Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”
And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’” (Genesis 3:1-3)
When the serpent spoke to Eve, I would have expected her response to be something like: “Adam, get over here! You’re going to think I’m crazy, but I’m telling you this serpent just spoke to me!”
But that doesn’t happen – she seems to take it in stride… Can you imagine if you were walking out in your backyard, and a squirrel in a tree nearby just blurted out, “Hey – you there! Can you spare some acorns?”
I would suggest that the first response from most people would not be to calmly say, “Sorry dude, I don’t have any acorns handy….” (Of course, I’m assuming here that you don’t typically carry acorns around in your pocket to hand out to soliciting squirrels). More than likely, your response would be something closer to, “Holy nutjob, Batman! That squirrel just spoke to me!”
Why is there no indication in Genesis that they find it odd that one of God’s creatures spoke to them in a language they readily understood? Were they like Dr. Doolittle and just understood the language of the animals? Did the animals in that day have the ability to speak the same language as mankind?
Yeah, I don’t know the answer to that, but we can be sure that things were very different before the flood. Both man and beast were all on a vegetarian diet until God allowed Noah and his family to begin eating meat (Genesis 9). It didn’t rain, but instead a mist came up out of the ground (Genesis 2). People lived to be much, much older (hence the phrase, “that guy is as old as Methuselah!” – Genesis 5).
So yeah, I guess it’s certainly possible that the wily serpent was able to speak, and maybe all the animals could communicate with both mankind and each other – prior to the Fall of Man, or possibly all the way up to the time of the flood… I guess we won’t know until the earth is renewed.
I, for one, am hoping for the day that I can have a nice conversation with a wombat – I always felt those cute little guys were underappreciated…
#LoveMatters