sneaky snake

Monday March 10^th, Genesis 2&3: 25 Although the man and his wife were both naked, they were not ashamed.   ¹ Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” ² The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”  ⁴ “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  The serpent or snake is a common figure in the creation stories of both Egypt and Babylon.  The first 11 chapters of Genesis were written during the latter part of the Babylon captivity, so the creation stories of the Hebrew people reflect the creation stories they had been hearing during their captivity in the land of Babylon.  The snake in these accounts is a sneaky creature that tries to rob humanity of the gift of eternal life.  Here in the Hebrew creation myths it again does its business by tempting the new humans to eat of the tree of knowledge, and in the process also tempting God not to destroy humanity, the pinnacle of creation.  The snake speaks the truth, only it is slanted a bit.  God does understand what will happen and that the humans won’t die in a literal sense, but they will die.  Their idyllic instinctual life lived fully in the presence of God will come to an end and in many ways they will be on their own.  Change will happen, life will get harder and they will begin to think about the things they do and move from instinctual to reasoned beings.  Perhaps this is after all, a bit closer to being created in the image of God, and for the first of many times in the book we call the Bible, God takes deeds that were meant for evil and turns them to good. Now comes our part to continue the process of growing up into being the children of God we were created to be.