Is the Snake Cursed?

Into and Out of the Garden

As we saw last time, YHWH did not ask the snake any questions, as he had asked first the original earthling (ha-adam) and then the woman (ha-isha). He just announced, “Because you did this, you are cursed, more than any livestock animal or any field animal.” We also observed that the language here is extremely reminiscent of v. 1, where the narrator of our story told us, “The snake was shrewd, more than any field animal that YHWH God had made.” It’s especially obvious because “cursed” is arur and “shrewd” is arum.

Our humans friends too, remember, were also arummim, and it’s not entirely clear from our story so far who was shrewder and who was nuder. Spoiler alert: The earthling is also going to be arur (in v. 17; more precisely, he will be responsible for the earth’s being arur). So let’s devote today’s post to seeing whether we can’t get a better idea of what YHWH meant when he told the snake he was cursed.

You’ll remember from last time that Ephraim Speiser in his Anchor Bible commentary preferred to translate arur as “banned.” I disagreed with that translation for the simple reason that no obvious consequences seemed to follow. It’s not as if all the animals get together every so often to consult about the world situation (or simply to party) and the snake no longer is allowed to participate.

Eugene Combs, in a 2009 article, makes what I consider an even more startling suggestion:

YHWH Elohim does not explicitly curse the serpent. The verb (curse), in the form of a Qal passive participle, serves as a noun which denotes a condition brought about by an external agent, which in this case is not stated or which is at the very least ambiguous. The text, strictly speaking, does not support an interpretation which asserts that YHWH Elohim has cursed the serpent; the text rather suggests that YHWH Elohim observes that the serpent is in a condition of cursedness by virtue of its action.

The word ארור is certainly a Qal passive participle. (If you’re ready to up your Biblical Hebrew grammar game, see Lesson 17 of my Hebrew course, and remember that you can watch Lesson 1 for free here.)  But an announcement that the snake “is cursed” certainly does not rule out the possibility, indeed, the likelihood, that YHWH is actively cursing the snake. When the commissioner tells a player, “You are suspended for the next five games,” he is not just making an observation. He is the one doing the suspending.

The more power you have, the less you have to assert it. When I yell at the manager from the stands, “You’re fired!” I’m doing no more than expressing a hope (or at least my opinion). When the manager’s boss tells him, “You’re fired!” it’s the same passive participle, but he really is fired. It’s an announcement of action having been taken.

Remember also that “you are cursed” was introduced with the words “because you did this.” As we saw when YHWH asked the woman “What have you done?!” in v. 13, that question is never asked in the Bible just to get information. It’s always an accusation. “Because you did this” is similarly not merely introducing an automatic consequence. The speaker is angry and is taking action.

What action is he taking, though? Specifically, he must be arranging for the snake to live under certain new conditions, announced in the rest of this verse and the next one:

• walk on belly

• eat dirt

• experience enmity between snake and woman, now and forever

I’m reserving the right to translate all this differently when we go on to discuss each individual phrase, starting next time. Nonetheless, the details are reasonably obvious. I still need to ask, what makes all this a curse?

Nothing about any of these, by the way, supports either the notion that the snake is somehow “banned” from other animals — the woman is not an animal, not any longer — or that these things have somehow happened automatically because of what the snake did. If they had, we might imagine the woman would already have been angry enough at the snake to try to kill it (and vice versa).

The “obvious” meaning of cursing is, however, not quite as obvious here as we might wish it were. These things, I suppose, are bad, though walking on one’s belly, which seems weird and uncomfortable to us, is most likely as natural to a snake as being cold-blooded. But a Bible reader can’t help but hear the word ארור ‘cursed’ together with its echo, ברוך barukh ‘blessed’:

Blessed shall you be in the city and blessed shall you be in the country …

Blessed shall you be in your comings and blessed shall you be in your goings.

 [Deut 28:3, 6]

is followed as night follows day by

Cursed shall you be in the city and cursed shall you be in the country …

Cursed shall you be in your comings and cursed shall you be in your goings. [Deut 28:16, 19]

Cursing and blessing are opposite sides of a coin:

• I shall bless those who bless you, and anyone who curses you I will curse [Gen 12:3]

• Those who bless you are blessed; those who curse you are cursed [Num 24:9; for more on the likeness between these two verses click here]

Blessing and cursing are two sides of a coin. One offers abundance, the other dearth. That does seem to be the implication when the earth is cursed in v. 17, and eating dirt is also no walk in the park. The more general implication is simply that when you do something YHWH doesn’t like you can expect bad things to happen to you.

Notice that I didn’t say “when you do wrong.” The word רע ra ‘evil’ has appeared three times in our story so far, but only in the expression “knowing good and evil” (2:9.17 and 3:5) — the first two of them in the name of that tree that I call the Tree of Sorting. I’ve said before, I am saying now, and I will say again: This is not a story about sin, let alone Original Sin.

It’s a story about how our world got to be the way it is today. We’ll see a small part of what that implies next time.