5-2 The Serpent In Eden
Genesis 3:4-5: “And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes
shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil”.
Popular Interpretation
It is assumed that the serpent here is an angel that had sinned,
called “Satan”. Having been thrown out of heaven for his sin, he came
to earth and tempted Eve to sin.
Comments
1. The passage talks about “the serpent”. The words “satan” and “devil” do not occur in the whole book of Genesis.
2. The serpent is never described as an angel.
3. Therefore it is not surprising that there is no reference in Genesis to anyone being thrown out of heaven.
4. Sin brings death (Rom. 6:23). Angels cannot die (Lk. 20:35-36) ,
therefore angels cannot sin. The reward of the righteous is to be made
equal to the angels to die no more (Lk. 20:35-36). If angels can sin,
then the righteous will also be able to sin and therefore will have the
possibility of dying, which means they will not really have everlasting
life.
5. The characters involved in the Genesis record of the fall of man
are: God, Adam, Eve and the serpent. Nobody else is mentioned. There is
no evidence that anything got inside the serpent to make it do what it
did. Paul says the serpent “beguiled Eve through his (own) subtilty” (2
Cor.11:3). God told the serpent: “Because thou hast done this...”
(Gen.3:14). If “satan” used the serpent, why is he not mentioned and
why was he not also punished?
6. Adam blamed Eve for his sin: “She gave me of the tree” (Gen. 3:12).
Eve blamed the serpent: “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat” (Gen. 3:13).
The serpent did not blame the devil - he made no excuse.
7. If it is argued that snakes today do not have the power of speech or reasoning as the serpent in Eden had, remember that:-
(a) a donkey was once made to speak and reason with a man (Balaam);
“The (normally) dumb ass speaking with a man’s voice forbad the madness
of the prophet” (2 Pet. 2:16). and
(b) The serpent was one of the most intelligent of all the animals (Gen. 3:1). The curse upon it would have taken away the ability it had to speak with Adam and Eve. But it was an animal.
8. God created the serpent (Gen. 3:1); another being called “satan”
did not turn into the serpent; if we believe this, we are effectively
saying that one person can enter the life of someone else and control
it. This is a pagan idea, not a Biblical one. If it is argued that God
would not have created the serpent because of the great sin it enticed
Adam and Eve to commit, remember that sin entered the world from man
(Rom. 5:12); the serpent was therefore amoral, speaking from its own
natural observations, and was not as such responsible to God and
therefore did not commit sin. The serpent was a beast of the field
which God had made (Gen 3:1). Yet out of the ground [Heb. adamah-
earth, soil] God formed all the beasts of the field, including the
serpent (Gen. 2:17). So the serpent was likewise created by God out of
the ground- it wasn't a pre-existing agent of evil. Note the snake, as
one of the beasts of the field, was "very good" (Gen. 1:31)- hardly how
one would describe the serpent according to the orthodox reasoning. The
Torah doesn't speak of purely symbolic, abstract concepts; there is
always a literal reality, which may then be interpreted in a symbolic
way. The serpent, therefore, begs to be understood in this context as
just that- a serpent. The view has been pushed that the serpent is to
be read as a symbol of our human or animal nature. This would mean that
Eve's nature deceived Eve, and such a separation between a person and
their nature is problematic to say the least. This view runs into huge
difficulties- for how could Eve's nature be punished in a way separate
to her punishment, in what way was her deceptive nature created by God
like the animals, and how just was Eve's personal judgment in this
case... and the questions go on, continuing to be begged the more we
think about it.
Some suggest that the serpent of Genesis 3 is related to the
seraphim. However, the normal Hebrew word for “serpent”, which is used
in Genesis 3, is totally unrelated to the word for “seraphim”. The
Hebrew word translated “seraphim” basically means a “fiery one” and is
translated “fiery serpent” in Numbers 21:8, but this is not the word
translated “serpent” in Genesis 3. The Hebrew word for brass comes from
the same root word for “serpent” in Genesis 3. Brass represents sin
(Jud. 16:21; 2 Sam. 3:24; 2 Kings. 25:7; 2 Chron. 33:11; 36:6), thus
the serpent may be connected with the idea of sin, but not a sinful
angel.
