The Good and Evil Serpent (70 page)

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And the serpent said to (or questioned) the woman, “Why did God say, ‘you may not eat from each tree in paradise?’ “

The Greek is clearly an interrogative sentence: note the opening with the interrogative, “Why” (
) and the question mark at the end of the sentence (; [which is a question mark in Greek]).
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Speiser ignored a major obstacle to his understanding of the Hebrew: the witness of the Greek version. Once we scholars tended to mistrust the Greek version as a witness to a Hebrew version. We incorrectly assumed that such differences from the Hebrew were caused by the work of a translator. Now, we know from the Qumran Hebrew manuscripts that some (perhaps many) of the “variants” in the Septuagint are not the creation on the part of a translator; they often represent early Hebrew texts.
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That observation indicates that we should keep in focus both the Hebrew and the ancient Greek.

It seems clear, therefore, that the serpent is not deceiving the woman. It is misleading to label the serpent “ill-omened.”
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He is addressing a question to the woman. That the serpent asks a question does not indicate that he is ignorant. Rather the interrogative aligns the serpent with God Yahweh, who asks the man, “Where are you?” Both interrogatives are rhetorical dimensions of the Eden Story. Both the serpent and God are related: God creates the serpent, and both God Yahweh and the serpent serve the Yahwist to move the narrative along by asking questions.

Thus, it is best to translate Genesis 3:1 as a question in Hebrew, as have most commentators and as is found in most popular translations; here are a few representative translations:

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” [NKJV]

Nun war die Schlange listiger als alle Tiere des Feldes, die Jahve Gott geschaffen hatte; sie sprache zum Weibe: “sollte Gott euch denn wirklich verboten haben, von allem Bäumen des Gartens zu essen?”
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Il dit ä la femme: “Alors, Dieu a dit: Vous ne mangerez pas de tous les arbres du jardin?”
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Et le serpent dit a la femme: “Pourquoi Dieu a-t-il dit: ‘Ne mangez pas de tout arbre dans le jardin’?”
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And he said to the woman, “ ‘Is
it true
that the Lord God said, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden’?”
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These reflections lead to an appreciation of the clever use of language in Genesis 3:1. The Yahwist has adeptly composed Genesis 3:1 so that it is possible to understand, in paradigmatically opposite ways, the first spoken words in the narrative: the serpents’ words addressed to the woman
. How should one translate the Hebrew words in parentheses? Although the prohibition or command is in the emphatic form (
and not
), God’s words may mean either “You may not eat from every tree of the garden” or “You may not eat from any tree of the garden.” As Moberly reports, “The range of options given is as wide as it could be”;
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the Hebrew means either “every tree” or “any tree.” The ambiguity underscores a little-known fact; the serpent points out the problem with the prohibition. We may assume that the humans lack knowledge, so they might have understood God’s prohibition to mean that all the trees contain forbidden fruit (“que tous les arbes sont prohibes”).
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Speiser’s negative view of the serpent, which is presupposed and un-examined, led him to mistranslate the Hebrew that introduces the serpent: “Now the serpent was the sliest of all the wild creatures.”
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In fact, the Hebrew
‘rwm
, in Genesis 3:1, does not have a negative meaning, as too many exegetes, like Speiser, assume or claim. It is rather neutral, and obtains the meaning “sly” or “clever”—even “wise”—according to the context. The Hebrew noun
(from
) is used twice in Proverbs 12 to denote a wise or prudent man in contrast to a fool (vv. 16, 23). The translators of the Septuagint chose three words to translate this Hebrew noun:
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, which can have a positive sense but usually, especially as used by Aristotle, Philo, Josephus, and the New Testament authors, signifies one who is “clever,” “crafty,” or “sly;”
, which in classics, the Septuagint, the Pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, and the New Testament authors indicates one who is “intelligent,” “wise,” or “sagacious;” and
, which in all ancient Greek literature specifies one who is “wise,” “prudent,” and “thoughtful.”