The serpent is not named in Genesis as ‘adversary’, let alone Satan, and there’s a discrepancy with the serpent being Satan: the serpent gets cursed to crawl on its belly in Genesis, yet in Job Satan has been walking back and forth.[1]
So either the serpent in Genesis isn’t Satan, or there are inconsistencies with Job.
(Satan is also described in Revelation as a standing dragon, though this is in a vision)
A few translations say ‘going’ rather than ‘walking’. I don’t know if this is a legitimate translation, or an attempt to avoid discrepancy. ↩︎
Using his name as an epithet doesn’t change that, any more than referring to some-one as ‘Don Quixote’ or ‘Lennie’ would make them not specific characters.
It surely isn’t. “Condemned to crawl on its belly” for its part in the Fall, is consistent with the Jewish claim that it once was four legged, like other reptiles, and never two-legged like no other reptiles. My own pet theory is that the Tale of the Fall is as much a grandfather’s tale to grandchildren to explain why snakes slither about on their bellies rather than walk on four legs like lizards.
Samael was the great prince in heaven. After God created the world, Samael took his
band of followers and descended and saw the creatures that God had created. Among
them he found none so skilled to do evil as the serpent, as it is said, Now the serpent was the
shrewdest of all the wild beasts (Gen. 3:1). Its appearance was something like that of a camel,
and Samael mounted and rode upon it. Riding on the serpent, the angel Samael came to
Eve in the night and seduced her, and she conceived Cain. Later, while Eve was pregnant
by the angel, Adam came to her, and she conceived Abel.
Others say it was the serpent himself who seduced Eve, for after he saw Adam and Eve
coupling, the serpent conceived a passion for her. He even imagined killing Adam and marrying
Eve. So he came to Eve when she was alone and possessed her and infused her with
lust. That is how the serpent fathered Cain, who was later to slay his own brother. And that is
how Eve was infected with his impurity. As a result, all of Israel was impure from that until the Torah was given on Mount Sinai. Only then did Israel’s impurity cease.”
“These words do not imply that hitherto serpents had not been reptiles . . . but that the crawling is henceforth symbolic (cf. Isa. 65:25) - just as in 9:13 a new significance, not new existence, will be decreed for the rainbow.”
Bill Arnold writes:
“This curse does not mean the serpent once walked upright with legs anymore than it wants the reader to assume the serpent will now literally eat dust as opposed to its previous fare. Rather these are idioms for humiliation. The serpent, who had been characterized as the shrewdest of all the animals, will now become the most humble. The changed relationship is between the offspring of the woman and that of the serpent, which relationship will henceforth be marred by enmity (3:15).”
The same exegetical logic that would require snakes to have walked would also require a current diet of dust. Snakes do not eat dust so unless we have a valid exegetical reason to think the first part of the curse was not an idiom while the second one was, we must reject the idea that Genesis teaches snakes could walk before the events in the Garden.
Curiously enough, snakes probably did walk…a hundred million years ago.
I don’t need to. I realize that was a common Jewish view. Whether it holds up exegetically or not is another issue. Either way, the story is mythological to me and originally may have had dragons in mind as snakes. I see it as rearranging ANE furniture. I can see why many authors would think snakes lost their legs on account of this though.