God then speaks to the woman. Adam blamed the woman, the woman now blames the serpent, claiming she was deceived. In fact the dialogue shows that she was not really deceived, for she knew what God had actually said, but she chose to follow the serpent’s advice. When we do wrong we may claim that we did not know it was wrong, this is usually nonsense. We knew full well it was wrong, but we chose to do it anyway.
God then goes to the serpent. Notice that God does not actually question anything that the man or woman have said.
Now the serpent does not get the chance to explain himself, but is immediately faced with judgement. God knew full well who had done what. The snake is cursed. Now remember that a curse is “God’s judgement on sin”, it is not in anyway like a magic spell. There will be continual antagonism between the snake and mankind, and in the end man will crush the serpent. This took place when Jesus won the victory on the cross, and all mankind who believe in Jesus will gain victory over the devil.
It is useful to think about what this means for interpretation of Genesis 1-3. As far as I am aware all Bible believing interpreters take this as referring to the Satan (and rightly so), rather than a direct judgement on snakes as such. However, we can also see some realisation of it in snakes, as they are not the most popular beasts in the world. Perhaps this should tell us to be on our guard about taking Genesis 1-3 too literally, but equally we should not dismiss it out of hand.
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