The Serpent in the Garden of Eden: Hero or Deceiver?

With a Subtitle: Hebrew word study reveals the truth about the serpent and the forbidden fruit

A brief Excerpt: Modern thinkers cast the serpent in Eden as the misunderstood truth-teller who freed humanity from God. But a closer look at the Hebrew word for knowledge in Genesis reveals exactly who the snake really was—and still is today.

The Author is: Zack Duncan

There’s a sense of growing sympathy towards the serpent in the Garden of Eden these days.

Here’s how the basic thinking works: God was overly restrictive in prohibiting access to the tree. The serpent came to bring knowledge to humans and free us from that repressive way of life.

There are a number of systems and traditions that hold some version of this view.

Here are some:

• Gnosticism: God in the Old Testament is the bad guy (the Demiurge) who is a either an ignorant or a malevolent lesser deity who seeks to trap human souls within matter. The serpent brings gnosis (knowledge) and the path to spiritual liberation. In certain Gnostic texts like the Apocryphon of John, the serpent is a manifestation of Sophia (Divine Wisdom).¹
• Luciferianism: The serpent is Lucifer, the “light-bringer” who represents independence and the deification of the self. Access to the tree represents the self-directed pursuit of knowledge that opposes God’s path of knowledge coming through submission and blind obedience.
• Jungian Analytical Psychology: The serpent is an archetype of the unconscious and the instinctual human drive towards the integration of the self. Eating the forbidden fruit is necessary for psychological growth.
• New Age and esotericism: The serpent is the spiritual mentor of the humans. In some applications the coiled energetic force (Kundalini) is the spirit that brings enlightenment to human consciousness.
• Postmodernism: Our postmodern age doesn’t affirm a belief system as much as it is skeptical of existing beliefs and any established meta narratives. And what’s a more monumental way to subvert the metanarrative then to swap the roles in the Garden?
• Rationalism: An atheistic view of the Biblical account views the serpent as a catalyst for independent critical thinking and a force for good.

The common thread is the serpent as the misunderstood truth teller who knows that forbidden knowledge and autonomy trumps innocence and obedience.

To some, it seems like there’s an argument to make. At least to those of us steeped in Western hyperindividualism.

The question is whether the argument is true…or if we’re being played.

Satan vs. God

The Bible paints a picture of a supernatural adversary who stands opposed to God and humanity in every way.

This adversary doesn’t tend to oppose directly. Not until he’s exposed, at least.

He prefers to work on the sly. Through deception. Picking his spots and waiting for the right moment to hurt God by going after the people God made and loves.

That’s his primary tactic: eroding trust so people will choose to reject God’s way.

• God’s way is to trust and obey even when it doesn’t make sense or seem pleasurable. To do the grueling, sometimes frightening, and always humbling work of learning to trust God above ourselves. And then to grow in the realization that God had our best in mind the whole time as we walk in freedom.
• Satan’s way rejects surrender and seeks to glorify self-will. He promises humans power, pleasure, and access. All without submission to authority. But he later enforces subjugation through the deception. Those who follow the snake slowly sink into bondage.

This is what the adversary really wanted in the Garden.

To get people to voluntarily choose something that seemed to be good, but would rob them of the freedom and flourishing. To choose to eat from the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil and opt for corruption rather than perfect communion with God.

A look at one specific word in Hebrew in this Genesis account shows us the truth: the snake is truly a snake.

A Look at the Hebrew

Here’s the key passage that reveals the lie:

16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” [Genesis 2: 16–17]

The key word here is “knowledge.” It doesn’t mean what you think it means.

In our context we tend to think of knowledge as something that is always and objectively good.

Many of us grew up wanting to get good grades. Why? So we could get into a good college and and then get more good grades. Then, we could get a good job and make money and have a nice life.

We think of gaining knowledge as the way to feed our brain so we can one day live the way we want to.

But that’s not how “knowledge” works in Hebrew. Not with the word used here.

Two Types of Knowledge

Most people agree that there is a difference between intellectual knowing and experiential knowing.

We differentiate between the two types of knowledge with an adjective. Just like in the paragraph above.

But in Hebrew there are two distinct words for intellectual vs. experiential knowledge.

