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Jungle_Book.jpg
1.
The NET Bible
Now the serpent was more shrewd than any of the wild animals
The Peshitta
Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field
NASB
Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field
The Jerusalem
The serpent was the most subtle of all the wild beasts
The Message
The serpent was clever, more clever than any wild animal
Comments
“The serpent was more subtle than all the beasts of the field, which Jehovah God had made.” - The serpent is here described not only as a beast, but also as a creature of God; it must therefore have been good, like everything else that He had made. Subtilty was a natural characteristic of the serpent ( Matthew 10:16 ) , which led the evil one to select it as his instrument. Nevertheless the predicate ערוּם is not used here in the good sense of φρόνιμος (lxx), prudens, but in the bad sense of πανοῦργος, callidus. For its subtilty was manifested as the craft of a tempter to evil, in the simple fact that it was to the weaker woman that it turned; and cunning was also displayed in what it said: “Hath God indeed said, Ye shall not eat of all the trees of the garden?” כּיאף is an interrogative expressing surprise (as in 1 Samuel 23:3 ; 2 Samuel 4:11 ) : “Is it really the fact that God has prohibited you from eating of all the trees of the garden?” The Hebrew may, indeed, bear the meaning, “hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree?” but from the context, and especially the conjunction, it is obvious that the meaning is, “ye shall not eat of any tree.” The serpent calls God by the name of Elohim alone, and the woman does the same. In this more general and indefinite name the personality of the living God is obscured. To attain his end, the tempter felt it necessary to change the living personal God into a merely general numen divinium, and to exaggerate the prohibition, in the hope of exciting in the woman's mind partly distrust of God Himself, and partly a doubt as to the truth of His word. And his words were listened to. Instead of turning away, the woman replied, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” She was aware of the prohibition, therefore, and fully understood its meaning; but she added, “neither shall ye touch it,” and proved by this very exaggeration that it appeared too stringent even to her, and therefore that her love and confidence towards God were already beginning to waver. Here was the beginning of her fall: “for doubt is the father of sin, and skepsis the mother of all transgression; and in this father and this mother, all our present knowledge has a common origin with sin” (Ziegler). From doubt, the tempter advances to a direct denial of the truth of the divine threat, and to a malicious suspicion of the divine love ( Genesis 3:4 , Genesis 3:5 ) . “Ye will by no means die” (לא is placed before the infinitive absolute, as in Psalms 49:8 and Amos 9:8 ; for the meaning is not, “he will not die;” but, ye will positively not die). “But
(Note: כּי used to establish a denial.)
God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, your eyes will be opened,
(Note: ונפקחוּ perfect c. ו consec. See Gesenius, §126, Note 1.)
and ye will be like God, knowing good and evil.” That is to say, it is not because the fruit of the tree will injure you that God has forbidden you to eat it, but from ill-will and envy, because He does not wish you to be like Himself. “A truly satanic double entendre, in which a certain agreement between truth and untruth is secured!” By eating the fruit, man did obtain the knowledge of good and evil, and in this respect became like God ( Genesis 3:7 and Genesis 3:22). This was the truth which covered the falsehood “ye shall not die,” and turned the whole statement into a lie, exhibiting its author as the father of lies, who abides not in the truth ( John 8:44 ) . For the knowledge of good and evil, which man obtains by going into evil, is as far removed from the true likeness of God, which he would have attained by avoiding it, as the imaginary liberty of a sinner, which leads into bondage to sin and ends in death, is from the true liberty of a life of fellowship with God.)
Keil & Delitzsch (Genesis 3:1-5)
The serpent, in his Edenic form, is not to be thought of as a writhing reptile. That is the effect of the curse Genesis 3:14 . The creature which lent itself to Satan may well have been the most beautiful as was the most "subtle" of creatures less than man. Traces of that beauty remain despite the curse. Every movement of a serpent is graceful, and many species are beautifully coloured. In the serpent, Satan first appeared as "an angel of light" 2 Corinthians 11:14.
Scofield
tn The Hebrew word ( ’arum ) basically means “clever.” This idea then polarizes into the nuances “cunning” (in a negative sense, see Job 5:12 ; Job 15:5 ), and “prudent” in a positive sense ( Proverbs 12:16 , Proverbs 12:23 ; Proverbs 13:16 ; Proverbs 14:8 , Proverbs 14:15 , Proverbs 14:18 ; Proverbs 22:3 ; Proverbs 27:12 ). This same polarization of meaning can be detected in related words derived from the same root (see Exodus 21:14 ; Joshua 9:4; 1 Samuel 23:22 ; Job 5:13; Psalms 83:3). The negative nuance obviously applies in Genesis 3, where the snake attempts to talk the woman into disobeying God by using half-truths and lies.
sn There is a wordplay in Hebrew between the words “naked” ( ’arummim ) in Genesis 2:25 and “shrewd” (’arum) in Genesis 3:1. The point seems to be that the integrity of the man and the woman is the focus of the serpent’s craftiness. At the beginning they are naked and he is shrewd; afterward, they will be covered and he will be cursed.
The NET Bible
2.
The NET Bible
And the woman replied, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.”
The Peshitta
And the woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."
NASB
And the woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."
The Jerusalem
The woman replied, ‘The serpent tempted me and I ate.’
The Message
"The serpent seduced me," she said, "and I ate."
Comments
The man could not hide himself from God. “Jehovah God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?” Not that He was ignorant of his hiding-place, but to bring him to a confession of his sin. And when Adam said that he had hidden himself through fear of his nakedness, and thus sought to hide the sin behind its consequences, his disobedience behind the feeling of shame; this is not to be regarded as a sign of peculiar obduracy, but easily admits of a psychological explanation, viz., that at the time he actually thought more of his nakedness and shame than of his transgression of the divine command, and his consciousness of the effects of his sin was keener than his sense of the sin itself. To awaken the latter God said, “Who told thee that thou wast naked?” and asked him whether he had broken His command. He could not deny that he had, but sought to excuse himself by saying, that the woman whom God gave to be with him had given him of the tree. When the woman was questioned, she pleaded as her excuse, that the serpent had beguiled her (or rather deceived her, ἐξαπάτησεν, , 2 Corinthians_11:3). In offering these excuses, neither of them denied the fact. But the fault in both was, that they did not at once smite upon their breasts. “It is so still; the sinner first of all endeavours to throw the blame upon others as tempters, and then upon circumstances which God has ordained.”
Keil & Delitzsch ( Genesis 3:9-13 )
tn This verb (the Hiphil of, nasha) is used elsewhere of a king or god misleading his people into false confidence ( 2 Kings 18:29 = 2 Chronicles 32:15 = Isaiah 36:14 ; 2 Kings 19:10 = Isaiah 37:10 ), of an ally deceiving a partner ( Obadiah 7 ), of God deceiving his sinful people as a form of judgment ( Jeremiah 4:10 ), of false prophets instilling their audience with false hope ( Jeremiah 29:8 ), and of pride and false confidence producing self-deception ( Jeremiah 37:9 ; Jeremiah 49:16 ; Obadiah 3 ).
The NET Bible
That’s all folks.
Peace,
HH.
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