9. Note that the enmity, the conflict, is between the woman and the
serpent, and their respective seed. The serpent is presented not so
much as the foe of God, but the enemy of mankind. The promise that the
seed of the woman would crush his head is echoed in the words to Cain
in regard to sin: "Its desire is for you, but you will be able to
master it" (Gen. 4:7). The snake is to be connected symbolically with
human sin, not any superhuman Satan figure.
Suggested Explanations
1. There seems no reason to doubt that what we are told about the creation
and the fall in the early chapters of Genesis should be taken literally.
“The serpent” was a literal serpent. The fact that we can see serpents
today crawling on their bellies in fulfillment of the curse placed
on the original serpent (Gen. 3:14), proves this. In the same way
we see men and women suffering from the curses that were placed
on them at the same time. We can appreciate that Adam and Eve were
a literal man and woman as we know man and woman today, but enjoying
a better form of existence, therefore the original serpent was a
literal animal, although in a far more intelligent form than snakes
are today.
2. The following are further indications that the early chapters of Genesis should be read literally:-
- Jesus referred to the record of Adam and Eve’s creation as the
basis of His teaching on marriage and divorce (Matt. 19:5-6); there is
no hint that He read it figuratively.
- “For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived
(by the serpent), but the woman being deceived was in the
transgression” (1 Tim. 2:13-14) - so Paul, too, read Genesis literally.
And most importantly he wrote earlier about the way the “serpent
beguiled Even through his subtilty” (2 Cor. 11:3) - notice that Paul
doesn’t mention the “devil” beguiling Eve.
- Is there any evidence at all that there is anything else in the
record of the creation and fall that should be read figuratively? The
world was created in six days according to Genesis 1. That these were
intended to be understood as literal days of 24 hours is proved by the
fact that the various things created on the different days could not
usefully exist without each other in their present form for more than a
few days. That they were not periods of 1,000 years or more is
demonstrated by the fact that Adam was created on the sixth day, but
died after the seventh day at the age of 930 (Gen. 5:5). If the seventh
day was a period of 1,000 years then Adam would have been more than
1,000 when he died.
- In Digression 3 I attempt to outline the original intention and
context of Genesis 3- to explain to the Israelites in the wilderness
where the truth lay in all the various myths about creation and 'Satan'
figures which they had encountered in the epics and myths of Egypt and
the Canaanite tribes. The record appears at pains to stress that the
account of the garden of Eden is intended to be understood literally.
Consider Gen. 2:11,12 about "The land of Havilah, where there is
[now] gold; and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stones
are [right now] there". Cassuto comments about the record: "Its
intention was to express a protest against the mythological notions
current among the people. Do not believe- so it comes to tell us- that
the Garden of Eden was a supernatural garden, and that its trees bore
precious stones or gold balls instead of fruit that was good for
food... yet was its fruit real fruit, fruit good for human food.
Bdellium, onyx and gold come to us from one of the countries of our world,
from the land of Havilah" (1). The literality is indeed being
emphasized, and I therefore suggest that we likewise read the serpent
as indeed a "beast of the field" created by God- and nothing more.
3. Because the serpent was cursed with having to crawl on its belly
(Gen. 3:14), this may imply that previously it had legs; coupled with
its evident powers of reasoning, it was probably the form of animal
life closest to man, although it was still an animal - another of the
“beasts of the field which the Lord God had made” (Gen. 3:1 & 14).
It was cursed “above (“from among”, RVmg.) every beast of the field”
(Gen. 3:14), as if all the beasts were cursed but especially the
serpent.
4. Maybe the serpent had eaten of the tree of knowledge which would explain
his subtilty. Eve “saw that the tree was...a tree to be desired
to make one wise” (Gen. 3:6). How could she have seen this unless
she saw the result of eating the fruit in the life of something
that had already done so? It may well be that Eve had had several
conversations with the serpent before the one recorded in Genesis
3. The first recorded words of the serpent to Eve are, “Yea, hath
God said...” (Gen. 3:1) - the word “Yea” possibly implying that
this was a continuation of a previous conversation that is not recorded.
