A Shrewd Snake (Gen 3:1)

Into and Out of the Garden

^3:1 The snake was shrewd, more than any field animal that YHWH God had made.

 וְהַנָּחָשׁ֙ הָיָ֣ה עָר֔וּם מִכֹּל֙ חַיַּ֣ת הַשָּׂדֶ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר עָשָׂ֖ה יְ׳הוָ֣ה אֱלֹהִ֑ים

As we mentioned last time, the fact that this verse begins a new chapter is an artifact of Christian interpretation. “The” Bible — by which I mean, as I’ve explained, the standard Hebrew Bible — makes no break here.

In fact, there is a very clear indication that the writer did not want us to stop at the end of the previous verse and set the story aside for another day. If we did so, we might well not notice that the humans were nude (ערומים / arummim) and the snake was shrewd (ערום / arum).

I’m not claiming that’s a great translation, merely that I have found something that links the two words, which are much closer than most translations tell you:

• NJPS: naked / shrewdest

• KJV: naked / subtil

• NRSV: naked / crafty

• NETS: naked (γυμνοί) / sagacious (φρονιμώτατος)

• Robert Alter: naked / cunning

• Targum: naked (עַרטִלָאִין) / wiser (עַרִים)

Okay, Onkelos’ Aramaic translation (“the” Targum) at least tried to get a similar sound.

The strange thing is that these two words, though they sound the same, are completely unrelated. Since “nakedness” is ערוה erva, the מ m of arom ‘nude’ does not seem as if it should be one of the root letters. Indeed, if you look this adjective up in a biblical dictionary, you will find it under the roots עור or ערה. [Note for grammar fans: Per GKC 85t, somewhat unconvincingly, this is an “afformative” ם.)

Nonetheless, this word is not made up for the purposes of this beautiful transition. You will find it, complete with that m sound, throughout the Bible — 15 times, everywhere from First Samuel to Trito-Isaiah (for those who believe in him). As far as I’m aware, English doesn’t have a word that means both “naked” and “clever,” so I have tried to mimic the Bible here with a rhyme.

Let me remind you further that when this text was written, even fewer people than now would have been thinking in philological terms. They would simply have been hearing the sounds or reading the consonants (remember, the vowel signs are a Common Era, that is, modern, invention) and seen that both the snake and the humans were being called ערום.

We assume that the text is calling the humans “nude” because the very next thing it says is that “they were not embarrassed.” Most of us would be a little embarrassed if we were nude in public with a member of the desirable sex. (Yes — spoiler — in this story it is going to be Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.)

On the other hand, the snake is presumably also naked, as snakes still are to this day, apparently also without embarrassment, though who knows what a snake is really thinking? Since we expect snakes not to be wearing any clothes, and the next thing we’re told about this one is that he starts chatting with the woman, we assume that the word is telling us that he is intelligent. He would therefore be both nude and shrewd.

So perhaps we are intended to wonder at this point whether the humans, too, are shrewd as well as nude. We would be right to wonder!

The root ערם is used in two quite different ways in the Bible.

In Proverbs (eight of its 11 biblical occurrences), the adjective ערום seems to refer to one who is wise; in Job (two others), it seems to mean “sneaky.” Which version applies to our snake?

There’s a noun form from this root as well, ערמה orma. It too occurs three times in Proverbs, and clearly in a very positive way. One of the three occurrences is in Prov 1:4, declaring that part of the purpose of that book is “to teach orma to simpletons,” just as it is “to teach da’at [knowledge/knowing] to youths.” Yet in Josh 9:4 orma describes the sneaky plan of the Gibeonites to deceive the conquering Israelites into letting them live, and in Exod 21:14 it describes the act of first-degree murder.

Are we being told something complimentary about this snake, and by extension about the earthlings? Or is there a negative vibe to the way the word is used here?

Konrad Schmid, in his article “The Ambivalence of Human Wisdom: Genesis 2–3 as a Sapiential Text,” writes this: