Chuck Larsen

Everyone knows that the best way to kill a snake is to cut it’s head off. The final part of God’s curse on the Serpent, Satan, is the death blow that the “seed” of the woman would deliver on behalf of all mankind. Genesis 3:15 finishes by saying, “…he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” According to Josephus, an ancient Hebrew Commentator and historian the curse involved a lot of other things. He gleans this from his understanding of the overall dealings of Satan and the woman. Josephus writes that God, “Also deprived the serpent of speech, out of indignation at his malicious disposition towards Adam. Besides this, he inserted poison under his tongue, and made him an enemy to man; and suggested to them that they should direct their strokes against his head, that being the place wherein lay his mischievous designs towards men, and it being easiest to take vengeance on him that way: and when he had deprived him of the use of his feet, and made him go rolling all along, and dragging himself upon the ground.”^[1]

That speculation is all very interesting for sure, but the bottom line, regardless of how you see the details, is that the Serpent is cursed, and Satan loses in the end. Notice that God is addressing the serpent, Satan, and telling him to his face that he’s going to lose. Hamilton makes some good comments, “Also, the serpent is told that he is to be on the losing side of a battle between the seed of the woman and himself. In this eventual showdown, his head will be crushed by the seed of the woman. Is the ‘seed’ collective or singular? The Hebrew allows for either, but the Septuagint has ‘he.’ (The Latin Vulgate even has ‘she’!) Not without good reason many have referred to Genesis 3:15 as the protoevangelium, ‘the first good news.’ An as-yet-unidentified seed of the woman will engage the serpent in combat and emerge victorious. It is likely that Eve does not comprehend this word. But the snake is not left in the dark—he is to be cursed, a crawler, and crushed.”^[2] The original readers of Genesis did not know any details, but they did know that salvation from the curse would one day come! That’s the good news!

I’m not a very “original” guy, but I am a good student. If I find someone who says it better than me, I don’t have to try to improve on it. That’s why I use so many quotations in my writing. Redford does a great job wrapping up this discussion. “The enmity in this verse is more than the aversion that many people have for snakes. It is a perpetual and spiritual enmity between Satan and Eve, between all the forces of evil and all humanity (the offspring of the woman). At last, however, the offspring of woman, in the person of Jesus Christ, would gain the victory by crushing the head of Satan. Immediately after the baptism of Jesus, the tempter came to him as he had come to Eve, but he was defeated at every turn. Whatever damage Satan was able to inflict on Jesus was, in effect, a mere strike at his heel. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus attained the final and decisive victory. Thus does Paul declare the assurance that every Christian possesses: ‘The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet’ (Romans 16:20).”^[3]

^[1] Josephus, Flavius, and William Whiston. 1987. The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged. Peabody: Hendrickson.

^[2] Hamilton, Victor P. 1995. “Genesis.” In Evangelical Commentary on the Bible, 3:14. Baker Reference Library. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.

^[3] Redford, Douglas. 2008. The Pentateuch. Vol. 1. Standard Reference Library: Old Testament. Cincinnati, OH: Standard Publishing.

After confronting Adam and Eve for their disobedience, he then turns from them to the one who tempted them in the first place. He asked Eve a question. He asked Adam a question, but there was no question for the Serpent. God’s words to the serpent opened up with a curse. Genesis 3:14 begins, “The Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field…’” As you can see the text records the curse upon the “serpent” as an animal rather than directly on Satan who spoke through the snake. The serpent was declared by God the symbolic picture of the evil one because it was the instrument Satan used to seduce Eve. Twice in the book of Revelation (12:9, and 20:2) Satan is described as “The ancient serpent who is the devil, or Satan…” Satan can shape-shift at will. He might have simply appeared to Adam and Eve as a serpent. Maybe, he simply decided them into thinking they were talking to a serpent, or possibly Satan possessed a literal serpent and caused it to speak or spoke through it. We see Satan possessing pigs in the New Testament. We don’t get all the details here, but we do know that it was a serpent that tempted Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit. Thus, the serpent would remain a reminder to every generation of the fall of our first generation of parents.

