And the Lord
God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast 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: (Genesis 3:14)
I was thinking about this recently and I started to wonder,
“If Satan was already cursed because of being cast out of heaven, why curse him
again?” and “How does it help us to know this curse?”
If we think this is just about a serpent, it seems like the
curse is obvious. It’s implied that the serpent used to have legs and here has
them taken away. It’s also implied that it used to eat something better, but is
now relegated to only eating dust.
Our view of snakes today is perfectly in line with the seemingly
physical conditions God describes.
Serpents have to slither everywhere. And they’re always sticking their
tongues out, so it looks like they are licking the ground. (Of course, today we
know that the tongue action is the way snakes sense things.)
As I thought about it, I wondered if maybe the Lord was
making a statement about the curses that come to those who tempt like Satan
does. Satan is already cursed, but
it is us who must be warned from becoming his servants and tempting
others. Eve briefly became Satan’s
servant when tempting Adam to eat the fruit, so the warning is appropriate.
“upon thy belly shalt thou go” – This curse is about how
faster travel has been somehow taken away. I think the larger theme is about
progression. It teaches that those
who tempt others will have their own spiritual progress substantially slowed to
the point that everyone goes much faster.
Not a pleasant prospect. Not
only that, but any movement would happen on the belly instead of on legs. That may refer to how a tempter’s core
motivation for acting would become satisfying their appetites. One might even say that a tempter would
be enslaved by their appetites.
“dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life” – This curse seems to be about what a
tempter finds nourishing. A
tempter feeds not on something sweet, but on gross stuff. If they want to eat
dirt all their life instead of something that tastes better, their taste has become
corrupted. They call evil good,
and good evil (Isaiah 5:20). Who wants to eat dirt? Not me. I’d
rather eat tasty fruit from the tree of life than dirt.
So, I think this bit of knowledge can help us when we are
being tempted. It helps us discern the consequences. We don’t want our progression slowed, we don’t want our
appetites to be our motivation, and we don’t want to be have our moral and
aesthetic tastes corrupted.
It can also help us think about what we have to offer others
when we are trying to persuade them to try something. Will it stop their progression, enslave them to an appetite
or corrupt them in some way? If
so, then we shouldn’t try to pull them in, and we shouldn’t be in it either!
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