Disclaimer 2: This post isn’t going to make sense if you didn’t read the previous post. If you want to read it, go here.
Genesis 2-3
The New Testament easily identifies the serpent in the Garden of Eden as Satan (Rom 16:20; Rev. 12:9, 20:2). This has raised all sorts of questions over the years, such as where did he come from, what is he doing in this narrative, and why did God allow such a creature to infiltrate the Garden - His sacred space with Adam and Eve?
You will probably get tired of seeing me write this, but I am going to write it again, because we can easily forget: The Old Testament is an Ancient Near East document, therefore we have to read the text in ancient terms and through ancient eyes. This means that we cannot immediately rush to the conclusion that the serpent is associated with Satan. Yes, this is the eventual conclusion, but there is no indication that the serpent was identified as Satan during Old Testament times. As we saw in our last post, according to the Old Testament, there was no such thing as Satan as an arch-enemy of God (we will examine this historical development later in the series). We must remember that we have an Israelite author communicating to Israelites, and in their theology, there was no “Satan” as we now understand him. Being an ANE audience, they would have made certain associations with the serpent imagery that are very different from our thinking.
When we examine ANE documents, we see that they are full of serpent imagery. In the Gilgamesh epic, reference is made to a serpent who stole the plant of life from Gilgamesh. In the Akkadian Tale of Adapa, one of the guardians of Anu’s palace that Adapa meets is named Gizzida, whose name means “Lord of the Productive Tree.” This guardian has the shape of a serpent, and is known as the guardian of demons who live in the netherworld (Thorkid Jacobsen, “Mesopotamina Gods and Pnatheons,” in Toward the Image of Tammuzz and Other Essays on Mesopotamian History and Culture pg. 24).
In Egypt, serpents are related to wisdom and death. We find them on the crown of Pharaoh, in pictures, as well as in the Book of the Dead. In the Book of the Dead, serpents are presented as dangerous, deadly enemies that are along the path to the afterlife.
One such serpent who was associated with wisdom and death was Apophis. He was a great serpent of chaos who tried to swallow the sun every morning as it rose (Nicole B. Hansen, “Snakes,” in Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, 3:297).
In the Book of the Dead, we see many elements and ideas that are evident in the Genesis account as well. These include crawling on the belly, eating dust, and crushing the head and striking the heal. Look at these entries adapted from the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary: Old Testament.
Crawl on your belly (3:14). The Egyptian Pyramid Test were meant to aid the pharaohs of the Old Kingdom on their journey to the afterlife. In the text, there are several dozen spells and curses on the snakes which would seek to hinder the king’s progress. One of the spells that is called down on the snake is in order to make it lie down, fall down, get down, or crawl away (Pyramid Text 226, 233, 234, 298, 386). Another says that he should “go with (his) face on the path" (288).
This parallels the Genesis account where the serpent is cursed in chapter 3. The inference is that when God tells the serpent that he will crawl on his belly, there is no suggestion that the serpent ever had legs that are now being taken away from him. Instead, the curse means that the serpent is going to be docile, rather than in a striking position. The serpent on its belly is not a threat, while the one poised to strike is either in a mode of protection or attack. Though there are descriptions of serpents in the ANE who have legs, there is no mention of serpents ever losing their legs.
Eat dust (3:14). This is not a comment about what the snake eats. More likely, it is a reference to their habitat. In the Pyramid Texts, an attempt is made to banish the serpent to the dust. Furthermore, serpents are creatures of the netherworld, and those in the netherworld were typically portrayed as eating dust. In the Descent of Ishthar, the netherworld is described as a place where their food is dust and their bread is clay.
Crush your head (3:15). The Pyramid Texts 299 uses this expression to refer to overcoming or defeating the serpent. The idea is that such statements reflect a potentially mortal blow to the deadly creature. This imagery helps us understand how someone in the ANE might have understood this phrase.
Strike his heel (3:15). In the ANE, though they knew some snakes were non venomous, if someone was bitten, it was still assumed, as a precaution, that the snake was venomous. Thus, a strike to the heel could be a deadly blow.
All of these examples can provide us insight about how the ancient Israelites thought about the serpent. So, if they would not have thought of the serpent as Satan, what would they have thought?
First, let’s look at how the serpent is described. The adjective used about the serpent is arum, and it can be translated as “shrewd, subtle, wily, cunning, prudent, or clever.” It is a word that is usually associated with wisdom, and can be used in either a positive or negative way. This means that the serpent is nowhere described as evil. This description, then, does not help us in determining the nature of the creature. The only identity that we have is that he was one of the beast of the field (Gen. 3:1).
In recent studies, John Walton and others have suggested that the Genesis serpent is a “chaos creature.” In the ancient world, chaos creatures were creatures that belonged to the sphere of the divine, but were not themselves divine. “Their composite features gave them a combination of attributes. In the ancient world the chaos creatures are not thought of as evil. They are amoral but can be mischievous or destructive. They cause problems if left unchecked but can be domesticated and become associates of gods. Demons also function much like the chaos creatures, as do liminal creatures (e.g., coyote, screech owl).” (John Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve, pg 132).
In examining the context, we have already seen that the serpent was a “beast of the field”, and the word for serpent, nachas is one of the normal ways to describe a common snake. Therefore, it seems that there is nothing that would suggest that it is to be identified as a chaos creature. To understand where Walton and others are coming from, we have to look to other passages in the Old Testament.
In the Old Testament, God is depicted as creating the chaos creatures, such as Behemoth and Leviathan (Gen 1:21; Job 40:15-19; Psalm 104:26). The word nachas is also used to describe Leviathan in Isaiah 27:1. Finally, in Revelation, John identifies the serpent (who is now understood as Satan) as a great dragon- the ultimate chaos creature (Rev. 12:9). The conclusion is that the Israelites would have understood the serpent in Genesis 3 to be a chaos creature (Walton, Adam and Eve, pg. 133)
What then, can we conclude from this reading of the text? (The following is adapted from Walton, Adam and Eve, pgs 133-136)
1. An Israelite reader would have not understood the serpent as Satan. The serpent is the catalyst for the sin more than the cause of the sin.
2. They would not necessarily consider the serpent to be morally evil or bent on the destruction of mankind, even though they understood the effects of the temptation.
3. They would not have given any unique status to the serpent. He was just another creature that God created rather than a cosmic power.
4. They would have understood the serpent to be a chaos creature- a free agent who really doesn’t have a thought out agenda.
5. It is also significant that the Israelites do not give the serpent an ongoing role in the Old Testament.
6. The serpents reply to Eve “You will not surely die” is actually better translated “Don’t see death as such an immediate threat.” Notice also that the serpent does not suggest outright that Eve eat the fruit, nor does he suggest that she should disobey.
7. The Israelites would have understood that the result of the serpent’s role was that evil took root among humanity, and that war between the two have arisen (Gen. 3:15).
8. When we examine the text, we see that it never suggest that the serpent was ever in the Garden. If we want to know how they encountered the serpent, we must realize that their task in the Garden did not necessitate their constant presence. Priest who were serving in sacred space, such as Adam and Eve (more on this at a later time), did not mean that they were at all times in that sacred space. This means that the chaos creature could have been encountered outside the Garden when he suggested the temptation. The text does not specify. (I'm not sure I agree with this. See the comments section).
9. As a chaos creature, the serpent would have been associated with non-order rather than order. In the ANE non-order had a certain neutrality to it, whereas disorder was evil. This means that if the serpent is a chaos creature, then neither his contradiction to God nor his deception about the consequences are part of an evil agenda. They are simply meant to be disruptive- the exact behavior that chaos creatures engage in.
Grant it, a more complete understanding of this creature is developed later in the intertestamental period and the New Testament, but our goal for this article was to limit our perspective to the Old Testament, When we do, things look very different.
So, in closing, the serpent is a chaos creature- an amoral, non-order creature. His role is to disrupt. This he does. He causes Adam and Eve to go from a state of order to disorder (which was evil in the ancient world) by turning the order on to themselves, through transgressing God’s command.