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THE GENESIS OF THE WORLD-HISTORY, OF THE TRIAL, OF THE SIN OF MAN, OF THE JUDGMENT, OF DEATH, OF THE SALVATION-TRIUMPH, OF THE CONTRAST BETWEEN A DIVINE AND A WORLDLY TENDENCY IN HUMANITY, LASTLY OF THE UNIVERSAL CORRUPTION
FIRST SECTION
The Lost Paradise.
Gen_3:1-24.
A.—The Temptation.
2. Gen_3:1. Now the serpent.—The tree of knowledge, a part of the vegetable world, was made by God the medium of probation; from the animal world proceeds the serpent as the instrument of the temptation which God did not make. True it is, that the serpent appears as the probable author of this temptation, but such probability is weakened by what is said Gen_1:25; Gen_2:20. “It was (though Richers denies it) a good creation of God, though different, as originally created, from what it afterwards became” (Delitzsch). Through this supposition, however, of another created quality, he is brought nearer to the view of Richers. Does it appear as the mere instrument of a tempting spirit belonging to the other world, then must the decree of judgment, as pronounced, have regard not so much to it as to the spirit of sin, whose instrument and allegorical symbol it had become. How it could be such an instrument may be briefly explained by its craftiness; how it becomes an allegorical representation of the Evil One is taught us afterwards in the enmity that is proclaimed between the woman and the serpent. According to Nork (Etym.-Symb.-Myth. Real-Wörterbuch), “the serpent is just as well the figure of health and renovation, as of death; since it every year changes its skin, and ejects, moreover, its venom. This double peculiarity, and double character, as ἀãáèïäáßìùí and êáêïäáßìùí , is indicated not only in language, but also in myths, in sculpture, and in modes of worship.” In this relation, however, we must distinguish two diverging views of the ancient peoples. To the Egyptian reverence for the serpent stands in opposition the abhorrence for it among the Israelites (see the article “Serpent” in the “Biblical Dictionary for Christian People”), Greeks, Persians, and Germans. Among the Slavonians, too, does the serpent appear to have been an object of religious fear; and from them may there have come modified views to the Germans, as from the Egyptians to the Greeks. Concerning the species of serpents mentioned in the Bible, see Winer. It may not be without significance that Genesis (Genesis 3) is in such distinct contrast with the Egyptian views, not only in respect to the serpent, but also in respect to the Egyptian cultus of death and the other world. Delitzsch thinks that the serpent could hardly, at that time, have had such a name as ðָçָùׁ , since this (from ðָçַùׁ , to hiss) is derived from its present constitution. In this way the original constitution of the seductive serpent is regarded by him in a more favorable light than the nature of the tree of probation. Knobel, on the contrary, is of opinion that “the choice of the serpent was occasioned by the Persian myth, then known to the Hebrews, which makes the evil being Ahriman to be the tempter of the first man (giving to him the form and designation of the serpent), and represents him as the introducer of monstrous serpent forms.” Nevertheless, since in his time (according to Knobel), the belief in a devil was still foreign to the Hebrews, the author, he maintains, meant a real serpent, “as Josephus also rightly supposes (Antiq. i. 1, 4), as well as Aben Ezra, Jarchi, Kimchi, and most of the later commentators.” There is, however, not the slightest reason for deriving the primitive tradition, here given in its original Hebrew form, from any Persian myth, nor, in the second place, for ascribing to the Hebrews, not only a dependence on such Persian myth, but also an acknowledgment of its symbolical character or demoniacal background without any reasons for such anticipation; and, thirdly, is the alternative of its being either an actual serpent, or the devil himself, wholly untenable.—Now the serpent was more subtle. The question arises whether the adjective òָøåּí here stands in connection with îִï as expressing the comparative degree. At all events, the wholly analogous passage, Gen_3:14 (reminding us of this even by similarity of sound, îִëֹּì òָøåּí — àָøåּø îִëֹּì ) cannot mean: cursed more than every beast of the field. Among the beasts, the serpent was just a single example of cunning; and so is it afterwards said of the curse. “Wisdom is a native property of the serpent (Mat_10:16), on account of which the Evil One chose it his instrument. Nevertheless, the predicate òָøåּí is not given to it here in the good sense of öñüíéìïò (Sept.), prudent, but in the bad sense of ðáíïῦñãïò , callidus, crafty. For its wisdom presents itself as the craft of the tempter in this respect, that it applies itself to the weaker woman.” Keil.—And he said unto the woman.—The idea that the wife had a wish to be independent, and, for the sake of release, had withdrawn herself out of the man’s sight, as we find it in Milton, is original indeed, but sets up, when closely examined, a beginning of the fall before the fall itself.—Yea, hath God said.—The deluding ambiguity of his utterance is admirably expressed by the particles àַó ëִּé . The word in question denotes a questioning surprise, which may have in view now a yes, and now a no, according to the connection. This is the first striking feature in the beginning of the temptation. In the most cautious manner there is shown the tendency to excite doubt. Then the expression aims, at the same time, to awaken mistrust, and to weaken the force of the prohibition: Not eat of every tree of the garden! But, finally, there is also intended the lowering of belief through the bare use of the single name Elohim. The demon that has taken possession of the serpent cannot naturally recognize God as Jehovah, the Covenant-God for men. Knobel thinks, that the author left out the name Jehovah to avoid profaning it. Keil interprets: In order to reach his aim must the tempter seek to transform the personal living God into a universal numen divinum. But would, then, the Elohim of ch. i. be merely an universal numen divinum? The assault is directed against the paradisaical covenant of God with men; therefore it is that the serpent cannot utter the name Jehovah.
