over the beasts, and not to take their own law from them. Moreover, the fact that an evil spirit was approaching them in the serpent, could hardly be concealed from them. Its speaking alone must have suggested that; for Adam had already become acquainted with the nature of the beasts, and had not found one among them resembling himself - not one, therefore, endowed with reason and speech. The substance of the address, too, was enough to prove that it was no good spirit which spake through the serpent, but one at enmity with God. Hence, when they paid attention to what he said, they were altogether without excuse.
verses 1-5
“ The serpent was more subtle than all the beasts of the field, which Jehovah God had made.” - The serpent is here described not only as a beast, but also as a creature of God; it must therefore have been good, like everything else that He had made. Subtilty was a natural characteristic of the serpent (Mat 10:16), which led the evil one to select it as his instrument. Nevertheless the predicate ערוּם is not used here in the good sense of φρόνιμος (lxx), prudens, but in the bad sense of πανοῦργος, callidus. For its subtilty was manifested as the craft of a tempter to evil, in the simple fact that it was to the weaker woman that it turned; and cunning was also displayed in what it said: “ Hath God indeed said, Ye shall not eat of all the trees of the garden?” כּי אף is an interrogative expressing surprise (as in 1Sa 23:3; 2Sa 4:11): “Is it really the fact that God has prohibited you from eating of all the trees of the garden?” The Hebrew may, indeed, bear the meaning, “hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree?” but from the context, and especially the conjunction, it is obvious that the meaning is, “ye shall not eat of any tree.” The serpent calls God by the name of Elohim alone, and the woman does the same. In this more general and indefinite name the personality of the living God is obscured. To attain his end, the tempter felt it necessary to change the living personal God into a merely general numen divinium, and to exaggerate the prohibition, in the hope of exciting in the woman's mind partly distrust of God Himself, and partly a doubt as to the truth of His word. And his words were listened to. Instead of turning away, the woman replied, “ We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said,