The word “Satan” literally means “adversary.” We know several things about this being from the Scriptures and we can glean other things. It seems to me we can build a case that Satan’s original adversarial relationship with God began before time. Kendall agrees and says several helpful things. Satan’s fall took place before , “God created man; for the serpent was already the ‘father of lies’ when he approached Eve. It was obviously after God created the heavens and the earth. Perhaps the angels were created before God created the earth; ‘the heavens’ is listed first. The angels were probably a part of the ‘heavens’, the invisible realm of God’s creation. It could be that the revolt of Satan took place, then, after God created the heavens but before he created the earth.”^[1]

As the representative of Satan in the temptation of man, the curse was on the snake. “Man would always regard him as a symbol of the degradation of the one who had slandered God. He was to represent not merely the serpent race, but the power of the evil kingdom. As long as life continued, men would hate him and seek to destroy him.”^[2] Indiana Jones is the great archeologist and adventurer made famous in recent (kind of!) movies. Indiana Jones isn’t afraid of anything—until a snake shows up on the scene. Then we hear him mutter, “I hate snakes” and “Snakes, why did it have to be snakes?” I confess, when I used to mow my own yard, whenever a snake appeared I would take my lawnmower after it. Why, like Indiana Jones, I hate snakes. It seems that the fear and hatred of snakes is acknowledged by evolutionary scientists but they have their own explanation for this. A California anthropologist did an experiment once with Monkeys. “One day she put a fake snake into the large outdoor cage of Rhesus macaques at the Davis Primate Center only to see a real snake slither into the cage. About half the 80 resident monkeys gathered around the real thing, mobbing it, calling out in alarm. The fear of snakes, Isbell reasoned, must be deeply embedded in our primate history.” The anthropologist Lynn Isbell has argued that, as primates, the serpent as a symbol of death is built into our unconscious minds because of our evolutionary history. Isbell argues that for millions of years snakes were the only significant predators of primates, and that this explains why fear of snakes is one of the most common phobias worldwide and why the symbol of the serpent is so prevalent in world mythology; the serpent is an innate image of danger and death.” My fear and dislike of snakes might look irrational but it’s anything but “unconscious.” They are cursed by God and all the hatred and fear of them have their roots in Genesis Chapter 3.

^[1] Kendall, R. T. 2000. Understanding Theology, Volume Two. Ross-shire, Great Britain: Christian Focus.

^[2] Pfeiffer, Charles F. 1962. The Wycliffe Bible Commentary: Old Testament. Chicago: Moody Press.

Refusing to accept responsibility for one’s actions has been a frequently recurring theme in the Bible. Adam blames Eve for his disobedience. Aaron blames the Israelites for the golden calf; Saul blames his troops’ impatience and Samuel’s late arrival for his disobedience; Then Saul blames his soldiers for the failure to carry out God’s instructions; The man who buried his talent blames his action on his master’s hardness. I could go on, but I’m sure you get the picture. Adam blamed God and then Eve for his part and then Eve seems to be passing the buck to the serpent. Genesis 3:13 says, “Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this that you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’”

Beginning with another rhetorical question, God confronts Eve with her failure. He asks Eve what she has done and Eve’s answer contains two parts. First, she explained that the serpent deceived her. But Rosscup is right, “That is ‘passing the buck,’ yet an aspect very true even if not all of the picture. The serpent indeed hood-winked her. The Spirit of God later leads the apostle Paul to the commentary in I Timothy 2:12 that uses a special, stronger word for the woman’s being deceived. She was “really deceived,” not just “deceived” (apatao) but “profoundly deceived” (exapatao).” That means she was telling the truth. Yet, we cannot fail to see it’s in some way passing the buck also. Then Rosscup mentions the second part of her answer: “Second, Eve enlarges on the picture, and pours out her confession of guilt, ‘and I ate.’ She comes clean about her own culpability in the deviation. She, too, had acted out of harmony with what she realizes, sadly, God’s word had made clear as the way of obedience.”^[1]

