mark the existence of the possibility of good and evil. While the story emphasizes the choice that was made, the symbolic point was that God had never left them without agency.
It is also interesting to note that the way the trees are described is that one was sweet, and the other was bitter. The way in which the adjectives line up, it is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that is bitter. Indeed, the result of eating that fruit was to be cast into the lone and dreary world. There is, however, the implicit promise that when we are restored to the Tree of Life we will be restored to the sweet.