3. Gen_3:2-3. And the woman said unto the serpent.—That the serpent should address the woman, and not the man, is explained from the circumstance that the woman is the weaker and the seducible (1Pe_3:7). The text, however, supposes that the woman knew the prohibition of God, and in some way, indeed, through the man. Still, the woman does not offer, in her defence, this mediateness of her knowledge, as neither does Adam present as an excuse that he saw that Eve did not die from the eating of the fruit. The answer of both appears to be wholly right, and to correct the serpent she would seem to make the prohibition still stronger by the addition: Neither shall ye touch it. And yet by this very addition does her first wavering disguise itself under the form of an overdoing obedience. The first failure is her not observing the point of the temptation, and the allowing herself to to be drawn into an argument with the tempter; the second, that she makes the prohibition stronger than it really is, and thus lets it appear that to her, too, “the prohibition seems too strict” (Keil); the third is, that she weakens the prohibition by reducing it to the lesser caution: lest ye die, thus making the motive to obedience to be predominantly the fear of death. Or simply thus: She begins herself to doubt, and to explain away the simple clear prohibition of God, instead of turning away from the author of the doubt. There is something, too, in the thought that the woman does not denote God as her Covenant-God. And yet many have regarded her first answer as a sign of steadfastness in the beginning.
4. Gen_3:4-5. Ye shall not surely die.—This bold step in the temptation seems to suppose a wavering already observable in the woman; although, in truth, it may be noted, that, in spite of the perfect readiness of answer, the temptation of our Lord, Matthew 4, even advances in increasingly bolder forms. Still those forms are properly co-ordinate, whilst here the gradation is very strongly marked. Moreover, Christ, as the perfect man, could allow Satan to come out in all his boldness, whilst here the unprotected woman can only find safety in an immediate turning away.
5. And the serpent said.—The temptation steps out from the area of cautious craft into that of a reckless denial of the truth of God’s prohibition, and a malicious suspicion of its object. Ye shall not die at all; thus is the truth of the threatening stoutly denied; that is, the doubt becomes unbelief. The way, however, is not prepared for the unbelief without first arousing a feeling of distrust in respect to God’s love, His righteousness, and even His power. Along with this, and entering with it, there must be also a proud self-confidence; and a wilful striving after a false independence. For the transition from doubt to unbelief the way is specially opened through a false security. The serpent denies all evil consequences as arising from the forbidden enjoyment, whilst he promises, on the contrary, the best and most glorious results from the same.—For God doth know that in the day, etc.—The imitation of the divine language contains a species of mockery. Your eyes, says the voice of the tempter, instead of closing in death, will be, for the first time, truly opened. Here it is to be remarked, that the hour when unbelief is born is immediately the birth-hour of superstition. The serpent would have the woman believe, that on eating of that fruit she would become wonderfully enlightened, and, at the same time, raised to a divine glory. And so, in like manner, is every sin a senseless and superstitious belief in the salutary effects of sin. The promise of the tempter’s voice is first regarded for its own sake, and then as a complaint against God. Against the immediate deadly effect it sets the immediate pleasurable effect, whilst, at the same time, it represents the condition of men hitherto as a lamentable one—as an existence with closed eyes. Against the fearful threatening: to die the death, it sets the opened eyes, and the being like God, as a caricaturing, as it were, of that promise which had appointed men to the image of God. The eyes were opened—a biblical expression which in the Old Testament frequently denotes a high spiritual seeing, either as an enlightenment in respect to truth, or as the seeing of some theophanic manifestation in prophetic vision (Gen_21:29; Num_22:21). The knowledge, however, of good and evil, as the words are employed by Satan, must here denote not merely a condition of higher intelligence, but rather a state of perfect independence of God. They would then know of themselves what was good and what was evil, and would no longer need the divine direction. To the same effect the assurance: for God doth know, etc. This must mean: He enviously seeks to keep back your happiness; and He is envious because He is weak in opposition to nature, because the fruit of the forbidden tree will make you independent of Him, and because He is tyrannical and without love in His dealings with you. In this distorting of the divine image, there is reflected the darkening of the divine consciousness which the temptation tends to call out in the woman, and actually does call out. In all this it must be noted, that the temptation here is already at work with those crafty lies (see 2Th_2:9) which it has employed through the whole course of the world’s history—that is, with lies containing elements of the truth, but misplaced and distorted. Already that first question of the serpent contains a truth, so far as man ought to become conscious in himself of the certainty and divine suitableness of God’s commands. The doubt, however, which tends to life, is to be distinguished from that which tends to death, by its design and direction. The tendency of the devil is to scepticism. But in this bold assurance of the serpent which immediately follows, namely, that no evil effects, but only good, would result from the eating, there lies the truth that the outward death would not immediately succeed the enjoyment of the forbidden fruit; that with the consciousness of guilt there comes in a conscious though a disturbed distinction between good and evil, and that the sinner has placed himself in a false independence through his own self-wilfulness (comp. Gen_3:22). When we take it all together, however, it is the appointment to the divine image which the spirit of the tempter perverts into a caricature: Ye shall be as gods, and into an anticipation of immediately reaching their aim: “A satanic amphiboly, in which truth and falsehood are united to a certain degree of coincidence.” Ziegler. Comp. Job_8:44. Very dark is Knobel’s comprehension of this passage: “In the account of the Jehovist,” he says, “God appears to be jealous of ambitious men (Gen_3:22; Gen_6:3; Gen_11:16). This same view of the jealousy of the gods appears also among the Grecian writers, e. g., Herod, i. 32; iii. 40. vii. 10, 46; Pausan. ii. 33; iii.; comp. Nägelsbach: ‘Homeric Theology,’ p. 33.”
