Genesis - Parashath Bereshith - Third aliyah.

THIRD ALIYAH: THE SERPENT AND THE FALL. [2:20 - 3:21] When woman is created as a separate entity, man exclaims, [2:23] “This one shall be called woman, for from man she was taken.” Notice that he does not address her directly. Who’s he talking to? His words – the first recorded human speech in the Bible – are spoken in the third person, and there isn’t even a third person in the world yet! [2:24] “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife” – here is a moral imperative, a commandment, explicitly linked to the Garden of Eden. Up until now, the text has been declarative and expository: this happened, and then that happened. Here for the first time the text says: you shall do this. The message is that our instinct to seek union and wholeness cannot be fulfilled by staying in our parents’ home. The way home is forward. [3:1 - 5] The first recorded conversation in the Bible neither involves nor concerns a man, and therefore almost passes the Alison Bechdel test. Why did Eve speak to the serpent? Maybe because it spoke to her. Why does the serpent tempt Eve? Because it can. People sometimes ask why the serpent, specifically, had a motivation to cause man’s fall. But I think this is the wrong question. What the text actually tells us, the very first thing it tells us about the serpent, is this: [3:1] “The serpent was the most cunning of all the beasts of the field.” This answers the question, Why could the serpent, specifically, cause man’s fall? Nowhere does the text ask why the serpent wanted to, because we’ve already been told that – in 1:28, where man was given dominion over all the other creatures. What the text tells us is that the serpent was unique in its capabilities; it does not say that the serpent was unique in its motives. I think the serpent’s motive was shared among all the animals: resentment towards man for man’s having been given dominion over all other life forms. All the animals had the motive, but only the serpent had the method; all had the intent, but the serpent alone had the capability. This, then, is the first instance of envy and jealousy in the Bible, even before the well-known brothers whom we’ll meet in the next chapter. And it is also of the same theme: rather than wanting to better itself and improve its own standing, the serpent wants to bring the other guy down. This is the nature of envy and it’s an all too common human weakness. Venturing just a little bit into symbol, we might take the snake – and, in my reading, the putative rebelliousness of the animal kingdom generally – as a metaphor for how our lower nature, our animal instincts, will often use rationalization to get us to do things we know we shouldn’t do. [3:20] “He named her Life [חַוָּ֑ה |chava]” – as Steinsaltz drily observes, he could have called her a lot of things at that moment. But he didn’t. He named her Life. “- because she was the mother of all life.” I think the verb here [הָֽיְתָ֖ה |hayetah] really wants to be translated as “had become” – “she had become the mother of all life.” So, what is really going on here? I think she must have been already pregnant, and perhaps she told the man her wonderful secret right then and there. And now, suddenldy, the fruit, the fall, the curse – none of that matters now, because they are about to bring a new human life into the world. [597]