Genesis 3 tells us that “the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made” (v. 1).1 A snake made by God whose craftiness surpassed the other creatures but with the peculiar capacity of speech. This serpent seduces Eve into eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (v. 6). How is a snake able to talk? Did this really happen?
Ancient near east peoples, particularly the Israelites living three-thousand years ago, would have known from life experience that snakes neither talk nor carry on conversations with humans. They could also understand that the serpent from Genesis 3 is far from an ordinary. This cunning reptile bears a malevolent personality. Ultimately, we find out the serpent in the Book of Genesis is Satan.
The following will offer a closer look at the fall in Genesis 3, focusing upon the serpent, Satan, and the struggle between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman.
Serpent
Genesis 3 introduces us to the talking serpent whose craftiness can hardly be exaggerated. This tempter never explicitly tells Eve to disobey the commandment of the Lord; rather, it merely poses comments and questions which challenge the woman’s sense of reality about good and evil, truth and fiction, right and wrong. This is done through the planting seeds of doubt and allowing them to take root.
God instructed Adam, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:16-17). Eve likewise knew the gist of the prohibition, but her added clause, “neither shall you touch it,” suggests even handling to be a violation, which is exaggeration on her part (Gen. 3:3). But the serpent retorts, “You will not surely die” (Gen. 3:4), which is the antithesis to the Lord’s warning. This reply calls into question God’s truthfulness. The tempter goes on to say, “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5). Here the Lord is made out to be the bad guy who is keeping the man and woman from acquiring something beneficial. They are being denied access to the knowledge of good and evil. The serpent essentially plants seeds of doubt that lead the woman to question God’s very goodness and trustworthiness.2
The allurement of partaking in the forbidden fruit to acquire the knowledge of good and evil coupled with doubts about God’s truthfulness and trustworthiness form the temptation for the occasion. Eve succumbs to the temptation and eats the forbidden fruit. She then gives a piece to her husband. Adam takes and eats the sacrilegious food.
Satan
It is through the careful study of Genesis 3 coupled with subsequent theological reflection that ancient interpreters came to realize the connection between the serpent and Satan. For example, the Wisdom of Solomon, an apocryphal text, states: “for God created us for incorruption, and made us in the image of his own eternity, but through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his company experience it (WSol. 2:24).3 However, this connection is made certain through the unveiling of progressive revelation. The Apocalypse of John equates the “ancient serpent” with the “the great dragon,” “the devil” and “Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (Rev. 12:9; cf. 20:2). There is then a malevolent personality or Dark Power associated with crafty serpent in Genesis 3.
Satan is represented through the imagery of the serpent in Genesis 3. The one who tempted Eve is Satan, and a crafty serpent is a befitting image for the tempter.4[iv] Snakes hide in a variety of places, they attack with incredible speed, and they can swallow prey several times larger than their heads. Some snakes kill the prey prior to consuming them, either by constricting them to death or with a venomous bite. Other snakes eat their prey alive. Many of us carry around an innate fear of them. The crafty or cunning serpent is then a profound analogy for Satan. Put it another way, “Eve was not deceived by a talking snake. Rather Moses used the symbol of a snake to communicate the wiles of the evil one who deceived Eve through mind-to-mind communication — precisely as he seeks to deceive you and me today.”5
Satan is represented by a serpent in Genesis 3 but what is being communicated is far from folklore or mythology. The temptation and fall are events that do occur in the stream of history within time and space. Eve experienced the temptation generated by the Devil and the imagery of the crafty serpent is befitting to the Devil’s activity.
Judgment upon the serpent for causing the man and woman to stumble. The Lord said, “Cursed are you above all livestock, and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat, all the days of your life” (Gen. 3:14). Just as ancient near eastern peoples, including the Hebrews led by Moses out of Egypt into the wilderness, understood that snakes are without the capacity for human speech, they likewise knew very well that the same slithering critters never really feasted upon dirt for sustenance. Desert dwellers can easily observe in the arid wilderness snakes consuming insects, rodents, birds and other food sources that they can swallow. Even if the vestigial legs were noticed on some varieties of snakes, our biblical writers never identified them as evidence that those creatures once stood upright.
The eating of dust and crawling upon the belly are images of defeat. “It makes for better reading” writes Collins, “to take ‘dust you shall eat’ as describing the humiliation the Dark Power will undergo and ‘on your belly you shall go’ as a similar figure for how that power will always cringe before the mighty God.”6 This is the way prophets spoke of divine retribution coming upon anti-God forces. For example, Solomon gives praise to God saying, “May desert tribes bow down before him, and his enemies lick the dust!” (Psa. 72:9). Micah also foresees a time when things when anti-God forces “shall lick the dust like a serpent, like the crawling things of the earth; they shall come trembling out of their strongholds; they shall turn in dread to the Lord our God, and they shall be in fear of you” (Mic. 7:17). The crawling upon the belly and the eating of dust pronounces the final defeat of Satan, who wages war against God and the people of God.7
How we came to connect the serpent with Satan developed over time, and received certainty through the unfolding of progressive divine revelation as the Holy Spirit inspired the writing of the Scriptures. Nevertheless, Satan is the tempter in the Garden of Eden, and this has always been the case.