5. I've shown elsewhere (2) that the entire Pentateuch is alluding
to the various myths and legends of creation and origins, showing
what the truth is. Moses was seeking to disabuse Israel of all the
myths they'd heard in Egypt, to deconstruct the wrong views they'd
grown up with- and so he wrote Genesis 1-3 to show the understanding
of origins which God wished His people to have. The serpent had
a major significance in the surrounding cultures. It was seen as
a representative of the gods, a kind of demon, a genie. But the
Genesis record is at pain to show that the serpent in Eden was none
of those things- it was one of the "beasts of the field".
No hidden identity is suggested for the serpent in Genesis. J.H.
Walton comments: "The Israelites [made no] attempt to associate
it [the serpent] with a being who was the ultimate source or cause
of evil. In fact, it would appear that the author of Genesis is
intentionally underplaying the role or identification of the serpent...In
Canaanite literature the role of chaos was played by the serpentine
Leviathan / Lotan. In contrast, the Biblical narrative states that
the great sea creatures were simply beasts God created (Gen. 1:21).
This demythologizing polemic may also be responsible for avoiding
any theory of conspirational uprisings for the existence of evil...
there is no hint in the OT that the serpent of Genesis 2-3 was either
identified as Satan or was thought to be inspired by Satan. The
earliest extant reference to any association is found in Wisdom
of Solomon 2:24 (first century BC)... the earliest reference to
Satan as the tempter through the serpent is in Apocalypse Of
Moses 16-19, contemporary to the NT... in the writings of the
church fathers, one of the earliest to associate the serpent with
Satan was Justin Martyr "
(3). Even within Judaism, it is accepted that the idea that the serpent
was Satan is not in the text itself, and arose only within later
Rabbinic commentary: "The interpretation... according to which the
serpent is none other than Satan... introduces into the text concepts
that are foreign to it... the primeval serpent is just a species of
animal... it is beyond doubt that the Bible refers to an ordinary,
natural creature, for it is distinctly stated here: Beyond any best of
the field that the Lord God had made" (4).
Why So Misunderstood?
Throughout
the entire history of Jewish and Christian thought, Genesis 1-3 has
been the most studied passage, the verses most used to justify
theories, theologies, dogmas and behavioural demands. There's simply a
huge amount of material been written about these chapters, and a
colossal weight of dogma built upon them. The result is that
psychologically, most people approach these chapters with assumptions
and pre-existing ideas as to what's going on there. Here more than
anywhere else in the Bible, we run the danger of eisegesis (reading into the text) rather than exegesis, reading out of the text what God
is saying, rather than projecting our own preconceived ideas onto the
text and calling the process 'Biblical interpretation'. Augustine, one
of mainstream Christianity's greatest influencers, based much of his
teaching upon early Genesis. His whole teaching about sex, human
nature, Satan, temptation, salvation, judgment etc. all had its basis
in his understanding [or misunderstanding] of these chapters. Within
the Christian spectrum, evolutionists and creationists, pro-life and
otherwise, gay and straight... all seek justification from these
chapters.
So it's not surprising that many
commentators have noted that this passage is one of the most misused
and misunderstood in the whole Bible. But why? I'd suggest it's because
humanity [and that includes theologians and formulators of church
doctrine] squirms awkwardly under the glaring beam of the simple record
of human guilt. And therefore the serpent has been turned into a
superhuman being that gets all the blame; and human sin has been
minimized, at the expense of the plain meaning of the text. The whole
structure of the Biblical narrative is concerned with the guilt and sin
of the man and the woman; the snake isn't where the focus is. Von Rad,
in one of the 20th century's most seminal commentaries on Genesis,
understood this clearly: "In the narrator's mind, [the serpent] is
scarcely an embodiment of a 'demonic' power and certainly not of
Satan... the mention of the snake is almost secondary; in the
'temptation' by it the concern is with a completely unmythical process,
presented in such a way because the narrator is obviously anxious to
shift the problem as little as possible from man" (5). The record keeps
using personal pronouns to lay the blame squarely with Adam: "I heard... I was afraid... I was naked; I hid... I ate... I
ate" (Gen. 3:10-13; and compare Jonah's similar confession of sin in
Jonah 4:1-3- Jonah appears to allude to Adam here). Nobody reading the
Genesis record with an open mind would surely see anything else but the
blame being placed on humanity; as I have repeatedly stressed, the
words 'Satan', 'Lucifer' and the idea of the serpent as a fallen Angel
are simply not there in Genesis. They have to be 'read in' from
presuppositions, which ultimately have their root in pagan myths. John
Steinbeck, who was hardly a Biblical Christian, was fascinated by the
early chapters of Genesis, and his 1952 novel East Of Eden is
evidently his commentary upon them. And he finds no place for a 'Satan'
figure. Instead, he is struck by the comment to Cain that although sin
crouches at the door, "do thou rule over him". Steinbeck concluded from
this that victory over sin and the effects of Adam's sin is possible;
and therefore we're not bound by some superhuman Satan figure, nor by
an over-controlling Divine predestination to sin and failure. There's a
passage in chapter 24 of the novel that bears quoting; I find it deeply
inspirational, and another example of the practical import of the
correct understanding of early Genesis: "It is easy out of laziness,
out of weakness, to throw oneself onto the lap of the deity, saying, "I
couldn't help it; the way was set". But think of the glory of the
choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice; a bee must make
honey. There's no godliness there... these verses are a history of
mankind in any age or culture or race... this is a ladder to climb to
the stars... it cuts the feet from under weakness and cowardliness and
laziness... because "thou mayest" rule over sin". The practical
inspiration ought to be evident; all further commentary is bathos.
