Introduction
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working through a 14-hour class from BibleProject Classroom’s course on Adam to Noah. I’ve also been preaching through a sermon series at our church on marriage where I preached on the creation of man and woman. One of the things that has been on my mind is the topic of chaos, disorder, undifferentiated potential, how the serpent becomes a symbol for these things, and how man is at odds with them.
This symbol isn’t just present in Ancient Israel (and the Bible), but also in the Ancient Near East and Greco-Roman world as well. It is especially prominent in Ancient Egypt (Just do a Google search). You can actually think of it as a kind of universal symbol that has been in the cosmic imagery of cultures across the ages. The wheel of time turns, but the symbol of the ouroboros — the serpent eating its tale has remained.
But what exactly is its meaning? I’ve already given you the answers. But you need to have a picture painted to understand how it all works because when you get the meaning of the symbol, it actually sheds light on the biblical story and man’s role in creation. Giving you abstracted answers won’t do, and it certainly didn’t do for me. You need to see the symbol in a story to understand it’s importance as cosmic imagery. That’s when the puzzle piece finally snapped into place for me.
Man as an Agent of Order
I want you to imagine the scenes of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. God creates the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void. This is very important, and it’s a detail that ancient folk understood that we do not understand as moderns.
In Hebrew, the adjectives “formless and void” are תֹּ֫הוּ וְ בֹּ֫הוּ (tōʹ·hû wa bōʹ·hû). According to BDB (Briggs Driver Brown), תֹּ֫הוּ (tōʹ·hû) means confused land reduced to primeval chaos and בֹּ֫הוּ ( bōʹ·hû) means empty and ruin.
So, basically, the earth being formless and void means that it was a place of primeval chaos. That’s a very simple way of saying that the creation was unordered, unnamed, undefined, unknown, and undifferentiated. As the story goes along though, we see that God brings order to the disorder. He names the unnamed, He defines the undefined, He differentiates this from that (dry land from water, birds from sea creatures, land creatures from humans), and this makes things knowable and gives meaning to the world.
Now, in Genesis 2, this is repeated at the local scale. You can think of Genesis 1 as being a macrocosm and Genesis 2 being a microcosm. If you don’t quite understand what I mean, let me say it this way. In Genesis 1, God named the unnamed, defines the undefined, differentiates this from that, and this makes things knowable and gives meaning to the world. In Genesis 2, God creates an image of Himself to participate in the act of ordering the disordered, naming the unnamed, defining the undefined, and differentiating this from that. He gets to participate in meaning-making as a microcosmic image of God at the local level.
If you don’t believe me, just look at the narrative of Genesis 2.
4 These are the generations of heaven and earth when they were created, in the day that Yahweh God made earth and heaven—5 before any plant of the field was⌋ on earth, and before ⌊any plant of the field had sprung up, because Yahweh God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no human being to cultivate the ground, 6 but a stream would rise from the earth and water the whole face of the ground—7 when Yahweh God formed the man of dust from the ground, and he blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. 8 And Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And Yahweh God caused to grow from the ground every tree that was pleasing to the sight and good for food. And the tree of life was in the midst of the garden, along with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 10 Now a river flowed out from Eden that watered the garden, and from there it diverged and became four branches. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon. It went around all the land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 (The gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stones are there.) 13 And the name of the second is Gihon. It went around all the land of Cush. 14 And the name of the third is Tigris. It flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. 15 And Yahweh God took the man and set him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and to keep it. 16 And Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “From every tree of the garden you may freely eat, 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” 18 Then Yahweh God said, “it is not good that the man is alone. I will make for him a helper as his counterpart.” 19 And out of the ground Yahweh God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and he brought each to the man to see what he would call it. And whatever the man called that living creature was its name. 20 And the man gave names to every domesticated animal and to the birds of heaven and to all the wild animals. But for the man there was not found a helper as his counterpart. 21 And Yahweh God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. While he slept, he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh where it had been. 22 And Yahweh God fashioned the rib which he had taken from the man into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 And the man said, “She is now bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh; ⌊she⌋ shall be called ‘Woman,’ for ⌊he was taken from man.”
W. Hall Harris III et al., eds., The Lexham English Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012), Ge 2:4–23.
Notice in the narrative that man was created in the earth before there was any plant of the field had sprung up on the earth. Yahweh caused a stream to rise from the earth and water the face of the ground. After the stream watered the ground, Yahweh formed the man of dust. He differentiated him from the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living creature.