Seed
The hope of redemption for fallen humanity is imbued within the serpent’s curse. The Lord says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15). This text is referred to as the protoevangelium because it makes a “germinal pronouncement of the gospel” picturing the “long conflict between those who are the children of God and the children of the evil one.”8
The protoevangelium is the Gospel in embryonic form. It is God’s redemptive program that ends with the defeat of the serpent and his “seed” by the “seed” of the woman. A full-orbed understanding the redemptive plan is unveiled the rest of the Scriptures. Hank Hanegraaff writes, “From Adam’s rebellion to Abraham’s Royal Seed, Scripture chronicles God’s unfolding plan of redemption: the serpent would strike the Savior’s heel, and the Savior would forever crush its head.”9
The enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent is imagery depicting redeemed and fallen humanity. The dragon banished from heaven, the ancient serpent, the devil and Satan are synonymous in so far as John is concerned (Rev. 12:9; 20:20). The Gospel of John passes on the Lord’s teaching about those opposing Christ really belong to “[their] father the devil” (Jn. 8:44). They are Satan’s seed. Elsewhere John writes, “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother” (1 Jn. 3:9-10).
The Lord instructed the Hebrews sojourning through the wilderness to look upon a bronze serpent for healing from the affliction of fiery serpents that had infested their camp (Num. 21:4-9). In similar fashion, Christ instructed us that the Son of Man had to be lifted up so that whosoever believes can receive everlasting life (Jn. 3:14-15). We are all afflicted from the sin that came from our progenitors Adam and Eve, who were deceived by Satan into eating the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Paul even tells us that “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (Gal. 4:4-6). Elsewhere the apostle proclaims that “In love [God the Father] predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will” (Eph. 1:4b-5). It is through Jesus Christ that the Christians are sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father. Moreover, Paul envisions God crushing the head of Satan under the feet of a united, good and innocent Church community (Rom. 16:17–20).
We have this propensity to sin from our progenitors — Adam and Eve. We never act upon every single enticement to do evil, but we inevitably stumble. The Lord instructs us in the way we should go; however, Satan is actively working to wage war against God. He plants seeds of doubt that call into question truthfulness and trustworthiness the Lord and His instructions. The Devil beguiles us into imagining defiance to God being a good thing.
Death comes to us on account of sin. All of us enters into this world spiritually dead. We are fallen in sin and separated from the union with God that we were created to experience from the very beginning. Spiritual death is our present predicament. Our physical death is inevitable. All of us will experience that unnatural rending of the soul from the body, which is our physical death.
The Lord is still gracious and merciful. God became a man, Jesus Christ, to redeems us from our dismal predicament. Christ gives to us new life and makes a way for us to be reunited with the Father as His own sons and daughters. Today, we can be part of the seed of the woman or remain as the seed of the serpent.
— WGN
- All Scripture cited from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), unless noted.
- C. John Collins, Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary (Philipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2006), 170-171.
- Apocrypha cited from The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989).
- If Eve is conversing with an actual serpent, this particular reptile in Genesis 3 is acting out of the ordinary. Since snakes are without the capacity for human speech, something supernatural is occurring. This particular creature is being used as a mouthpiece for Satan (cf. Collins, Genesis 1-4, 171-172). Satan is the agent behind serpent’s actions. Yahweh can easily enable non-human creatures to speak to humans, as in the case of Balaam’s donkey (Num. 22:22-30); however, the biblical writers never mention anything about Satan possessing the same sort of creative power. I think it is a less of a stretch to understand the serpent to be a metaphor for Satan than for Satan to be using the serpent as an instrument of communication. Nevertheless, there is nary any reason to doubt that Satan was active in the temptation of Eve.
- Hank Hanegraaff, The Creation Answer Book (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2012), 64.
- C. John Collins, Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? Who They Were and Why You Should Care (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011), 64.
- Prostrating upon one’s belly in the dust is even a way the righteous communicated their distress to God. One psalmist lamented, “Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? For our soul is bowed down to the dust; our belly clings to the ground. Rise up; come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!” (Psa. 44:24-26).
- H. L. Ellison, Genesis, in The International Bible Commentary, ed. F. F. Bruce (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), 118.
- Hank Hanegraaff, The Creation Answer Book (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2012), 80.
Love Truth Blog 