In the Pseudepigrapha (False books) of the Old Testament is the Apocalypse of Moses. It tells a fanciful story of the life of Adam and Eve after they are thrown out of the Garden of Eden. In Chapter 14:3, Adam is said to have said to Eve, “O Eve, what have you done? You have brought a great wrath upon us, namely death which rules over our entire race.” He then commands her to tell their children how this came about. She and Adam weep together and finally Adam falls asleep. Their children gather around the bed and weep over their father and Eve decides to tell them the story.” ^[2] Who knows if this is true, but it adds a touch of humanity to their lives after the fall? Even in this story she still blames the serpent for her actions. To err is human, to deny responsibility is as old as our first parents. Adam blamed Eve; Eve blamed the serpent. Today we blame society or our parents’ upbringing or our economic condition. Will Rogers once said that there were only two eras in American History, the passing of the buffalo, and the passing of the buck. Harry Truman, the thirty-third president of the United States, had a sign on his desk in the Oval Office that read, “The Buck Stops Here,” reflecting his belief that the president must make decisions and accept responsibility for them. For the man who made the decision to drop the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that was one grave action to take responsibility for. Adam, the first man, would have been well served had he demonstrated similar accountability.

^[1] Rosscup, James E. 2008. An Exposition on Prayer in the Bible: Igniting the Fuel to Flame Our Communication with God. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

^[2] Jonge, Marinus de, and Johannes Tromp. 1997. The Life of Adam and Eve and Related Literature. Guides to Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press.

In explaining himself and his decision to eat of the forbidden fruit, Adam brings into his address two other who seem to be who he’s blaming for his deed. First, it looks like he’s blaming God, who gave the woman to him, and then he’s blaming the woman.” Genesis 3:12 records Adam’s response: “The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.’” About 10 years ago I wrote a personal entry in my Journal about a movie we watched. My comment says, “We ate pizza and watched a bunch of old pictures and old movies from my website and enjoyed that until the boys were getting bored out of their minds, so we shut it down and watched ‘The Grey.’ It’s a survival movie with Liam Neeson playing the lead role of airplane crash survivors in Alaska who are attacked and killed off one by one by wolves. It wasn’t a very good one and of course, God was to blame for all their problems.”^[1] Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law, blamed God for all her misfortune as well. In the midst of his pain and suffering, Job also appears to blame God. Criswell writes, “Job’s own sufferings, coupled with his strong belief in the sovereignty of God, led him temporarily to the intemperate view that God was to blame.”^[2]

I think there might be something to Lenski’s take on this. He says, “Adam says to God: ‘The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.’ God was to blame, for did he not create Eve for Adam? Adam certainly did not create her for himself! There are all manner of ways in which the blame can be shifted to God. Did he not make us with these bodily appetites of ours? Did he not create sex, for instance? Did he not make so many things so attractive to us? Does he not place them so dangerously near to us? So, the fallacious reasoning runs on.”^[3] Again, let me add, I don’t know about you, but these sayings are a bit too familiar!

I can’t help but think how these words of Adam affected his marital bliss that he so eagerly professed in Chapter 2. He said, “This is at least bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.” Hughes says about these words, “These are the first human words recorded in Scripture and the initial poetic couplet. She was at once his sister, his daughter, and his one-flesh wife. Such a helper—such intimacy—such oneness—such joy. She was his human universe.” But now after partaking of the forbidden fruit, things are not so rosy for the two. Hughes goes on and says, “But now—’she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.’ What infamous treachery! ‘It’s her fault, God. Don’t blame me.’ Adam was so calculated and so cold. So long, marital bliss. Adam would live for nearly 930 years more.”^[4] I’m sure they would settle things and learn to live with each other but Milton was absolutely right when he named his ode, “Paradise Lost.”

