Read Genesis 3
The crafty serpent
In the beginning of this chapter, the serpent is described as crafty. In fact, the serpent is described as more crafty than any of the wild animals God created. I initially had a rather positive connotation about the word crafty. But the Oxford dictionary seems to disagree with me on that point. It has two descriptions for the word. "Clever at achieving one’s aims by indirect or deceitful methods" and "Involving or relating to the making of objects by hand". I am rather sure it wasn't the latter. Knowing this we can assert that when the snake started talking to the woman (later called Eve), it had alternative motives.
Blame the woman
Just like Adam will do when confronted by God, we also point the finger at Eve when we are looking for someone to blame. But when I was reading this chapter I noticed the verse were Eve gives some of the fruit of the tree of good and evil to Adam. Notice that they ate of the fruit together for if Eve had eaten the fruit first, wouldn't she have noticed she was naked? Wouldn't she have hid from Adam? If Adam was innocent, God wouldn't have punished him.
The blame game
When God comes walking in the garden, Adam and Eve hid. Because they ate of the fruit of the tree of good and evil they realized that they were naked. They felt ashamed and didn't wanted to be seen by God.
When God asked Adam what had happened, the blame game starts. First Adam and then Eve, passes on the blame to the next one. But that doesn't work. The serpent, Eve and Adam, all get punished by God. It is also in this moment that the woman gets here name: "Eve", because she would become the mother of all the living.
On top of their punishments they also had to leave the garden of Eden. Because of what happened , God didn't want them to be able to live forever anymore. Because of the newly gained knowledge of good and bad they had become "like one of us". Therefore, God didn't want them to be immortal anymore, which was only made possible by the tree of life.
Back to the serpent
While I initially didn't went into detail of the punishments, since you can read that for yourself by clicking on "Read Genesis 3", I did want to share some thoughts on the serpent. When I read verse 14 somewhere in the middle: "you will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life", I can't help but wonder how a serpent looked before that moment.
Maybe the serpents had wings, maybe legs? Maybe they could move like they currently do but keep their heads upward, like how a cobra holds its head when defending its position? We don't know what it originally looked like, but it is always nice to think about it and try to challenge and test the images we have of something based on scripture.
First link to Jesus ?
Richard and Catherine Clark Kroeger came to the conclusion that when Jesus, a woman's child, died on the cross, and therefore defeating Satan, the prophecy spoken here was fulfilled: "through the defeat of Satan on the cross by Jesus Christ, the woman's Child (Jesus) would crush the serpent's head, but the serpent would only bruise the heel of her Child"