6. Gen_3:6. And when the woman saw.—There is truly indicated by the words, according to Luther’s translation, the lustful looking of the woman; but the expression presents, besides, the spiritual disturbance that attended it. She beheld it now with a glance made false by the germinating unbelief, or, so to speak, enchanted by it. “The satanic promise drove the divine threatening out of her thought. Now she beholds the tree with other eyes (Gen_3:6). Three times is it said how charming the tree appeared to her.” “The words åðçîã äòõ ìäùׂëéì (to be desired, to make one wise) are taken by Hofmann for a remark of the narrator.” Delitzsch rightly rejects this view. First, there is painted, in general, the overpowering charm of the tree. It appears to her as something from which it would be good to eat; that is, good for food. The charm has now, too, its sensual side: The tree is, moreover, pleasant to the eye. It appears also to have a special worth in supplying a want; it is to be desired to make one wise. The sensual desire and the demoniacal spiritual interest (especially curiosity and pride) unite in leading her to the fall. Tuch, Beck, Baumgarten, and others, give to ìְäַùְׂëִּéì the sense of making wise: it appeared to her as a means for spiritual advancement. Delitzsch (as also Knobel) disputes this, with the remark that it docs not agree with the word ðäîã (a thing to be desired). But why should there not be supposed a charm in this property of making wise? Herein is indicated not only the common power which the charm of novelty has for our human nature in general, but also its special influence on the female nature.—She took of the fruit thereof and did eat.—The decisive act of sin (Jam_1:15). Knobel: The heart follows the eyes (Job_31:7; Ecc_11:9).—And gave also unto her husband.—The addition òִîָּäּ interpreted by Delitzsch as denoting “an actual presence, instead of mere association.” We hold both suppositions to be wrong. An actual presence of the husband standing mute in the very scene of the temptation presents great difficulty; whilst the second view amounts to nothing. If it is taken, however, as the representation of an eating together, then the language is an abridgment; after that she had eaten she gave it to her husband to eat thereof after her, or to eat with her. In the very moments of temptation, as we must take the account, there comes in the perception of the fact, that she does not die from the eating; and so it is that the wife’s power of persuasion, and Adam’s sympathy with her, are not made specially prominent.
7. Gen_3:7-8. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.—In the relation between the antecedent here and what follows there evidently lies a terrible irony. The promise of Satan becomes half fulfilled, though, indeed, in a different sense from what they had supposed: Their eyes were opened; they had attained to a developed self-consciousness. But all that they had reached in the first place was to become conscious of their nakedness as now an indecent exposure. It is here in this first irony, as appearing in the divine treatment of the consequences of sin, that we get a clear view of that ironical aspect in the divine penal righteousness which shows itself in the Scripture, and in the whole history of the world (see Psa_2:4; Act_4:24; Lange’s “Dogmatics,” p. 469). Knobel would really regard the new knowledge as a pure step of progress. “As a consequence of the enjoyment they knew their nakedness, whereas before, like unconscious, unembarrassed children, they had no thought of their nakedness, or of their personal contrasts. At once did they perceive that to go naked was no longer proper for them. They had attained, in consequence, to a moral insight. Shame entered into men in near cotemporaneity with their knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil; it belongs to the very beginning of moral cognition and development. This shame, in its lowest degree, limits itself to the covering of the sexual nakedness.” The question here, however, is not respecting a moral reform, but a religious deterioration. The reflection upon their nakedness and its unseemliness becomes, in the light of the symbolical representation, necessarily known as the first form of the entering consciousness of guilt. They have lost the unconscious dominion of the spirit over the bodily and sensuous appearance, and henceforth there enters into the conscience the world-historical strife between the spirit and the flesh—a strife whose prime cause lies in the fact that the spirit came out of the communion of the spirit of God, whose form consists in the fact that the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and whose effect (the feeling of hateful nakedness) is, indeed, attended by a reaction of the shame-feeling, but which can only manifest itself in the effort to cover, in the most scanty way, the nakedness revealed. In this part of the body the feeling of nakedness manifests itself as a sense of exposure that needs covering, not because that fruit poisoned the fountain of human life, or, by means of an innate property, immediately effected a corruption of the body, so far as propagation is concerned (Von Hoffmann, Baumgarten), nor because, in consequence of the fall, a physical change had taken place; but simply because, in the taking away by sin of the normal relation between the soul and the body, the body ceases to be any longer a pure instrument of the spirit which is united to God. “This part of the body is called òֶøְåָä (e. g., Gen_9:22) and áָּùֶׂø (e. g., Lev_9:2; comp. Exo_28:42), because nakedness and flesh, which shame bids men cover, culminate in them.” Delitzsch. In what follows, wherein he says that here the contrast between the spiritual and the natural, having lost its point of unity, is of the sharpest kind, and that the beastlike in the human appearance appears here most bestial, Delitzsch is approaching again