^[1] Larsen, Charles. 2020. 2012 May Journals. MYJOURNALS. Larsen.

^[2] Criswell, W. A., Paige Patterson, E. Ray Clendenen, Daniel L. Akin, Mallory Chamberlin, Dorothy Kelley Patterson, and Jack Pogue, eds. 1991. Believer’s Study Bible. Electronic ed. Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

^[3] Lenski, R. C. H. 1938. The Interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews and of the Epistle of James. Columbus, OH: Lutheran Book Concern.

^[4] Hughes, R. Kent. 2004. Genesis: Beginning and Blessing. Preaching the Word. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

Finally, we hear from Adam. Eve and the serpent have been doing all the talking. Adam seems to have passively sat back and let Eve interact with the Devil without comment. The last thing we heard from Adam was his pronouncement of his wedding vows, so to speak, when God brought him Eve. He hasn’t said anything since. But God addresses him specifically after they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God asks Adam, “where are you,” and in Genesis 3:10, Adam replies, “And he said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.’” The UBS (United Bible Societies) Handbook for translators says it might be best to translate this as “I heard your footsteps in the garden.”

I have no idea how many movies or books I’ve read where someone is walking down a dark alley or narrow street and all you can hear is footsteps coming from behind them. We all know that something bad is going to happen. Jack the Ripper is coming for me! Some murderer is stalking me to kill me and rob me. I’ve lost sleep as a youngster over those movies. But the most ominous of footsteps were the ones I heard when my mother came down the basement steps and caught me and a neighbor girl when we were about 8 years old, showing each other our differences! We just knew what we were doing was wrong. I don’t remember my folks talking to me about any of that at that age, but something in me knew it was wrong and so did little Suzy (Not her real name). We got caught with our pants down doing our best to cover ourselves us. As we listened to the footsteps and scrambled to put ourselves together we knew we were done for. Walton sees the possibility of a different kind of translation for “the sound of God walking in the garden.” He says, “The Akkadian term is used in connection to the deity coming in a storm of judgment. If this is the correct rendering of the word here in Genesis 3, we can translate verse 8 in this way: ‘They heard the roar of the Lord moving about in the garden in the wind of the storm.’ If this rendering is correct, it is understandable why Adam and Eve are hiding. I do not offer this as the right translation.” He then adds, “…the logic of the context makes this new rendering a possibility, but one that can only be held tentatively.”^[1]

Adam’s answer had to do with his fear of the sound of God coming coupled with their nakedness that they were trying to cover up with fig leaves. Briscoe recognizes that “The fact that nakedness and fig leaves were so much a part of the shame felt by fallen mankind has led many to suppose that the original sin was in some way sexual. In fact, some older commentators seem to suggest that the forbidden fruit was sex.”^[2] But this is most unlikely because of God’s creating each of them “male and female” and then commanding them to be fruitful and multiply. I expect everyone has some kind of experience of being caught “red-handed.” God was about to cover their shame with something more substantial that fig leaves and he does something similar with us. Ross explains, “People disobey God’s word and then, because of their guilty fears, hide themselves. But God searches out the sinners, draws a confession from them, and then covers their guilt and shame with a symbol of his gracious provision. The gospel explains this symbol fully: In the fullness of time God accepted the death of Jesus for our sins, and on the basis of that sacrifice, he clothes us with righteousness.”^[3]

^[1] Walton, John H. 2001. Genesis. The NIV Application Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[2] Briscoe, D. Stuart, and Lloyd J. Ogilvie. 1987. Genesis. Vol. 1. The Preacher’s Commentary Series. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.

^[3] Ross, Allen, and John N. Oswalt. 2008. Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Genesis, Exodus. Vol. 1. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers.