3:1 - 1Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He1 said to the woman, "Did God really say,`You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
[T - OL ]
Readers who know their systematic theology better than their Bible immediately see Satan among the trees here. It is a personally interesting experience that both my children are (as I was tried to be) biologists. My daughter, in particular, has worked quite extensively with snakes. When people discover the fact, one of the most frequent questions we get is the shocked exclamation, "How can you let your daughter work with Satan?"2 My suggestion for understanding the passage here is to leave Satan out of the picture for a while and look, instead, at the serpent. If Paul, writing about this same event, can say that "Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning" rather than Satan's (2 Cor 11:3), we are safe to do so too.3
First of all, the nachash, 'snake,' 'serpent,' was simply one of wild animals Yahweh had made. And it was "more crafty ('arum)" than the rest of them. The English text cannot reflect the effect of hearing this that a Hebrew reader would have experienced. In the last sentence the author had said that the First Couple were both naked 'arur. In the next breath he says the serpent was 'arum. The sounds of the two words would immediately link the two entities together. But this English adjective (NIV) already skews our first impression of the snake. The Hebrew word, however, can have positive as well as negative meanings. It occurs very frequently in the book of Proverbs, where it speaks of the 'prudent,' a synonym for the wise. It is an interesting fact most of us forget that Jesus advised us to be pronimoi as serpents (Matt 10:16), the same adjective used by the Septuagint here in Gen 3:1. If It was crafty, however, It was not demonic. On the author's and Paul's authority we can take that to be true. If It was not demonic, what It did shows Itself, nonetheless, to be an evil agent of chaos (and what a chaos!).4
It began with a simple question to the First Woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" In as far as the question involved God, the serpent was engaging in theological discourse (the first in human history). But like all intellectual enquiries, what and where we get to in terms of an answer depends on how we frame the question and, more significantly, the attitude (i.e., our heart) with which we ask it.5
The serpent's evil intention is already revealed in the manner of Its' question. First, it is telling that, whereas it is always "the Lord God" (Yhwh 'elohim) who had given the commandment elsewhere in the account, the serpent referred only to God ('elohim), refusing to utter the personal name of God, Yahweh. To do so would imply the covenantal authority of God over It, which It would not acknowledge. It would not be doing what It is doing if It did.6 Second, the question opens with an emphatic particle 'ap ki-, which NIV translates as "really," and "indeed" by NKJ and NASB.7 It is an interjection that questions the fact of what follows. The question also contains all the important words of Yahweh's command against eating the fruit of the tree but they are re-arranged in a manner not only befitting a question but also subtlely skewing the possible answer in a certain direction. The reshaping is not easily discernable in a translation; see if this word-by-word and literal translation helps:
What Yahweh said (2:16-17):
From all (mikkol) the trees in the garden you may eat, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you must not eat from it.
What the serpent said (3:1):
Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any (mikkol) tree in the garden?'8
In doing this, explains Martin Emmrich,
the tempter seems to deliberately rearrange God's command in jumbling material from 2:16-17 in such a way as to create a new meaning. Indeed, we might call the serpent's interpretive method 'picking and choosing,' and its selective approach converts the originally very generous words with only one exception into a highly ambiguous prohibition which in the worst scenario can be read to imply the total denial of food.' But however one may translate 3:1b, it is clear from the text that the notion of the goodness and generosity of God is seriously damaged. Evidently, the words of the serpent are shrewdly shaped to lure the woman out of her defenses, i.e. to manipulate her.9
All theological enterprises begin with questions. What the serpent had done in raising Its question is, says Gerhard von Rad, to assert "that it knows God better than the woman in her believing obedience does, and so it causes her to step outside of the circle of obedience and to judge God and his command as though from a neutral position. . . . And man's ancient folly is in thinking he can understand God better from his freely assumed standpoint and from his notion of God than he can if he would subject himself to his Word."10 But, as Proverbs (9:10) and the Psalms (111:10) remind us, "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," no true understanding can come from distrustful questions. As students of J. I. Packer were constantly reminded in his class, theology that does not result in worship and the praise of God is flawed.11 Here it was flawed beyond grief.
Theology that does not result
in worship and praise of God
is flawed.
Here it was flawed beyond grief.
You may wish to read the following commentaries-expositions:
Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, 2016