The Enchanter

Q

My question is on Satan and the Garden of Eden. “The Serpent,” told Eve it was OK to eat of the tree. Then she does and God puts a curse on the Serpent. He says, “Because thou has done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life” (Gen. 3:14). So before the curse, he was something other than what we recognize as a snake. Any ideas of what he may have looked like?

A

The Hebrew word for serpent in Genesis 3:1 is the noun form of a verb that means to enchant or practice divination. Genesis 3:1 also says the serpent was more shrewd or crafty than the beasts of the field. This could mean that he really wasn’t one of them but inhabited one so as not to frighten Eve. As a consequence of allowing the enchanter to indwell him, the animal was thereafter deprived of his legs. But irrespective of all that, no one knows what the animal might have looked like before the event.