The Motive And Origin Of The Sin
What
were the motives of Adam and Eve for sinning, for accepting the
serpent's suggestion? Considering this can help open a window onto the
question of the origin of Adam's sin. They were attracted by
the idea of "knowing good and evil". But this phrase is elsewhere used
in the Bible about how an adult 'knows good and evil', but a child
can't (Dt. 1:39; 2 Sam. 19:35; Is. 7:16). Adam and Eve were immature;
like children, they wished to 'grow up', they resented the restraints
which their immaturity required them to be under; they wanted, just as
children want, to be the all-knowing adults / mature people whom they
had seen the Elohim as. As children long to escape from what they see
as meaningless and onerous restrictions, whilst having no idea what
this would really mean in practice and how un-free it would really be-
so Adam and Eve were attracted by the idea of having the knowledge of
good and evil just for the bite of the forbidden fruit. I find this a
perfectly understandable explanation of the motive for Adam
and Eve's sin. It seems a quite imaginable exercise of the freedom of
choice and behaviour which God had given them. There is no hint that
'Satan made them do it', or that they were 'possessed' by some sinful
spirit. They did just what we so often do- misused, wrongly exercised,
their freewill and desired that which was inappropriate. Simple as
that. There's no need to bring in an external Satan figure to explain
what happened.
The Serpent And The Woman
In
Gen. 3:15 we have the famous prophecy that the seed of the woman would
have conflict with the seed of the serpent. The woman's son would
mortally wound the snake by striking it on the head, whereas the
serpent would temporarily wound the woman's son by 'bruising' him in
the heel. New Testament allusion suggests we are to understand this as
a prediction of the fight between the Lord Jesus, as the seed of Eve,
and the power of sin. The Lord Jesus was temporarily wounded, dying for
three days, but through this the power of death, i.e. sin, was
destroyed (Heb. 2:14). In our context, it's noteworthy that the
prophecy of Christ's crucifixion in Is. 53:10 underlines that it was God
who 'bruised' Christ there. Gen. 3:15 says it was the seed of the
serpent who bruised Christ. Conclusion: God worked through the seed of
the serpent, God was [and is] totally in control. The serpent is
therefore not a symbol of radical, free flying evil which is somehow
outside of God's control, and which 'bruised' God's Son whilst God was
powerless to stop His Son being bruised. Not at all. God was in
control, even of the seed of the serpent. However we finally wish to
interpret "the seed of the serpent", the simple fact is that God was in
powerful control of it / him.
Notes
(1) Umberto Cassuto, Biblical And Oriental Studies (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975) Vol. 2 p. 107.
(2) See Digression 3 The Intention And Context
Of Genesis 1-3.
(3) J.H. Walton, 'Serpent', in T.D. Alexander and D.W. Baker, eds,
Dictionary Of The Old Testament And Pentateuch (Leicester:
I.V.P., 2003) pp. 737/8.
(4) Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary On The Book Of Genesis (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1998 ed.) Vol. 1, pp. 139,140.
(5) Gerhard von Rad, Genesis (London: S.C.M., 1966) p. 85.
