“And Jehovah God proceeded to say to the serpent: ‘Because you have done this thing, you are the cursed one out of all the domestic animals and out of all the wild beasts of the field. Upon your belly you will go and dust is what you will eat all the days of your life.

Genesis 3:14, 15, NW; Leeser; Zunz.

16, 17. (a) To whom did God’s words to the serpent really apply? (b) To what did a first-century writer liken this abasement?

¹⁶ This was not a curse upon the whole serpent family. Seemingly God’s words were addressed to that one literal serpent, but He knew that it had only been victimized to serve as an instrument of a superhuman, invisible spirit person, one who had hitherto been an obedient heavenly son of God. This one had also let himself be drawn out and enticed by a desire of a selfish kind. It was a desire for sovereignty over mankind, independent of Jehovah’s universal sovereignty. This desire he had let take root in his heart and had cultivated it, till it became fertile and produced transgression, rebellion against the Sovereign Lord Jehovah. This spirit transgressor then made himself a liar, slanderer or Devil and a resister or Satan, right there at the Paradise of Pleasure.

¹⁷ As suggested by the abasement that was pronounced upon that victimized serpent, God abased this newly risen Liar, Devil, Satan. One first-century Bible commentator likens this abasement to a ‘throwing of Satan into Tartarus,’ a disapproved state of spiritual darkness with no enlightenment from God.—2 Peter 2:4.