智慧树 is not a tree the endowed our first parents with the knowledge of good and evil through eating its fruit. It did not endow, it simply showed.

Without eating the fruit from this tree, the first parents were still able to know the good and evil, for God had already told them about the two choices (obey or rebel) and the outcomes (life or death) before they even attempted on the forbidden fruit. God could have set up any other kind of test for their obedience. It did not have to be a tree like that.

While Adam and Eve walked hand in hand, fully naked and without any sense of shame, they liberally picked off bountiful four-season fruits from many different fruit trees in the Gardend of Eden. Suppose on a starry cool night under a crescent or full moon, they happened before the two trees in the middle of the Garden of Eden. They dutifully recalled the exhortation of God not to eat the forbidden fruits from one of the two trees (the other being the tree of life). They obeyed God and only looked at the enticing fruits without covetous desire. Thus they chose good rather than evil. This kind of rendezvous happened often every now and then. The knowledge of good and evil was correctly known and applied in their daily life. They already knew good and evil even without rebellion. They always obeyed God, until that sad hour when Satan came to tempt them.

But after eating the forbidden fruit, the first parents experienced the full dose of bitter outcome of rebellion. So their knowledge of good and evil was intensified and colored by their unfortunate experience of rebellion. While this is one way of knowing, it is not the most painless way of learning.

Even without the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God could have easily set up another way of testing their obedience. Even without eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve could have remained knowledgeable about good and evil, for they had correctly known and applied that knowledge every day before they fell to rebellion.

But apparently the cosmos was designed such that the fall of humanity was built in. The fall of humanity was only possible before the actual rebellion, per human perspective. But to God, the fall was inevitable. Thus sin and death had to be an integral part of the cosmos. It was up to our first parent to participate and play out the bittersweet saga of human history of fall and redemption. Welcome to this world of wonder.