A Snake or a Serpent? (Gen 3:1)

Into and Out of the Garden

¹ “Besides, God said you could not eat from any tree in the Garden.”

 אַ֚ף כִּֽי־אָמַ֣ר אֱלֹהִ֔ים לֹ֣א תֹֽאכְל֔וּ מִכֹּ֖ל עֵ֥ץ הַגָּֽן׃

Hang on — “besides”?

Yes!

As we noticed last time, though there is no real break in the text, the scene has abruptly shifted. We now see that this new scene — “originally independent,” according to Claus Westermann — has been joined “already in progress,” as they used to say on TV. We can only imagine what brought this snake and the woman together and why they are conversing.

Most translations (Speiser in the Anchor Bible, followed by Robert Alter, is the exception) have something along the lines of the NJPS: “Did God really say: You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?” If I am not mistaken, NJPS here is following the Aramaic translation, which includes the word בְקוּשטָא b’qushta ‘in truth’. (It also means “in Constantinople,” but we are not going to follow that lead. Anyway, it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople.)

David Kimhi responds to “Did God really say” by observing, “ ‘Really’ makes clear that there was a whole conversation, of which this is just the end.” The Hebrew word that prompted the Targum’s “in truth” is אף af, which “really” means something more like “also, even, besides.” The combination אף כי af ki, which is “really” what we need to be translating here, usually means something like “how much more so.”

“Or,” says HALOT,

אַף‎ elliptically introduces a question, the contents of which are preceded by ‏כִּי‎:

‏אַף כִּי אָמַר‎ did God really say?

But they give no other example of this syntax — because there isn’t another. Somehow, then, we are picking up this conversation after it has already started.

The problem with using “even” here shows up in Speiser’s translation:

Said he to the woman, “Even though God told you not to eat of any tree in the garden …” ² The woman interrupted the serpent.

Alter does not translate “the woman said” with “interrupted,” as Speiser does, but he shows the interruption with an em-dash. Perhaps I am too influenced by the traditional translation, but I don’t hear an interruption in the Hebrew here. In any case, this translation doesn’t solve the problem of the “interruption” before the beginning of this episode, which is preceded (perhaps) by an explanation of why we are seeing a talking snake, but not by an opening that makes sense of what we see when the scene abruptly starts, in medias res (as they say over in the Classics department).

Here is Speiser’s explanation:

Even though. The interrogative sense which is generally assumed for Heb. ʾap kı̄ in this single passage would be without parallel; some critics emend accordingly to haʾap kı̄. But the corresponding gam kı̄ is used for “although,” cf. Ps 23:4, and the meaning suits the context admirably. The serpent is not asking a question; he is deliberately distorting a fact.

You see what’s missing (even granting that a snake can talk) when we begin to read this story:

• How did these two characters fall into conversation?

• How does either of them know that the earthling was prohibited (in 2:17, before either of them was created!) to eat from the Tree of Sorting?

• Why does the snake care about this?

Some of you may well be thinking: It’s not a snake, you fool, it’s [gasp] the Devil! Jon Levenson, in the Jewish Study Bible, replies: