Always a Snake?

 Sometime last fall I started the daily practice of reading two chapters of the Bible with Little Pumpkin every night before bed. We started at Psalm 1 and just read two consecutive chapters a night. Just last week, we finished Revelation and have turned back to the beginning of the Bible and began in Genesis. Just tonight, we read chapters 3 and 4 of Genesis and something specific stood out to me that I never noticed before. And, I wondered, was the serpent that God created always a snake?

I'll tell you right off that I currently don't have an answer to my own question. But, I re-read that portion of Scripture and looked at several translations, and am just sharing my new-found question and thoughts.

Chapter 3 of Genesis is the start of the fall of the human race into sin. It is when Eve eats the forbidden fruit, and Adam also chose to partake. At the beginning of the chapter, it says, "Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made." (Genesis 3:1a, NIV) That part made me think a little bit. Crafty. God made a crafty animal. The definition of "crafty" from dictionary.com is: skillful in underhand or evil schemes; cunning; deceitful; sly. In the other translations that I looked at, the words "subtle," "cunning," "shrewd," and "clever" were used in place of "crafty." Ultimately, I have to wonder if the serpent, by being crafty, was also the smartest of all the animals that God created? It says he was "more crafty than any of the wild animals..." The serpent also spoke. I never thought about that either: he's an animal, yet he had the ability to speak. And, he was smart enough to be crafty.

I have always thought, or assumed, that a serpent was a snake. And vice versa. They are one and the same, but that "serpent" was just an out-dated name for "snake." Now I'm not so sure that they are, or were, one and the same.

Further on, in Genesis 3:14, after the LORD speaks with Adam and Eve, He speaks to the serpent and says, "...Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life." (NIV)

In verse 1, it kind of seems as though the serpent is a bit above all of the rest of the animals; he was smart enough to be more crafty. Now it seems that God has placed him at the very bottom of the totem pole; he is to be more cursed than any of the other animals - both domestic and wild. And, on top of that, the serpent is told that he will now crawl on his belly and eat dust for the rest of his life. That right there is what made me stop and ask, "Wait. Was the serpent not a snake before the fall of man? Did he embody some other form? And did snakes exist prior to this point in time, or is this when the animal form that we call "snake" come about?"

I looked up the word "serpent" on dictionary.com and it gives three definitions: 1. a snake; 2. a wily, treacherous, or malicious person; 3. the Devil; Satan. Gen. 3:1-5. Well, those are all things I associate with the word "serpent," and with the word "snake." I guess that doesn't answer my question about the form of the serpent or snake, not that I was expecting to get a hard-bound truth from a dictionary website. But, I thought maybe there was an aspect of "serpent" that I had not known before, and was trying to do some quick research.

Beyond my question of whether the serpent has always had the form of a snake, I began thinking about God's curse on the serpent and how it is carried out. God took the animal that was more crafty, maybe even smarter, than all the rest of the animals (which, in theory, could imply that the serpent was at the top of the animal hierarchy) and made him the lowest of the low. The serpent was cursed "above all the livestock and all the wild animals." With the introduction of sin into God's perfect creation, we know that life for the human race became hard and painful (just continue reading through chapter 3). I never thought about it before, but that sin brought about less-than-desirable issues for the animals as well. The wording, "Cursed are you above all the...animals" implies that God actually placed a curse upon ALL of the animals, and the serpent got the worst of it.

Being cursed more-so than any other animal is a pretty low blow. I don't know what the serpent looked like, but if he wasn't snake-like before, having to motivate about like a snake probably didn't help his appearance very much. Even though the other animals may have also been cursed, they weren't punished, if you will, to the same extent. People still like, or tolerate, most animals. Some people prefer dogs, some prefer gerbils, some birds, some cows, some love eagles, etc. You get the picture. But I'd say that it's a pretty small percentage of people that love, or prefer, a snake over all the rest of the animals that were created. And, I have to think that that is part of the curse. Along with the grody aspect of having to slither on your belly across, or through, the surface that every other living thing gets the privilege of only having to use their feet to traverse. And, if in fact snakes did already exist, even though the serpent had to start slithering on his belly like a snake, he was still placed lower than a snake at that point. And I'm not sure you can get much lower than a snake.

So, in summary, I'm not sure that snakes and the serpent are, or were, the same thing. And, the serpent started out, potentially, at the top of the animal kingdom. After the fall of man, for his part in that event, God took this top, crafty animal and made him the lowest of the low: a despised creature that slithers about silently on his stomach through muck, mud, and dirt, and will be eating dust for the rest of his life. Maybe the lesson to be learned here is to be sure and use your God-given abilities for good, and not for evil.