the theosophic mode of view; although it is true that man, from his demoniacal striving after something too great for him, falls back into a beastly laxity of behavior, which, however, even here shame contends against, and seeks to veil. As the death of man, in its historical aspect, stands in counter-relation to the human generations in their historical aspect, so it would seem that whilst the first presentiment of death, in the first human consciousness of guilt, must give a shock to men, there would also be, in connection with this foreboding of death, another presentiment of a call to sexual propagation; but along with this, and in order to this, there would be a feeling which would seek to veil it, with its acts and organs, as by a sacred law. This modesty, or bashfulness, of man, however, relates not merely to natural generation, but also to the spiritual and the churchly; as though all origin demanded its covering—its creative night. The commendation of the first growths of intelligence in a man’s soul produces a feeling of blushing diffidence, and so, too, the churchly birth hath its reverent and modest veiling. When, therefore, along with the presentiment of death, and of the generic or sexual destiny (which, nevertheless, we cannot make independent of man’s historical death), there comes in the feeling of shame in the first men, so also, as a symbolic expression therefor, there enters into them, along with the guilt, an inner death, and the sense of the want of renovation. For the refutation of Knobel’s view, that by the fig-tree here is not meant the usual fig-tree, but the plant named pisang, or banana, see Delitzsch and Keil. See also more particularly, respecting the tree in question, Knobel and Delitzsch.—And they heard the voice.—Knobel, Keil, and Delitzsch explain the word ÷åֹì here, not of the voice of the Lord, but of the sound or rustling noise made by the Deity as he walked; and they compare it with Lev_26:33; Num_16:34; 2Sa_5:24. By such an interpretation is the symbolical element left entirely out of view. For beings in their condition, this sound of God walking must evidently have become a voice; but besides this it is said, farther on, that God called to Adam. At all events, the voice here becomes first a call. “In the cool of the day, that is, towards evening, when a cooling breeze is wont to arise.” Keil. To this we may add: and when also there comes to man a more quiet and contemplative frame of soul. So Delitzsch remarks very aptly: “God appears, because at that time men are in a state most susceptible of serious impressions. Every one experiences, even to this day, the truth of what is narrated. In the evening the dissipating impressions of the day become weaker, there is stillness in the soul; more than at other times do we feel left to ourselves, and then, too, there awake in us the sentiments of sadness, of longing, of insulation, and of the love of home. Thus with our first parents; when evening comes, the first intoxication of the satanic delusion subsides, stillness reigns within; they feel themselves isolated from the communion of God, parted from their original home, whilst the darkness, as it comes rushing in upon them, makes them feel that their inner light has gone out.” Farther on Delitzsch maintains that God appeared to man as one man appears to another, though this had not been the original mode of the divine converse with him. The theophanies had their beginning first after the fall ; and according to his explanation, “God now for the first time holds converse with men in an outward manner, corresponding to their materialization and alienated state.” On the other hand, Keil maintains, “that God held converse with the first men in a visible form, as a father and educator of his children, and that this was the original mode of the divine revelation, not coming in for the first time after the fall.” In neither can we suppose that there is taught a twofold incarnation of God, first in Paradise, and then in Christ. In like manner, too, must we regard the question here as unanswered, in what respect the theophanies (which were mediated in all cases through vision-seeing states of soul) are to be distinguished from real outward appearances in human form. Hofmann would complete the knowledge of Paradise, by taking as the appointed mode of revelation-God’s appearance to them as soaring on the cherubim. Delitzsch, moreover, informs us (after Hofmann, perhaps) that God, at this time, did not come down from heaven, since he yet dwelt upon the earth. More worthy of our confidence is the language of Keil: “Men have separated themselves from God, but God cannot and will not give them up.”—And Adam and his wife hid themselves.—Clearly an expression of guilt-consciousness, as also, an indication, at the same time, of the fall into sin, and of the decline into a state of corruption. The particular characteristics are these: consciousness of their transgression, of its effect, of their spiritual and bodily nakedness, of their separation from God—of a feeling of distrustful, selfish, and servile fear, in the presence of God, and of the loss of their spiritual purity, as originating in their guilt, together with the false notion that they can hide themselves from God. Moreover, the regular consistency which appears in this progress of sin must not be overlooked. Through this status corruptionis, the first common act of sin passes over into a second. Taken symbolically, this is the history of every individual fall into sin. “They hid themselves through modesty,” says Knobel. With all this, there is presented in the flight of the sinner from God a feeling of exculpation; yet still, again, it is attainted with self-deception, with a want of truth and humility.—Amongst the trees.—In the deepest density and darkness of the garden, which now becomes an emblem of the world, and of that worldly enjoyment in which the sinner seeks to hide himself.
