The word "old" does not refer to the age of the serpent, the Greek word archaios takes

us back to the "beginning" arche. The serpent of antiquity is the Devil. He belongs to

the "old world" (II Pet. 2: 5) the "old" creation (II Cor. 5: 17). It will be noted further,

that the Scriptures are not content merely to say that the serpent is the Devil, and that the

serpent is Satan, but that both titles are employed together. Now "Satan" is Hebrew, and

is found in Job 1: 6; Psa. 109: 6; Zech 3: 1, 2 and is brought over into the N.T. where it

is mentioned thirty-six times. That Paul believed and taught that the old serpent was the

devil and Satan we can discover by reading his epistles:

The Devil is the N.T. title and is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word Satan. The

reader must distinguish between the title "Devil" in the singular, which is the Greek

diabolos, and "devils" in the plural, which should in every case be translated "demons".

Returning to Gen. 3: 1 we note that the serpent is spoken of as being more subtil

than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. This at first sight is a

difficulty. How can a mighty spirit, as the devil and Satan is set forth in the Scriptures,

be compared with a beast of the field? We learn that after Judas Iscariot had received the

sop at the table, that "Satan entered into him" (John 13: 27). We discover that fallen

angels "left their own habitation" (Jude 6) and that this word "habitation" is the Greek

oiketerion, a word used of the resurrection body of the believer "our house from heaven"

(II Cor. 5: 2). Not only so, we read that when angels appeared to men, they were

almost always in the form of men, so much so that Abraham prepared for them a meal

(Gen. 18: 2) to which the Apostle alludes when urging the entertaining of strangers,

For the purpose of deception, Satan selected the most subtil of the creatures that God

had made, invested himself in that animal's body, invaded the sanctity of the Garden, and

inveigled our first parents into the disobedience and sin.

Referring to the structure of Gen. 3:, we note that it opens and closes with two

peculiar references. It opens with the devil inhabiting the form of a serpent, and it closes

with the cherubim, which are elsewhere described as having the form of a man, a lion,

an ox and an eagle, creatures unknown except by revelation, and evidently symbolic.

The word translated "serpent" is the Hebrew word nachash which means "shining" and

"brazen".

It will be remembered that when the people of Israel were bitten by serpents, Moses

was commanded to make a "serpent of brass" where the Hebrew words are nachash

nechoseth (Numb. 21: 9). This was afterward destroyed by Hezekiah, because of the

idolatrous practices of Judah, calling it nehushtain "a piece of brass". In a slightly

different form nachash is translated "enchantment" and "to divine" (Lev. 19: 26;

Gen. 44: 5), and is associated with witchcraft, familiar spirits, necromancy, and