The word binah gets at knowledge that exists on the intellectual level. It’s the power of the human intellect to discern and make judgements. This binah is always a good thing. Proverbs 4:7 and other Scripture exhorts readers to pursue binah.

But there is a deeper knowledge.

The kind of knowledge that transcends the intellect and is intimate, experiential, and relational.

This is the word yada, and it’s an action. Yada means knowing through experience. This is the word used in it’s noun form (da’at) in Genesis 2:9 regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

You might enjoy having binah-type knowledge about how various sicknesses work in the human body. You would definitely not enjoy having yada-type knowledge of the same.

We find another example in Exodus 7:5 when the LORD promises that Egypt will know (yada) who He is because of their experience with the plagues.²

Binah knowledge and yada knowledge are radically, completely different.

Consider again the distinction between reading about sex in a textbook and having sex.

This is why English translations of the Bible uses the verb “to know” to refer to sex. It’s not a euphemism. It’s the intimate and experiential knowledge of yada.

Now Adam knew (yada) Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain… [Genesis 4:1]

Do you want to have this type of experiential knowledge of good and evil? To be as intimately acquainted with evil as a man having sex with his wife? To have a personal relationship with evil?

God did not create humans for this. Before eating from the tree, Adam and Eve had experiential knowledge only of good.

God was not restricting us. He was protecting us.

The Serpent Revealed

The snaky counter narrative to the Bible has God saying the following in the Garden:

• Humans! I demand you obey my capricious rule designed only to keep you in ignorance. I want you to be dumb so you have to listen to me. I’ll never tell you why, either. So there!

Knowing the Hebrew word tells us what God was really saying:

• My dear children, I have made this good world for you as my imagers.³ You are free to go anywhere and do anything as long as you remain in trusting relationship with me. I am your Good Father and I want you to choose what is good as you grow. I made you for good. Trust me and remain in that trust and you will learn through obedience. I won’t abandon you if you choose not to trust me, but not trusting the One who desires the best for you will make life much harder for you.

Humans, with the serpents help, chose the hard way.

We walked away from perfect relationship with the Creator and chose the path of suffering and hardship apart from a holy and loving God.

This is exactly what the serpent wanted.

And now this same serpent continues the deception by casting himself as the good guy.

Wrapping Up

The lie of the “helpful” serpent rests in part on the myth that an increase of knowledge is always good.

But even though this myth might feel true, we know it’s a lie.

• Thanks to nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons we have deep knowledge about how to kill each other efficiently.
• Because ofgain-of-function research humans know how to modify deadly pathogens to make them more deadly, ramping up risks related to lab leaks or deliberate misuse.
• We know more than ever about human cognitive biases which has contributed to advanced behavioral manipulation techniques and a growing decline in trust.

These things don’t simply exist as discrete packets of information in our brain. We experience the weight of this unfiltered knowledge.

Without trust in a divine Creator, knowledge can either help or harm. We need God as our ethical anchor to guide us towards the good. Otherwise, the pursuit of knowledge can be a path to our own undoing.

So we can see what type of “heroic” mission that serpent truly had. Just about as heroic as offering arsenic to a helpless baby.

But there’s good news.

Wrapping Up

God still cared for Adam and Eve after they ate from the tree.

He made them clothes from animal skins to hide their new shame of nakedness. And He promised that one day, the seed of the woman would crush the head of that snaky serpent.

We know the snake crusher has come. His name is Jesus. The only One who was perfectly obedient in all things.

Because of Him, we have access back to the Garden. We can live in His Kingdom of hope and peace and righteousness.

We once again have a choice to make. Will we take the opportunity to turn to trust in the God who showed His love for us by coming to earth and dying for us?

Or remain in rebellious bondage to the snake?

God’s way or satan’s way?

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This article is part of a series on satan. The bad guy.

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Sources and references

1: What is the serpent’s place in Gnosticism? https://www.reddit.com/r/Gnostic/comments/s2s28r/what_is_the_serpents_place_in_gnosticism/

2: Exodus 7:5

And the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it.” [Exodus 7:5]

3: Tselem: Being IMAGE bearers: https://hebrewwordlessons.com/2019/03/24/tselem-being-image-bearers/

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