8. Gen_3:9-19. Where art thou?—Knobel: “Jehovah must now call for man, who, at other times, was ever there.” Delitzsch: “It is clear, that not for his own sake does God direct this inquiring call to man, but only for man’s sake. God does in truth seek them, not because they are gone from his knowledge, but because they are lost from his communion.” It is a consequence of the very being of God as a person, if he would not violently surprise man with his omnipresence and his omniscience, that he should freely assume the form of seeking him, that is, of drawing nigh unto him gradually, in a way of mercy; since man must seek and find Him. The Good Shepherd seeks and finds the lost sheep; the sinner must seek and find God; the relation must be an ethical covenant relation. Delitzsch says farther: “This word, àַéֶּëָּä (where art thou?) echoes through the whole human world, and in each individual man.” That is, in a symbolical sense, the passage denotes every case of a sinner seeking his divine home. Delitzsch: “The heathen world feeling after God ( øçëáöᾶí , Act_17:27) is the consequence of this evening call, àַéֶּëְּä , and of the longing for home that is thereby evoked.—I heard thy voice in the garden.—Knobel: “His slight covering is sufficient as against the familiar wife, but not as against the high and far-seeing Lord of the Garden.” (!) The question may be asked, why God called to Adam, though Eve had been first in sin? Without doubt is Eve included in the more universal significance of the word Adam (man), yet still the call is directed to the individual Adam. In a certain sense, however, is this Adam, as the household lord of the wife, answerable for her step, notwithstanding that he himself is ensnared with her. The ethical arraignment for the complaint against the wife proceeds through Adam. But thus appears also here the additional indication that Adam is denoted as the first author of the hiding, as Eve was first in the sin itself. According to the mere laws of modesty (Knobel) the wife should rather have appeared in the foreground here. According to Keil, “when Adam says that he hid himself for fear, on account of his nakedness (thereby seeking to hide his sin behind its consequences, and his disobedience behind his feeling of shame), it is not a sign of special obduracy, but may easily be taken psychologically; as that, in fact, the feeling of nakedness and shame were sooner present to his consciousness than the transgression of the divine command, and that he felt the consequences of sin more than he recognized the sin itself.” Delitzsch would amend this by adding: “although all that he says is purely involuntary self-accusation.” It is to be observed that here appears the first mingling and confusion of sin and of evil, that is, that punishment of sin ordained of God, and which is the peculiar characteristic of our redemption-needing humanity.
Gen_3:11. Who told thee that thou wast naked?—Knobel: “From this behavior Jehovah recognised at once what had happened.” Hardly can any such anthropomorphism be found in the sense of the text. Keil says better: “It is for the sake of awaking this recognition of sin that God speaks.” The question, however, concerns not merely the means by which the recognition of sin may be brought out, but in a special manner the methods through which its confession may be educed. So also Delitzsch. “His explanation, however, of the interrogative îé as indicating that a personal power was the final original cause of the change that had passed upon man,” is far beyond the mark. For it is not the occasion of sin that is referred to here, but the occasion of the consciousness of nakedness. This, however, comes not from without, but from within. There lies, moreover, in the question that immediately follows: Hast thou eaten of the tree? the explanation of the meaning of the first.
Gen_3:12. And the man said, the woman whom thou gavest.—An acknowledgment of sin by Adam, but not true and sincere. The guilt proper is rolled upon the woman, and indirectly upon God himself; in which, however, there is naturally expressed a general exculpation, only God is put forward as the occasion of the calamity that has arisen. The loss of love that comes out in this interposing of the wife is, moreover, particularly denoted in this, that he grudges to call her Eva, or my wife (see this form of grudging, Gen_37:32; Job_3:20, where he says he instead of God;Luk_15:30; this thy son, Joh_9:12; where is he? namely, Jesus, etc.). “That woman by my side, she who was given to me by God as a trusty counsellor, she gave me the fruit;” in this form, again, is Eve in part excused by an imputation to God.
Gen_3:13. And the Lord God said unto the woman, what is this that thou hast done?—God follows up the transgression, even to the root—not the psychological merely, but the historical root.—The serpent beguiled me.—Although temptation is a beguiling, yet here, in the gross delusions of the serpent, and the wife’s inclination to excuse herself, the latter conception is the more obvious one.
Gen_3:14. To the serpent he said, because thou hast done this.—It is no more said here, wherefore hast thou done this? although the serpent is previously introduced as speaking, and, therefore, as capable of maintaining conversation. Therein lies the supposition, that the trial has now reached the fountain-head of sin, the purely evil purpose (the demoniacal) having no deeper ground, and requiring no further investigation. Accordingly, there follow now the fatal dooms, according to the consequences of each particular evil act. The serpent receives his sentence first: thou art cursed.—The sense of îִï (rendered in the English translation above, or comparatively) is clearly that of selection: among all cattle, or out of all cattle (Clericus, Tuch, Knobel). It does not mean, therefore, cursed, that is, abhorred, by all cattle (Gesenius, De Wette, et al.) or above all cattle, that is, comparatively more cursed (Rosenmüller et al.). The sentence pronounced upon the serpent proceeds in a threefold gradation. Its explanation brings up, of itself, the question, whether the whole sentence bears upon the serpent alone, or in connection with something else, or only in a symbolical sense. Surely the general doom, cursed be thou (singular) among all cattle, and among all beasts (corresponding with the causality: subtle among all beasts, prominently), indicates a symbolical background of the whole judgment. 1. Quidam statuunt maledictionem latam in serpentem solum (quia hic confertur cum aliis bestiis) non in diabolum, quia is antea maledictus erat. 2. Alii in diabolum solum, quia brutus serpens non poterat juste puniri. 3. Alii applicantv. 14ad serpentem, v.15in diabolum. At vero tu et te idem sunt in utroque versu. 