The craftiness of the serpent in Genesis 3 is that he gets you to think about the rules and the consequences of Genesis 2, and you completely forget that God promised to bless you first in Genesis 1.
And God does not break His promises.
Tag: Genesis 1
See how He Loves Us
This is how I read the scriptures:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:1 (NIV)
See how he loves us!
Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Genesis 1:2 (NIV)
See how he loves us!
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
Genesis 1:3 (NIV)
See how he loves us!
If I can’t see how He loves us in the passage, I stop and look for it. And I will never stop looking and listening until it all rings and echoes with this singular truth: See how he loves us!
Names
There’s an odd thing about names I’ve just noticed in Genesis.
Genesis 1: God names things on days 1-3, but not 4-6.
Genesis 2: The man names the animals, and he calls the woman “isha.”
Genesis 3: The man names the woman “Eve.”
God never gives gives the man a name. Never.
A Foundation
Genesis 3 introduces sin and death, and it’s understood to be tragic. In some ways, terrifying. But if you’ve spent time pouring over Genesis 1 and 2 and see that a foundation has been laid down by God, you can trust the God of the story to fix what has been broken.
So this is what the Sovereign Lord says:
“See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone,
a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation;
the one who relies on it
will never be stricken with panic.
Isaiah 28:16 (NIV)
Death
Perhaps the Tree of knowledge is tied to death because the only way to truly know the depths of evil or “bad” is to see death. To understand it. To succumb to it. To see that disobedience undoes the work God did in Genesis 1.
Most Crafty
There is a ranking of cleverness in the creatures God created.
The serpent (a creeping thing) is more crafty than the wild beasts, but not described as more clever than the cattle/livestock.
God said, “Let the earth bring forth every kind of living creature: cattle, creeping things, and wild beasts of every kind.” And it was so.
God made wild beasts of every kind and cattle of every kind, and all kinds of creeping things of the earth. And God saw that this was good.
Genesis 1:23-24 (The Contemporary Torah, JPS 2006)
Now the serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild beasts that God יהוה had made. It said to the woman, “Did God really say: You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?”
Genesis 1:23-24 (The Contemporary Torah, JPS 2006)
Some translations render this as “more shrewd than all…”
Light in the Beginning
If God is Light, then light was not created in Genesis 1:3. It was there, hovering over our darkness in Genesis 1:2. We just couldn’t see it. It was there in the beginning.
Perhaps Genesis 1 isn’t an account of things being created, but an account of things being revealed.
Darkness
Darkness is mentioned at the start of Genesis 1, and the rest of the chapter continues in a description of days, and of things we see in the Light.
Darkness isn’t mentioned in Genesis 2. Or Genesis 3. In fact, we don’t get this word again until Genesis 15, when God makes covenant with Abram. It starts in darkness, and then God shows up. That is the story of our relationship with God.
Trust the Story
In Christianity, we’re taught “first you must know that you’re a sinner,” but this is not the pattern of Genesis.
Genesis doesn’t tell you about sin and death until after it establishes that you are beloved.
God is asking you to trust Him in the story.
The Name of the Creeping Things
In Genesis 3, we’re going to be introduced to the Serpent. He’s a “creeping thing,” unlike “wild animals” or “livestock.” All three are listed specifically in the creation account of Genesis 1.But when Adam names in the animals in Genesis 2, notice what’s missing. It’s the “creeping things” of Gen 1:24-25.
Why?
And out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock, and to the birds of the sky, and to every animal of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.
Genesis 2:19-20 (NASB)
I’m not sure, but perhaps it’s tied to this:
Now concerning everything which I have said to you, be careful; and do not mention the name of other gods, nor let them be heard from your mouth.
Exodus 23:13 (NASB)
The creeping things point to the serpent of Genesis 3. The serpent points to all the false gods.