Shabbos Parashas Bereishis - 5776

Shabbos Parashas Bereishis - 5776

Rabbi Hal Miller

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field that Hashem G-d had

made. He said to the woman, "Did, perhaps, G-d say: 'You shall not eat of any tree

in the garden'?" [Bereishis 3:1]

Who was this serpent? Was it a human-like creature? Apparently it could speak, it

could reason and argue, and according to no less than Rashi, it saw Adam and

Chava engaged in marital relations and wanted to kill Adam to take Chava for itself.

Our verse gives us a first hint, in the words "more cunning than any beast of the field",

but that isn't particularly clear. Rashi says this only shows the validity of our cliche, "the

greater they are, the harder they fall." The Torah principle of "middah k'neged middah",

loosely translated as the punishment fits the crime, also applies here. Rashi points us

at verse 3:14, "more cursed than all", as his proof. Abarbanel then asks, based on the

fact that the serpent outfoxed both Adam and Chava too, why did our verse not say

"more cunning than any other creature", rather than limiting it to beasts of the field? This

part of our verse seems to describe an aspect of the serpent, but not tell us who it is.

The Talelei Oros brings the Chidushei HaRim, who translates our verse as, "So what if

the L-rd said that you shall not eat from any tree in the Garden?" He explains that this is

the way people attack Torah observance, not from logical arguments, which would always

fail, but from an antagonistic "so what" approach. He seems to be implying that the serpent

is all anti-semites and apostate Jews. This makes sense, but we cannot ignore the plain

meaning of the text, so this is not our complete answer either.

Radak and others note that, unlike the case of Bilaam's donkey, there is no indication in

our verse that "G-d opened the mouth" of the creature involved. Abarbanel explains that

this is because G-d does not do a miracle for bad purposes, such as the serpent's evil.

Many say that this conversation was actually between Chava and an angel, specifically

Samael, the most powerful of the angels, also called the Satan. They explain that the

Satan was upset with the creation of man as the highest being under G-d, so was

working here behind the scenes for man's destruction.

Thus far, everyone seems to be saying that the serpent was a creature that represented

the Satan in doing evil to mankind.

Sforno says this conversation between the serpent and Chava is imaginary. He compares

the evil inclination to a serpent. He writes, "Pirkei d'Rabi Eliezer already enlarged on this by

describing Samael as riding the serpent, meaning taking advantage of this power of

imagination. The insidious nature of the evil urge consists of the fact that it conjures up in

our imagination something desirable, which because of its desirability we rationalize into

considering as harmless, harboring no physical or spiritual danger for us."

A few verses after ours [3:6], we see that Chava thought the tree "was a delight to the

eyes". Rashi says that the words of the serpent "appealed to her, and she believed him."

Abarbanel disagrees, and asks why Chava would believe the words of the serpent and

not the words of G-d. He follows the line of Sforno, that Chava's conversation was all in

her mind. There are those who say that Chava made up the conversation to back her

position that she and Adam were in control of the world, but Abarbanel disagrees with

them as well. His opinion: "The serpent never spoke to the woman, nor the woman to him

because it was not like a man that speaks either by way of nature or miracle." Chava saw

the serpent go up into the tree and eat the fruit, yet it did not die, so she believed it would

not kill her as well.

Our verse shows that Chava was wrong to come to such a conclusion, to apply human

logic to overrule Divine commandment. If we "test" the Torah, and judge it and G-d's

word according to our human-level understanding, we are bound to fail in our analysis.