Allegory of the Serpent: Was Satan Literally a Snake?

“So the huge Dragon (the original Snake who’s called the Slanderer and Opposer) who is misleading the whole habitation [of mankind] was thrown down! He was thrown down to the earth along with [all of] his [angelic] messengers”.
Revelation 12:9

Everybody knows the story of the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve, the first human pair who were placed in a “paradise of delights”, with everything they could have ever needed, only for it to all go wrong when a talking snake, who was actually the Devil in disguise according to the scriptures, tricked Eve into eating the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Good and Evil (Genesis 3:1-13).

It’s often taken for granted by most readers, that the snake in the story was literal, whether or not the Devil literally manifested as a snake materially to speak to Eve, or whether he simply puppeteered an already existing snake to speak in the manner that an angel made a donkey talk to Balaam (Numbers 22:24-28), the traditional understanding is that Eve was talking to a real snake that was in front of her on the tree.

We see in the account, that when Eve tells God of what the snake said to her, he turns around and says this:

• “YHWH God said to the serpent; Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life“. – Genesis 3:14

This section of the passage has resulted in all kinds of theories from Christian readers, and from others, simply mockery.

After all, why would God punish a snake, by making it do what it already does? Crawl along the ground? And secondly, why punish all the snakes in the world, for the action of one snake, which in reality, wasn’t even the snake’s fault, but of the Devil who was controlling or manifesting itself as a snake?

To answer this, some have asserted that perhaps, all snakes “once had legs”, and God at this point in time removed them, causing them to be slithering animals instead, to represent to humanity a reminder of the Devil’s sin and lie – an… interesting interpretation, if not somewhat absurd to my mind, but most certainly, quite an amusing take on the account.

I of course, do not understand this passage in such light. Rather, I believe this passage has much deeper layers to it than a mere surface reading would give it credit.

Firstly, I don’t think this can be taken too literally, as to be telling us, all snakes once had legs, and that God removed them, for we see that it was also told that it would “eat dust”. Snakes today of course, do not eat dust. Most eat other animals, whilst some species eat fruit.

Secondly, this was a punishment by God to the serpent itself, who in fact, was not a snake in true nature, but Satan, a spirit being. So punishing all snakes would not be a punishment to the Devil, because the Devil himself is not actually a snake.

Rather, I understand that there is a sense of both allegory and rich irony in this ancient text.

Whether or not if the Devil really did manifest himself as a literal snake, or if he just controlled one, the point that he was told he would “crawl on his belly and eat dirt”, I believe is essentially God telling Satan he’s going to push his face in the mud like some dog owners might push their disobedient dog’s face in its own faeces. It indicates that the Devil is made to “suffer”, and to “struggle”, just as a human being would struggle if he was forced to drag himself around in the mud all day to get about.

This declaration, was one of a curse put on Satan, that for the rest of his existence would be both difficult, and lowly.

But the text here I think also potentially reveals some humour or clever irony on the part of God. As Satan was described as to be acting like a snake, potentially even controlling or manifesting as one when speaking to Eve, it was if God said to him; “Oh, so you fancy yourself a snake do you? Fine, you can be a snake if you want to, and you’ll get everything that comes with it, including crawling around in the dirt!” The punishment described to the Devil, also being a bit of a pun, or play on.

In fact, many ancient writings and stories intended to teach moral lessons, tend to have a “cruel irony” about them. For example, the Boy Who Cried Wolf, or Red Riding Hood. Though Genesis is not to be taken as complete fiction by the intent of the author, it ‘does’ appear to be possibly using some classical story telling “motifs” in order to make it more memorable to its audience, as such was typical of ancient culture when telling the tales of histories and traditions, just as we do in England to this day with King Henry VIII and his six wives:

So, rather than understanding that, one time, snakes had legs, and because the Devil pretended to be a snake to talk to Eve, God then took all their legs away, or that he told snakes to crawl around even though they already were crawling around, as a punishment to all snakes because of what the Devil did with a snake, there is to be understood, a far richer and intelligent meaning to this ancient account.

Ancient writers weren’t stupid, they were like you and me. They had rich culture, religion, poetry and philosophy. They knew snakes already crawled around on the ground by nature, and they also knew snakes didn’t eat dirt for their diet. We see in Genesis‘ opening chapters, a lot of allegory and song when it comes to the creation accounts and earliest human actions and interactions with the divine world.

Whilst the account does intend to give us a true ‘history’ of the earliest days of humanity and the reasons for why we are here today in the situations we find ourselves, we shouldn’t be too quick to assume to take ‘everything’ so hyper-literal, but to understand the highly poetic nature of ancient culture and writing.

In this respect, Satan might not have even been controlling or appearing as a snake to Eve at all, but perhaps in reality he simply appeared as a man, or as a glowing angel before her. But the story describes Satan as a snake, because typically, snakes are seen by most people to be creepy, slimy, sneaky, just as the account of Genesis tells us, the snake was the “most crafty” of all of God’s creations (Genesis 3:1), so it’s a perfect way to poetically describe him here, amongst all the other creations that Adam and Eve were surrounded by.

Perhaps the account itself is almost being “sneaky” with us in its style, by drawing us in to a comfortable place narratively, where everything is normal, recognisable, just two humans in a nice garden with animals, and suddenly… it appears that one of the sneakier animals approaches and begins to talk! This sudden unexpected twist being just as narratively deceptive and surprising as Satan himself was deceptive and surprising toward Eve.

Satan is consistently described to be “snake” in the account, as if he were just one of the many animals in the garden, but we know he was not. Revelation tells us, he was the “original serpent”, but this obviously does not mean that Satan was “the first snake God created on Earth in the Garden of Eden”, or that the origin of the Devil was an evil talking reptile, just as much as Revelation isn’t trying to make us believe that Satan is literally a giant dragon, but it’s telling us the true identity of the talking “snake” that deceived the human race.

Therefore, it’s very much possible that the ‘Serpent’ of Genesis, was completely allegorical, and that there was no talking snake at all in Eden, but rather, simply an interaction between Eve and a materialised spirit being, of whom was the Devil, who was then made to ironically “crawl on his belly and eat dirt” for the rest of his miserable existence for the terrible evil he had done, matching his “snake-like” description.