 By James H. Cagle |
“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, Yea hath God said, Ye shall not eat of the tree of the garden?” (Genesis 3: 1 KJV).
There are serpents that are beasts, known as reptiles, that crawl on the ground. Some are poisonous, and can destroy man, and some are not. There are serpents among the angels of which Satan is the leader. There are also serpents among men that Satan manipulates and uses, that can destroy men, if they listen to their lies.
The first serpent mentioned in the Bible is the one Satan uses, and by perverting the truth about God and His Word, seduces Eve, who in turn gets Adam to disobey God. This is why Satan is called a murderer and a liar. All his actions were premeditated. He’s a murderer because through his work, Adam sinned and died spiritually, severing his union with God, resulting in death being imputed to all his descendants. Satan is the father of lies because he told the first lie, and the first lie he told, was told about God (Gen. 3: 1).
Whatever the serpent was like originally, was transformed after The Fall as God cursed it into a creature that crawled in the dust, becoming the snake in the grass we know (Gen. 3: 14).
The next serpent mentioned is the one that appeared when Moses threw his rod on the ground, which was used to convince the Jews that Moses was sent by God. Aaron’s rod also became a serpent before Pharaoh and his magicians, whose rods also became serpents, which Aaron’s serpent swallowed up (Ex. 4: 1-5; 7: 9-12).
The next serpent was the brass serpent made by Moses and put on a pole, as God commanded, so that every one of the sinful Israelites bitten by serpents, when they looked upon it, would not die but live (Num. 21: 5-9). Jesus referred to this work of redemption as a picture of His work of redemption for the whole world (Jn. 3: 14). This brass serpent that Moses made was worshiped as a god 700 years later by the Israelites. King Hezekiah broke it into pieces because he said it was “Hehushtan” or just a piece of brass (2 Kings 18: 5).
Often men are referred to as serpents because they have traits or characteristics of a serpent. Serpents are beautiful creatures, but they cannot move forward without crooking themselves, and their poison is in their mouth. Even so, there are men, sometimes religious men, that advance through deceit or by crooking themselves, whose poison is in their mouth. We might think that because someone is beautiful or handsome that they can’t be evil. Satan is the most beautiful creature God made, but he is a devil at heart. John the Baptist called the religious leaders of his day “vipers” (Mt. 3: 7), which is a poisonous snake, and so did Jesus (Mt. 12: 34, 23: 33).
Satan is referred to as a serpent (Rev. 12: 9, 14, 15; 20: 2) because of his crooked ways and his lies that he tells to make man’s way crooked. Satan, the serpent, is finally judged by Jesus Christ and is punished along with all who followed him in the lake of fire for all eternity (Rev. 20: 10-15).
In the millennial reign of Christ, the serpent will still be a reptile that slithers along in the dust, but it will no longer be poisonous (Is. 65: 25).
