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Genesis 3:14 Explainer
(maybe)
(All of this is from the
Divine Council worldview,
not from the traditional church’s understanding.)
So the LORD God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and every beast of the field! On your belly will you go, and dust you will eat, all the days of your life. (BSB)
Adonai, God, said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all livestock and wild animals. You will crawl on your belly and eat dust as long as you live. (CJB)
Then the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all the livestock, And more than any animal of the field; On your belly you shall go, And dust you shall eat All the days of your life;” (NASB)
I’m not 100% comfortable with any explanation I can offer about what really is going on in Genesis 3:14. First of all, snakes were designed without legs, so “crawling on their belly” was their intended means of locomotion. So we can’t take God’s condemnation of all snakes literally. The context doesn’t allow it. Moses was writing this about 2,500 years after the event, when there was a long history of enmity between snakes and men. So I think there was some “poetic license” at play here. So let’s analyze the passage a bit. Heylel (Lucifer, Satan, the Adversary, etc.) wasn’t an angel and he isn’t a snake. He is and has always been a ben Elohim, a “son of God.”
Gen. 3:1 - “Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field that the LORD God had made.”
This probably means that “the serpent” (not the snake but Heylel) was more crafty than any of the created physical animals.
I
think Eden was designed to be the “Home Office” for God’s
“Family Business” in the physical realm, so I am very sure that He was there
often, because in the late afternoon (“in the cool of the day”) on the
day after the fall He had come for a visit as usual.
I’m inclined to believe that He originally intended that “Home Office”
to be like any other businesses home office, a place for staff from
all His businesses and branch offices to meet and discuss their
operating plans. And we have absolutely no idea how long it was between
Creation and the Fall. It may have been hundreds of years. So I don’t
think it’s unreasonable to think that staff from His invisible office
would be walking around in His visible office. Maybe there had just been
a planning session among the humans and the benéi Elohim, and
Heylel called Eve aside after the meeting (or during a coffee break) to
tempt her.
I don’t believe Halel physically took the form of a snake. I believe the word “serpent” is speaking not of his physical form but of his character, as it does throughout the following books of the Bible. When God addresses “the serpent" in Genesis 3:14, I seriously doubt He was speaking to a snake. He was speaking to “the Serpent” (the Dragon, the Deceiver). Of course Heylel wasn’t literally condemned to crawl on his belly, because he is now alive and well and still causing havoc in the physical realm. I think God was telling His once-highest administrator that he was now to be considered to be lower than the lowest of not just the other benéi Elohim, but even lower than the lowest of the physical animals.
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ANXIOUSLY WATCHING FOR MASHIACH’S RETURN,
SPEEDILY AND IN OUR DAY. MARANA, TA!