4. Alii existimant cam in utrumque latam. Quam sententiam verissimam judico. Medusin Poli Commentar. ad h. l. The inconsistency that arises when we would understand v. 14 of the serpent only, and v. 15, on the contrary, of Satan, is very apparent. The various diversities of interpretation are a consequence of a want of clearness in respect to the fundamental exegetical law, that here an historical foreground is everywhere connected with a symbolical background. Accordingly, both the historical and the symbolical go together through all the three dooms imposed upon the serpent; it is in the third act, however (the protevangel, as it is called), that the symbolical becomes especially prominent, and casts its light over the whole passage.—First judgment doom: Upon thy belly shalt thou go; that is, as the worm steals over the earth with its length of body, “as a mean and despised crawler in the dust (Deu_32:24; Mic_7:17).” It is a fact that the serpent did not originally have this inferior mode of motion like the worm, and it is this circumstance partly, and partly the consideration that along with his speaking the serpent presented to Eve the appearance of a trusty domestic animal, that appears to have given occasion to the expression: among all cattle, as a complement to which there is added: among all the beasts of the field. And to this effect is the remark of Knobel, that “for the time before the curse, the author must have ascribed to the serpent another kind of movement, and perhaps another form. It is reckoned here with the áäîä (cattle), v. 1 with the çéú äùãä (or beasts of the field).” In respect to this, it must be noticed, that there has also been maintained the supposition of his having before gone erect (Luther, Münster, Fag. Gerhard, Osiander) and been possessed of bone (Joseph., Ant. i. 1, 4; Ephraim, Jarchi, Merc.). Delitzsch and Keil, moreover, favor the view, that the serpent’s form and manner of motion were wholly transformed (Delitzsch) or changed (Keil). Delitzsch: “As its speaking was the first demoniacal miracle, so is this transformation the first divine.” Instead of that, we hold that this exposition only works in favor of the mythical interpretation (Knobel), since it mistakes the symbolical of the expression; on which, beside, it can only touch in the phrase to “eat the earth.” According to Delitzsch, “the eating of dust does not denote the exclusive food of the serpent, but only the involuntary consequence of its winding in the dust.” So, moreover, the expression, “On thy belly shalt thou go,” cannot denote that he was deprived of bone and wing, but only the involuntary consequence of the manifestation of the serpent’s hostile attitude to men, namely, that it should now wind about timorously upon its belly, or go stealing about in the most secret manner; whereas, before this, it could, with impunity, perform its meanderings before their eyes, yea, even stand upright in some respects, and twine itself round the trees. The older exegesis had some excuse, since it did not always know how to separate the conception of a biblical miracle wrought for judgment, or deliverance, from a magical metamorphosis. The assumption, however, at the present day, of such a metamorphosis, has to answer the question, whether through it the conception of a miracle is not changed, as well as that of nature itself. That, in fact, in consequence of the fall, and of their changed attitude towards men, the forms of animals can undergo monstrous changes, and have often been thus changed, though still remaining on the basis of their generic organization, is shown in the case of dogs who run wild; but the exposition above mentioned extends itself illimitably beyond any conception of deterioration. As far as concerns the symbolical side of the first sentence, it is clear that before any wider relation (to Satan), we must hold to the specific appointment, that the tempting evil shall no longer meander about the world, bold and free, but, in correspondence with its earthly meanness, and bestial association, shall wind along the ground in the most sly, and sneaking, and secret manner, eating the dust of the earth, and feeding itself upon the coarsest elements of life, or the very mould of death. This sentence, then, in the next place, avails not only against evil in general, but the Evil One himself. And therewith is denoted, at the same time, The second doom. Knobel: “According to the older representations, serpents licked the dust, and enjoyed it as their food. (Compare Mic_7:17; Isa_65:25; Bochart:Hieroz. iii. p. 245).” Here it is supposed that Micah and Isaiah have merely taken Genesis too literally; whereas Knobel interprets: “it is compelled to swallow down the dust as it moves here and there with its mouth upon the ground.” As the serpent, the allegorical type of the temptation, is sentenced to have its mouth in the dust, so is the genius of the serpent condemned to feed on elements which are a coarse prelude, or a nauseous after-game, of life.—Third doom of the serpent; the Protevangel. The rationalistic interpretation, which is last defended by Knobel, finds here denoted only the relation between the serpent-nature and the human race. That is, Genesis here, in one of its most ethically significant passages, flattens down into a mere physical anthropological observation. It is true that the physical here forms the point of departure. “Enmity shall exist between the serpent and the woman, and between the descendants of both. Man hates the serpent as a creature in direct contrariety to himself, persecutes and destroys it.” (To this point the words of Plautus: Mercat. iv. 4, 21, aliquem odisse œque atque angues.) It is also hostile to man, and bites him when uncharmed. In Pliny: Nat. Hist. x. 96, it is called immitissimum animalium genus. Compare also Ovid, Metamorph. xii. Genesis 804: calcato immitior hydro. It appears, as matter of fact, to have been the creature of the primitive world that was the most absolutely opposed to culture, and which, proceeding from the dragons of the earlier earth-periods, found its way through the last catastrophes into the newly prepared world, or had been organically metamorphosed—like “the den-inhabiting brood of the old dragons,” which, in a worse sense than any other beast could have done it, render the earth uncomfortable, destined as it was to culture; and therefore is it devoted to destruction in the world into which it had passed over. In connection with this fact, the thought readily occurs, how very appropriate that the natural relation between the serpent-brood and the human race, destined ever, and here anew, to the kingdom of God, should become a symbol of the religious ethical conflict between the evil and the good, upon earth. In opposition to the rationalistic stands the orthodox interpretation of our passage, which refers it to Satan