Genesis Diaries: 3:1-6a

“The Fall” is how nearly every Bible titles this section. It is a very apt description of the feeling that this passage produces in the reader. Everything is going well. Everything is ideal. Mankind stands with all they ever need, including an in-presence relationship with God, naked gardening, and soon to be attempting to perpetuate the species. It is the “golden age” of mankind in a spiritual sense.

When we speak of other “fall”s we often speak of ancient civilizations who fall from their height of power, influence, and riches. Usually the theme is everything is going well due to the hard labor of those who came before, the children of great men become soft and easily corruptible, the society rots from within, and then barbarians come in and lay waste to it all. Rome. Greece. China. The Islamic empire. This, of course, is not quite what we see here.

Usually we understand this as a “fall from grace”, but the term “The Fall”, in reference to this moment seems to appear nowhere in scripture.

There was a Fall in scripture. A different, but not entirely dissimilar, fall happened before this moment.

Isaiah records for us the first “Fall” in the 14th chapter of his book. God allowed him to see Lucifer, the Satan, thrown to the Earth like lightning. His great sin was taking action to overthrow the LORD, to rebel against the Almighty and take His throne. His great boast was, “I will be like the Most High.”

Oh, how that terrible phrase rings down through the ages echoing in Eden, the Tower of Babel, the Pharaohs of Egypt, the Emperors of Rome, and continues to reverberate in our own hearts with every sin, every ideological tantrum, every rejection of God’s way because “I know better” or, the worst of all, “I deserve better!”

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made.”

How is it that we understand the “serpent” here to be the Devil/the Satan/Lucifer? If that is who it is why doesn’t it just say that?

Near as I can tell, it appears that at the time Moses wrote the books of the Torah, there wasn’t yet a concept of The Satan, The Deceiver, The Accuser, The Tempter. Frustratingly, God hasn’t given us all the information we would like to have right up front. We see some slight echoes of Lucifer in an upcoming moment with Cain when God advises him that “sin” is crouching at his door waiting to devour him. We get glimpses in Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Job. By the time of Jesus, the identity and being of Satan is more or less fleshed out. He is a threat and is perpetually after humanity to turn them from God.

Scripturally the only time that Satan is explicitly connected to the serpent in the Garden of Eden is in Revelation. It is likely to have been a connection made before that. When John the Baptist encounters the pharisees he calls them a “brood of vipers”, literally “children of the serpent”. This same epithet is used by Jesus multiple times during his ministry as well. How are they children of the serpent? He points out their lying tongues, their heaping up massive unnecessary loads on the people via their teachings, and the way they make someone who seeks God “as much of a son of hell as they are”. Most interestingly to me, Jesus declares that they “shut up the Kingdom of Heaven, not entering themselves and not letting others enter”.

Conclusive evidence? Not as much as some people would like. But, as a storyteller, the connections are clear enough narrative-wise for me.

I’ve always found it strange that the adjective for the serpent is “crafty”. Not just “crafty” but “more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made.” The word “arum”, in the Hebrew means, “subtle, crafty, shrewd, prudent”. There are other scriptures that use the same word to describe the actions of someone who is wise, someone who plans, someone who considers the best course of action given their goals, who examines all the the ins and outs, pros and cons, and acts on it. Whether this trait is indicative of the serpent as a creature itself or of Satan, I don’t feel it really matters. The emphasis here is on the fact that it knew very well what it was doing and agreed to do it.

The goal then was clear, Satan or serpent. It knew full well that it was leading mankind to disobey the Lord. It sought, at the very least, our death and destruction as a species. It’s interesting to consider its particular target.

Eve was the only one of the two who did not know a life outside of the garden. Adam was made outside of Eden, outside the perfect place; the “walled garden”. It may be that she wasn’t even there when God gave the Edenic Law that prohibited the eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In the chapter 2 narrative, it says that God gave Adam this warning before Eve was created. Possibly she heard it second-hand from Adam.

When we were kids, and even up into young adulthood, we believed that life outside of the protective care of our parents that we’d always known was going to be absolutely great. If we just were adults, if we could get rid of these authority figures, and out of there then we would be happy. They were trying to keep something from us! Then we learned what it was actually like out there.

The serpent says “Did God actually say…?” From the first words of the serpent, the veracity of what she heard, from Adam or the LORD, is at issue. The forked tongue twists the words into “you shall not eat of any tree of the garden?” This is a common enough tactic for manipulators. When Eve rightly responds, even her version of the dictum is flawed. She declares it is “the tree in the midst of the garden” that they must not eat of, though there are two trees in the very midst of the garden. She goes and adds to the LORD’s actual words stating “neither shall you touch it, lest you die”. The trap is set. The serpent knows his mark is ready for the taking.

“You will not surely die.”

The created thing contradicts the Creator as if it knows more. This should have been the first clue, but then the serpent draws her into suspicion. “God is keeping something from you…something that would make you more than you are right now. You could be like Him. He knows good and evil. Why would He be keeping something like that from you? Why is it that He doesn’t want you to be like Him?” I imagine the serpent saying.

You could be like Him. Satan’s boast. “I will be like the Most High.”

The interesting thing is that everywhere else in Scripture, the Truth comes out. God does actually want us to be like Him. He is the only deity in the whole pantheon of recorded deities who tells all to follow Him, to love Him so much that they become ever more and more like Him, to do as He does, to love how He loves, to be motivated by what He is motivated by, and to see how He sees.

When we arrive at verse 8 we find something very interesting:

“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes…she ate.”

In chapter 2 verse 9 it says of God’s planting the garden, “And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that was pleasant to the sight and good for food.”

This was not an issue of God’s lack of provision. God had already provided trees that bore great fruit, excellent fruit, fruit that dazzled the senses to their uttermost and provided all the nourishment they needed. Adam and Eve already knew the Good. What was the tree going to give them? Namely, “wisdom”. There is a lot to say about the concept here about “wisdom”, but it happens to be way too much for this post. I may get to it later, but I must point out one thing before I go.

When Eve considers the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, there is an interesting linguistic thing that is happening. In the ESV we read that Eve saw that the tree “was to be desired to make one wise.” I’m not sure how it holds up in the Hebrew but this suggests not that she saw it was going to make her wise. It “was to be desired”. She was influenced to desire it. At all other times she didn’t look at the tree and think, “Oh. Hey, look Adam. I bet that fruit would make us wise.” It took the serpent’s suggestion, the hint of need, the marketing of it, for her to consider this. It wasn’t desired. It “was to be desired”.

“It’s what you should have. Why wouldn’t you want this? You deserve more. If you can get it, why not have it? It won’t hurt anyone. God doesn’t know what He’s talking about. How could something that pretty, that nutritious looking, that ‘popular’ ever do you anything but good?”

And so it goes…from that day to this. The deception is everywhere…especially in marketing/advertising. But more importantly, in every human heart the serpent still whispers.

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