Question about the serpent in Genesis chapter 3 [Ecumenical]

Genesis 3:1-15 "Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?' The woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'' 'You will not surely die,' the serpent said to the woman. 'For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and that you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'....So the Lord God said to the serpent, 'Because you have done this, 'Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.'"

I would be interested to hear anyones opinion of the nature of the serpent. Was the serpent an actual animal or was the serpent simply a disguise for the devil? I have been told growing up that the serpent was really the devil. If that was true, then why does God punsh the serpent (the animal) and not the devil in verse 14 and 15? We are told in Numbers 22:28-30 that the Lord opened the mouth of Balaam's donkey. Is it possible that before the fall, Adam and Eve could speak to animals freely and understand what the animals were saying back to them?

Many years ago, I read an essay by Maurice Maeterlinck called “The Two trees in the Garden”. He told the Genesis story in a way I had never heard, and yet, when I re-read Genesis, it was exactly as he had said it was. God forbade Adam and Eve from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He said that, if they ate from it, they would immediately die. Since they didn’t know what death was, the threat was sort of an empty one, but note that, after they did eat, they did not immediately die, but lived for many more years. The serpent told Eve that, if they ate, they would become like God. Their eyes would be open to new knowledge. Specifically, they would know how to find and eat from the other tree, the Tree of Life, and become immortal, like God.

After they ate, God expressed fear to some unnamed interlocutors that the humans might find their way to the Tree of Life, and quickly banished them from the Garden, and set an angel with a sword of fire to block the way to the Tree of Life. In other words, what the serpent (the supposed father of lies) said, was true. Now, in a hierarchical world, maybe evil does consist in trying to rise above your appropriate station. It may be wrong to seek to become gods. History is filled with people achieving near-godlike power, and it reliably ends badly.

We, sorely limited beings, imagine overcoming our limits and achieving heaven on earth. If we were “good” we would make peace with our limits and accept our place. But “a man’s reach must exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”

IMHO (and my viewpoint isn’t popular on this here), these are Peshers. Analogous stories to describe deeper principles. The serpent and tree aren’t literal snakes and trees but descriptions to paint a picture of greater principles in a time when the language was limited and literacy was highly uncommon.

Think about this analogy then re-read this story.

Think about the changes in the world from 5 thousand years ago until now. The differences in how we view things, language, everything.

Now imagine five thousand years in the future. Some archeologist is reading the story of you. He comes across one of your journals and in it, you said “Today, I bought a new Jaguar. We were so excited, we immediately went to the field to eat some dogs and watch the Tigers battle the Cubs. After, we had so much Bud, we spent all night worshiping the porcelain god”.

Without the proper context and proper perspective, it would seem you have some animal sacrifice ritual in which you eat dogs and watch animals fight to the death all for some god you worship named porcelain.

Donald Barnhouse has a fabulous book entitled, “The Invisible War” which walks through the account of the Fall in the Garden with outstanding detail.

Volumes have been written on this account.

I’d recommend first, ensuring you are in fellowship with God by personal confession of all known and unknown sins to Gdo the Father, through faith in what He provided by the Son on the Cross, whose sacrifice on the Cross paid for all sins to God the Father, and He is then sure and just to forgive us those sins, and we are in fellowship with Him.

Next, read the account in Scripture, through faith in Christ, allowing God to guide our understanding of Him.

In academic study of the passage, it is fruitful to structure the account, then study what God tells us about it in the passage.

For example, list all of the persons involved, the objects, the prepositions used to describe the relationships, orient the passage in proper context with other Scripture.

The serpent is also identifiable with Satan, the devil, the Adversary.

The time was after a time when Lucifer who became Satan had been identified and fell from Heaven. It happened after the great calamity in heaven and Chaos was ushered in.

It was the first thing around from our perspective, after the fall from Heaven, and it attracted the attention of the Adversary, because God created man in His image.

Note what occurs here.

THe Adversary attempts to attract attention from the Creature towards himself, instead of God. He seeks to draw admiration and confidence in himself, as opposed to any faith in what God provides.

After Adam’s sin, note that the punishment for the serpant is twofold. Enmity of man against the devil is one of the consequences. Even with us now having an old sin nature, born without a human spirit in fellowship with God, our perception of the devil isn’t neutral or acceptable. Our natural perception of him is first influenced by enmity. This is true for all humanity.

Also consider the penalty for sin (missing the mark of God’s Plan for us). It is death.

The first death experienced in the Garden of Eden is a spiritual death. Adam and Eve still had their souls. They could reason and perceived physically they were naked, and they covered themselves. They were not immediately dead soulishly.

They also didn’t die physically immediately. They were driven out of the Garden and man had to work by the sweat of his brow and woman suffered in childbirth.

The first death was their spiritual death, a separation from His Spirit, which occurred immediately upon disobedience to His command.

In the Garden, Adam would name animals. Naming has significance in Hebrew as it is an identification of the true nature of a thing being named.

Some have posited that man being made in God’s image, having a human spirit, was also perceiving other animal life as to their body, soul, and spirit, if they did indeed have spirit.

In the case of the serpent, it did have a spirit, namely that of the Adversary.

Remember, this account is given to men who also may not have a reborn human spirit and may also be dead spiritually to God. Yet, God still has a way to communicate to man, so we can understand even those things which we had been separated from since the Garden, i.e. the spiritual life.

Place faith in Him (God, through faith in Christ) and let God sanctify our thinking by His Will at His pace for us.

One important consequence of the fall in the Garden is that the old sin nature and spiritual death is now passed genetically throughout all humanity. It isn’t until the second Adam (Jesus Christ), that another human is born perfectly, who can provide the Perfect Sacrifice, so that God the Father may then through grace accept our faith as justification for righteousness, thereby allowing God the Holy Spirit to regenerate a human spirit in us, whereby we are reborn in Him.

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