on the one side, and to Christ, the personal Messiah, on the other. According to most of the older interpreters, the seed of the woman denotes directly the Messiah. (See Hengstenberg: “Christology of the Old Testament,” I. p. 21.) In respect to it, however, the Romish interpreters make a very bold variation. They do this in correspondence with the translation of the Vulgate: ipsa (instead of ipse) conteret caput tuum, which is condemned, not only by the Hebrew text, and the Septuagint, but in the “Quest. Heb.” of Hieronymus, who was himself the author of the Vulgate, as also by Petrus Chrysologus and Pope Leo the Great (see Calmet’sComm. p. 120); whilst Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory the Great, and others, have ranged themselves on the side of the Vulgate. Calmet interprets: in eundem sensum (namely, the right sense of the Hebrew text) reddi potest vulgata; neque aliter B. Virgo conterere valuit serpentem quam per filium suum Jesum Christum. So also says Von Schrank in his “Commentary:” in Hebrœo quidem habetur, ille ( äåּà ) conteret caput tuum: ergo semen mulieris, i.e. Jesus Christus conteret, sed res eodem redit: nam neque sanctissima Virgo aliter quam partu suo, i.e. in virtute Jesu Christi filii sui, caput serpentis contrivisse credenda est. Both authors, indeed, gave these wrested interpretations before the latest Papistical glorification of Mary. In modern times has the interpretation which refers the seed of the woman to the personal Messiah been defended by Philippi. In the primary sense, says Delitzsch, it is only promised that humanity shall win this victory, for äåּà (he) relates back to æֶøַò àִùָׁä (seed of the woman); as, however, the seed of the serpent has its unity in Satan, so it may be fairly conjectured that the conquering party, the seed of the woman, has also a person for its unity—a conjecture which, as we readily concede to Philippi (“Treatise concerning the Protevangel in Kliefoth-Meier’s Church Periodical,” 1855, pp. 519–548), is the more obvious; since in this second sentence the pronoun äåּà has for its object not the seed of the serpent, but the serpent, and in it Satan himself. It is, however
an incorrect opinion, that äåּà has immediately, and exclusively, a personal sense, and that the organic process of the annunciation of redemption demands this. The conception of äåּà is that of a circle, and Jesus Christ, or, as the Targum says, King Messiah, is evermore in the course of the redemptive history the prominent centre of this circle. So Delitzsch says, too, that Christ is essentially meant as the centre of humanity, or as the head of humanity, especially of the redeemed, as Keil says. We miss here the distinct exposition, whether the prophecy directly applies to Christ as a conscious announcement, or only impliedly, in as far as Christ is the kernel and the star of the woman’s seed. Hengstenberg regards the place as more decidedly relating to the collective posterity of the woman (“Christology,” i. p. 22). “Truly hast thou inflicted a sore wound upon the woman (such would be the import of the words addressed to the serpent), and thou, with thy fellow-serpents, wilt continue to lie in ambush for her descendants. Nevertheless, with all thy desire to hurt, wilt thou be only able to inflict curable wounds upon the human race, whilst, on the other hand, the posterity of the woman shall at last triumph over thee, and make thee feel thine utter impotency. This interpretation is found, indeed, in the Targum of Jonathan, and in the Jerusalem Targum, which, by the seed of the woman, understand the Jews who in the days of the Messiah shall vanquish Sammael. Paul seems to proceed on this view, Rom_16:20, where the promise is collectively referred to Christ. More lately has it found an acute advocate in Calvin, and then in Herder.” As the interpretation of the whole Protevangel is specially conditioned on the choice of expressions in detail, we apply ourselves to the analysis of the passage. As it is the third and most important part of the doom, taken collectively, so does it also divide itself again into three parts, whose point of gravity may also be said to be in three divisions. 1. Enmity between thee and the woman.—In place of the false, ungodly, and man-destroying peace between the serpent and the woman, must there come in, between them, a good and salutary enmity, established by God. That the woman may have a special abhorrence of the serpent, after her experience of the deception which she charges back upon him, and that the falsehood of the serpent, which had all along before been enmity, should now be unmasked,—this is the point of departure. But, since this enmity, as occasioned by an ethical event, must be itself substantially ethical—since the serpent is denoted as permanently present in his serpent-seed—since, finally, there is mention, at the end, of one head of the same—so does the whole passage have for its aim the ethical power of temptation, which must have worked in some way through the physical serpent, notwithstanding that a being morally evil is characterized, chap. Gen_3:1, and throughout the whole process of the temptation. The woman, however, is set in opposition to the serpent, in the first place, because she has been seduced by him, but then, too, in order to set forth more prominently the ethical character of the human enmity against the serpent. We must take into view here the predominant susceptibility of the woman, which, in its curiosity, had become a special susceptibility to temptation, but which now must become a predominant susceptibility for the divine appointment of enmity between them; add to which that, in general, man becomes master of evil only through a feminine susceptibility for the assistance of God. 2. Between thy seed and her seed.—That is, the appointment of this enmity shall work on permanently through the generations that are to come; the strife shall never cease. And truly, it thus continues as a war between the serpent-seed in its one totality, and the woman’s seed in its one totality. And now here the symbolical sense presents itself much stronger; for in all the occasional conflicts between men and serpents there is no universal and generic war between both. But this indicates a working of the power of temptation as a unit against the unitary moral power of the woman’s seed in the conflict. In general, it is a contrast between the mysterious power of evil from the other world, and the human race altogether in this. Since, however, men alone can belong to the genuine seed of the woman, as it carries on the enmity of the woman against the serpent, so it is clear, that from the opposite direction it must be men that fall in with the society of the serpent’s seed (that is, the demons and their powers), or in other words, become ethically children of the power of temptation. 