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Genesis

About this book

Disobedience and Expulsion from the Garden

Chapter 3

1 Now the serpent was shrewder than any of the wild animals⁠ that the Lord God had made.⁠ He said to the woman,⁠ “Is it really true that God said, ‘You must not eat from any tree of the orchard’?”⁠ 2 The woman said to the serpent,⁠ “We may eat of the fruit from the trees of the orchard;⁠ 3 but concerning the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the orchard God said, ‘You must not eat from it, and you must not touch it, or else you will die.’”⁠ 4 The serpent said to the woman, “Surely you will not die,⁠ 5 for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will open and you will be like God,⁠ knowing good and evil.”⁠ 6 When the woman saw that the tree produced fruit that was good for food, was attractive to the eye,⁠ and was desirable for making one wise,⁠ she took some of its fruit and ate it.⁠ She also gave some of it to her husband who was with her,⁠ and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them opened, and they knew they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.⁠ 8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God moving about in the orchard at the breezy time of the day,⁠ and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the orchard. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”⁠ 10 The man replied, “I heard you moving about in the orchard, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.”⁠ 11 And the Lord God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave me, she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.”⁠ 13 So the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman replied, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.”⁠ 14 The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the cattle and all the living creatures of the field!⁠ On your belly you will crawl⁠ and dust you will eat all the days of your life.⁠ 15 And I will put hostility between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”⁠ 16 To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your labor pains;⁠ with pain you will give birth to children.⁠ You will want to control your husband, but he will dominate you.”⁠ 17 But to Adam he said, “Because you obeyed the voice of52 your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you,⁠ ‘You must not eat from it,’ the ground is cursed because of you;⁠ in painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.⁠ 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, but you will eat the grass of the field.⁠ 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you will return.”⁠ 20 The man named his wife Eve,⁠ because she was the mother of all the living. 21 The Lord God made garments from skin⁠ for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.⁠ 22 And the Lord God said, “Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil,⁠ he must not be allowed to stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”⁠ 23 So the Lord God expelled him from the orchard in Eden⁠ to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken. 24 When he drove the man out, he placed on the eastern side of the orchard in Eden angelic sentries who used the flame of a whirling sword⁠ to guard the way to the tree of life.⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare Pyramid Texts Spell 204 and Genesis 3:14

Ancient Near East, Egyptian · Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Genesis 3 curses the serpent to crawl on its belly and promises its head will be struck. The Egyptian Pyramid Texts contain spells using similar language, commanding snakes to fall down, crawl away, and be trampled underfoot by the gods.

Passages

Pyramid Texts Spell 204

Ancient Near East, Egyptian · Egyptian Funerary Spells
Cobra, to the sky! Horus’s centipede, to the earth! Horus’s sandal is treading on the enclosure’s lord, the cavern’s bull. Shunned snake, I cannot be shunned: Unis’s sycamore is his sycamore, Unis’s environs are his environs. Anyone Unis finds in his way he will devour.
2350 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Pyramid Texts

Genesis 3:14

Hebrew Bible
14 The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the cattle and all the living creatures of the field! On your belly you will crawl and dust you will eat all the days of your life. 15 And I will put hostility between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” 16 To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your labor pains; with pain you will give birth to children. You will want to control your husband, but he will dominate you.”
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Genesis

References

“... The Egyptian Pyramid Texts were designed to aid the pharaohs of the Old Kingdom (end of the third millennium) on their journey to the afterlife. Among the over 700 utterances are several dozen spells and curses on snakes that may impede the king’s progress. These utterances contain phrases that are reminiscent of the curse on the serpent in Genesis 3. For instance, the biblical statement that the serpent will ‘crawl on your belly’ is paralleled by frequent spells that call on the snake to lie down, fall down, get down, or crawl away (Pyramid Text 226, 233, 234, 298, 386). Another says that he should ‘go with [his] face on the path’ (Pyramid Text 288). ... Treading on the serpent is used in Pyramid Texts 299 as an expression of overcoming or defeating it. Specific statements indicate that the ‘Sandal of Horus tramples the snake underfoot’ (Pyramid Text 378), and ‘Horus has shattered [the snake’s] mouth with the sole of his foot’ (Pyramid Text 388). This reflects a potentially mortal blow to this deadly enemy. There is no suggestion that the Israelites are borrowing from the Pyramid Texts, only that these texts help us to determine how someone in the ancient Near East might understand such words and phrases. ...”
John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2–3 and the Human Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2015), 107–108.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Pyramid Texts Spell 204 and Genesis 3:14

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