THREE CURSES

Part One

By A. Prentice

Scripture references are to the New International Version, UK (1984 edition).

THE WORST DAY in history is recorded in the third chapter of the Book of Genesis. For on that day all mankind was murdered. There were three perpetrators in the crime: Satan, Eve, Adam. Each was uniquely guilty and each was uniquely cursed.

We’ll examine each in turn, drawing principally on biblical texts, with some reasonable supposition thrown in. A few prefatory remarks: whenever the subject of Genesis, Adam and Eve, and so on, is brought up, it invariably draws titters from the gallery. The song by Gershwin, ‘They all laughed’ . . . at Christopher Columbus, etc., might well be applied to this subject they all laughed at Genesis and Adam. There’s more sceptical merriment aroused among non-believers (and some Christians) on this topic than there is on the notion that Man is the culmination of a series of fortunate accidents over a vast period of time, an article of secular faith which has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. Whether the believer will have the last laugh remains to be seen.

We’ve said before, that once you discount the testimony of Genesis, you may as well discount the whole Bible, for the strength of the Gospel message at the heart of biblical teaching rests on the premise that God is the Creator. On this stands the superstructure of faith. It’s the only way to understand human history. In short, were there no fall from grace in Eden, there is no rational explanation for the Gospel.

The First Cursed: Satan

14. So the LORD God said to the serpent . . . ‘Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 15. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.’

The ‘serpent’ probably is the snake, and stands in for Satan. As Lucifer, he was awarded the guardianship of Adam and Eve. For consistency, we will use Satan.

Ambitious and lusting for greater power and glory, Satan madea bid to take over the nascent empire of Eden. Exploiting whatever loopholes existed in the structure of command and control, he used his honourable position to undermine the bond of trust between Eve and Adam, then between them and their Maker. Communicating in some way or other through the snake, he tackles Eve first. Perhaps he regarded her as the more malleable of the two, since much of her information about God and the general arrangements, she probably got second-hand, through her husband.

Feigning ignorance, and taking the indirect approach, Satan first elicits Eve’s own understanding of the prohibition. Then he discredits God’s integrity and injunction. The exchange is recorded in Genesis 3: 1, 2:

[The serpent] said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, “You must not eat fruit from any tree in the garden”?’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, “You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.”

Putting this into modern parlance, the conversation perhaps went like this:

Satan: ‘Rumour has it that you’ve been told you can’t eat any of the fruit in the garden. Surely that can’t be true?’

Eve: ‘No, not at all. We are allowed to eat any fruit we like – just not from that special tree over there. God told us that if we do, we’ll die.’

Satan: ‘Poppycock! You won’t die. He just wants to keep you under his thumb. He’s afraid that once you eat from it, you’ll become enlightened – you’ll know everything, just like him.’

Eve, like Adam, was perfect but did not know everything. Evidently she was driven by native curiosity, a trait built into human nature. The mandate given by God to the couple to reproduce and prosper, no doubt implied that they would augment their store of knowledge the longer they lived. So Satan’s ‘hook’, that she’d get new and exciting information from eating the fruit, may have had strong appeal for her. And the notion that God was concealing information from her well, it just wouldn’t do.

This malicious and rebellious action by Satan suggests motive and a plan of action. It’s hard to imagine that he would make a move like this without some reasonable expectation of success. Unless you are recklessly mad, you do not blithely attempt to wrest power from the one in charge in this case, the Almighty without anticipating a stiff reaction. A bid for power involves motive the spur for the action; strategy a plan; and tactics the methods employed to ensure success.

Satan’s motive is explained in Isaiah 14: 13, 14, under the figure of the King of Babylon:

13. You said in your heart, “I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars [angels] of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain.

14. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”

That Satan could even contemplate such a usurpation gives us a glimpse into the administration of heaven. It intimates that the angelic orders possess free will and operate with a wide freedom of action. Apparently, Satan took advantage of the cover provided by this arrangement. But why he thought he could get away with it is not made clear. Perhaps he did not anticipate the means by which God would inflict the punishment on him and on the human pair. Regardless, once Satan had struck his blow, he pressed on, as wilfully stubborn persons usually do. By this point, he had apparently hardened his heart against repentance. John Milton puts these words into Satan’s mouth in his poem, Paradise Lost (Book 1, lines 261-263):

Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice,

To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:

Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

Or, ABG – Anyone But God. In this figure, Satan advances his course of action. He will finish what he started, regardless of the outcome. He would take advantage of whatever opportunities might come along, advancing his own interests where he could, and damaging God’s cause as much as possible. At least he wasn’t dead, and as long as he lived, it was full steam ahead.

For his role in precipitating man’s defection, thus triggering God’s sentence of death on the human race, Satan is characterised by Jesus as a killer (manslayer; John 8: 44). For his high treason, Satan was stripped of his office and humiliated. Whereas before he was higher than Man as Man was lower than the angels now he would be counted as less than the brute creation, metaphorically grovelling on his belly. The thoughts and ambitions of Satan have, in turn, brought humanity low to the ground, far removed from the glories of its original creation.

And so Satan and humankind Deceiver and deceived were by the apostasy in Eden locked together in a perpetual cycle of sin and death, each in defiance of the holiness and will of God. Such an epic struggle must culminate in victory for one side or the other. The Scriptures make clear how it will all end.

To be continued

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