3. It shall bruise.—Here now the question arises: what is the meaning of that enigmatic verb ùׁåּó ? The Septuagint translates: áὐôüò óïõ ôçñÞóåé êåöáëὴí êáὶ óὺ ôçñÞóåéò áὐôïῦ ðôÝñíáí ; the Vulgate: ipsa conteret caput tuum et tu insidiaberis calcaneo ejus. The Septuagint is consistent in having the same expression ( ôçñÞóåé - ò ) in both cases, but it is the one which, in view of the Alexandrian spiritualism, is the weakest of them all. The Vulgate chooses for both members of the sentence interpretations of the same word that lie too far apart. This is evidently done in order that, on the one side, the ipsa (the she, or the Virgin in that translation) may exhibit the highest possible degree of heroism, whilst on the other side, under the protecting veneration of the monastic theology, she does not suffer the least injury to her heel. The word ùׁåּó is interpreted in various ways: 1. terere, conterere. So the Syriac, the Samaritan, and others (such as our German and English versions). So also Clericus, Tuch, Baumgarten, Rödiger; also, with special reference to Rom_16:20, Hengstenberg, Delitzsch, Keil. In any case, it would be an epexegetical translation, if we would find the expressions, to tread with the foot, and to pierce, in one common conception, lying at the ground of both. Moreover, this same word, as used Psa_139:11, and Job_9:17, cannot denote either to tread, or to pierce. Just as little, on the other side, can it mean insidiari, or inhiare, to assail or pursue in a hostile manner—as Umbreit, Gesenius, and Knobel explain the word with reference to its supposed affinity with ùׁàó . The middle conception, which suits both places here, and which commends itself as suitable to the two parallel passages, Job 9 and Psalms 139, is to lay hold of, seize, hit. Keil: “The same word is used in relation to the head and the heel, to indicate that the enmity on both sides is aimed at the destruction of the opponent—for which purpose by head and heel are expressed majus and minus, or, as Calvin says, superius and inferius. This contra - arises, indeed, out of the very nature of the foes. The serpent who crawls in the dust, if he would destroy man walking in his uprightness, can only seize him by the heel; whereas, man can crush his head. But this difference itself is already a consequence of the curse pronounced upon the serpent, and its crawling in the dust is a premonition that in the strife with man it must, at last, succumb. Be it even that the bite of the serpent in the heel is even deadly when its poison penetrates throughout the whole body (Gen_49:17), yet it is not immediately mortal, nor incurable, like the crushing of the serpent’s head. There comes also into consideration: 1. The contrast: head and heel. The life, like the poison, of the serpent, is in its head, and is destroyed with it. The heel of man is the least vulnerable, whilst it is that part of the body which is the most easily healed. 2. The conscious, adaptive aiming of the woman’s seed, the blind, brutal, and ill-directed assault of the serpent. The seed of the woman seizes the power of evil in its central life, in its principle; the seed of the serpent attacks the power of good in its most outward and assailable appearance. 3. The very moment in which the serpent bites at the heel of the man, is the one in which the latter brings down the crushing foot upon its head. It is, indeed, not without significance, that the seed of the woman is presented in the singular, and in fact, in the last decisive moment, set in opposition, not to the seed of the serpent, but to the serpent himself—as is pointed out by Hengstenberg and others. Here now must we distinguish between the prophetical and the typical elements of prophecy—as also the prophecies that are strictly verbal. The prophetic element is present in the prophet’s consciousness; the typical element is not, although it may be consciously present to the spirit of revelation that guides him. Our text appears primarily, indeed, as the immediate speech of God, the all-knowing, who sees beforehand every thing in the future; but still, the measure of consciousness in our prophecy can become determinate to us only according to the presumable degree of consciousness in the author of Genesis, or, still further, in those who actually brought down the tradition contained in chapter 3. In relation, therefore, to this human prophetical consciousness, and its germinal state of development, must we distinguish between the conscious prophecy of the word and the unconscious prophecy of the typical expression. So in Psalms 16. the conscious prophecy says, through my communion with God I shall possess immeasurable joys of life; the typical expression, however, is fulfilled in the resurrection of Christ (Acts 2). So also says the prophet, Isaiah 7 : the young prophet wife shall, 1. conceive; 2. bear a son, whose name, 3. with joyful hope they shall call Immanuel. The typical expression, however, is a prediction of Christ, the son of the virgin. In this sense, also, does Paul allow himself to interpret the singular, in thy seed, as a typical prophecy of Christ. And we doubt not, that here, too, the spirit of the type chose this expression, the seed of the woman, with an æonian consciousness of its rich significance. If we go back, however, to the conscious prophecy, so it may be safe to say, that with the humanity in general, on its light side, there is also placed its core—as it is with Judah (Gen_49:10), and Israel (Hos_11:1). In truth, the core, or heart, is ever embraced in concrete unity with the hull, but to the biblical view is this gravitation to the unity peculiar from the very beginning. On the other side, however, according to the New Testament, and the patristic unveiling of its significance, is the seed of the woman not exclusively to be referred to the individuality of Christ. Christ, as the Christ in the universal humanity, is here to be understood; especially in the second clause, at least, as also, therefore, in the third according to Paul (Rom_16:20).
There remains, finally, the question how the temptation of the first pair by the serpent is to be understood. According to Knobel there is found in our passage just as little reference to the devil as to the Messiah (p. 48). Consequently would the whole passage become a mere physical myth. Von Bohlen goes back to the kindred traditions of the ancients, and finds it of the deepest significance that in the printed Samaritan text there is ëָּçָùׁ , liar, instead of ðäù , serpent. According to one of the Indian myths, Krishna, in the form of the sun, contends with the Evil One, in the form of serpent. In like manner in Egypt, Typhon, whose name is interpreted by Serpent, persecutes his brother Osiris, or the sun. Hercules possesses himself