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[Achilles]

Why did God punish the snake? Why is it a snake and not another animal? Why is there a snake in the first place?

[jimwalton]

First, it may not have been a literal snake. The Hebrew word for serpent is *nahash*, which is indeed the common word for snake, but it also possibly means "able to stand upright." There are all kinds of verbal possibilities here. For instance, *nahash* is the same root as nehoset, which means "bronze". We see that the shiny, upright snake in Number 21.9 is the same root: it was a literal thing, but a spiritual symbol. "Snake" could also be a word play, because the Hebrew word for "deceive" is very close to it, and is the same root as for magic and divination. Snakes in the ancient world were very much associated with spiritual powers, magic, and cultic rituals. So maybe that's why it was a snake and not another animal.

Back to Genesis now. So what if this "thing" (the nahash) was a spiritual power, represented to the woman as a bright creature, speaking "spiritual wisdom", and yet was deceiving her—all of these can be expressed by the word for snake? Just a little bit of research could change the whole picture. Bible scholars are still working on this text. New archaeological data, as I have just explained, are motivating them to rethink what we thought we knew. So maybe that's why there was a snake in the first place—it was actually a spiritual power (same word group).

So maybe, as I said, this wasn't a snake at all (though logically that is the word used by their culture). Maybe it was a deceiviant (my own coined word. You like it?) upright spiritual being. That may have been why Adam & Eve didn't think it was weird to converse with it. After all, who would talk to a snake? The *nahash* distorted God's words, deceived them both, and was cursed by God for what he did. And, by the way, *nahashim* are often the object of curses in the ancient world, and the curse of Genesis 3.14 follows somewhat predictable patterns, conforming to the culture's expressions and forms. The word curse (*'aror*) also means "banned," so what was happening was that this spiritual being was being thrown out of the garden, so to speak, removed from God's presence (banned), and that was his curse. Maybe that's why God punished the spiritual being. It distorted God's words, deceived them both, and motivated them to rebel against God. You'll notice in the text that the serpent was cursed, but not the man or the woman. There were consequences for what they had done, but only the serpent and the ground were cursed.