After this, Yahweh is said to have placed him in a garden to cultivate and keep it. The interesting thing here is that the Hebrew words for cultivate and keep are עבד (‘bd) and שׁמר (‘smr) which means to till and to guard. It’s the same language used for the priesthood of Israel later in Scripture (Num. 1:34, 3:7-8). Man was created by God to bring order to the creation and guard it. He can be rightly understood to be an agent of order. Jack Donovan speaks of men archetypally being fathers, strikers, and lords of the earth. In other words, they were formed by God to create, guard, and perpetuate order.
Ever since this moment that God formed man and placed him in the Garden, he has been ordering the world by naming, defining, and differentiating. As the story continues, he names rivers and cities, differentiating them from one another. He also differentiates resources in those lands. Some have gold that, like God, He declares is good. Some have bdellium and onyx stone. From there, God brings animals to him to name and differentiate from one another. And then, He gives to him a helper fit for him that he names woman because she came from man.
This is what men were created for. Man is a cosmic image of order that participates in meaning-making and creating cosmos from chaos. Even in Ancient Egypt you see this shared cosmic imagery. However, in Ancient Egypt it was the Pharaoh who was the exclusive cosmic image that ordered the chaos as the serpent on the margins of the world sought to impose its chaos as the wheel of time circled around and around.
The Monster on the Margin
Now, let continue the narrative so you can see how this works. In Genesis 3, the serpent comes into play in the story. The message that he brings to the woman is key in understanding his role as a symbol.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal which Yahweh God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God indeed say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, 3 but from the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, God said, ‘You shall not eat from it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die’.” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You shall not surely die. 5 For God knows that on the day you both eat from it, then your eyes will be opened and you both shall be like gods, knowing good and evil.”
W. Hall Harris III et al., eds., The Lexham English Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012), Ge 3:1–5.
Notice the message of the serpent. It’s a message of non-differentiation. “God knows that on the day you eat from the tree that’s different from the other tree, you will become like gods.” In other words, there will be no Creator-creation distinction. God is keeping something from you.
Eat and you’ll be like the divine. There will be no lines drawn any longer or distinctions between kinds. All will be one.
The woman takes and eats and gives some to her husband who was created as an agent tasked to order and guard the garden-sanctuary as a priest like God. After that, chaos ensues.
Instead of dealing with the agent of chaos line he was designed, the man ends up naked and ashamed covering himself as his wife does the same. God comes blowing through the Garden like a wind and pronounces covenant curses upon all the parties. In the end, man indeed gets to go back to the one, but not in the way he was promised by the serpent. Rather than becoming like the gods, he goes back to the undifferentiated dust from which he came which is exactly what the serpent devours (Gen. 3:14-19).
This is how the serpent becomes a symbol of chaos and disorder. In the narrative, he is the being who personifies tōʹ·hû wa bōʹ·hû. He is the ever-present enemy encircled around the margins of the world, waiting to bring chaos.
This idea of the serpent being the personification of tōʹ·hû wa bōʹ·hû is also found in Scripture. It’s not just something that I’m reading into Genesis 3. In Psalm 74:12-14, Asaph writes of Yahweh smashing the head of leviathan, the chaos dragon who resided on the margins of the world in the primordial waters, which are the same waters at creation when the world was tōʹ·hû wa bōʹ·hû.
12 But God has been my king from long ago, working salvation in the midst of the earth. 13 You split open the sea by your strength; You broke the heads of the sea monsters in the waters. 14 You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food to the desert dwelling creatures.
W. Hall Harris III et al., eds., The Lexham English Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012), Ps 74:12–14.
Here’s what I think is going on here. In Genesis 1, which is a macrocosm, God smashes the heads of leviathan when he splits open the seas and separates the waters from the waters. In Genesis 2, God creates a microcosmic image of Himself and allows him to participate in his ordering work in the world. In Genesis 3, the man is tested, and he’s supposed to smash the head of the microcosmic version of leviathan, the serpent (Hebrew נָחָשׁ — nâchâsh) in the garden. He doesn’t, and so God promises the woman a seed who would come and crush the serpents head (Gen. 3:16).
Isaiah 27:1 also explicitly links leviathan with the serpent saying:
On that day, Yahweh will punish with his cruel, great and strong sword Leviathan, the fleeing serpent (עֲקַלָּתוֹן נָחָשׁ — ʿăqallâthôwn nâchâsh), and Leviathan, the twisting serpent, and he will kill the sea monster that is in the sea.
W. Hall Harris III et al., eds., The Lexham English Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012), Is 27:1.
This explains why the cosmic imagery of the Ancient Near East depicted a cosmology where there was a serpent coiled around the earth or depicted in the waters and underworld. This is also present in Norse/Germanic culture as well with Jörmungandr, the Midgard serpent who dwells in the world sea devouring his own tail. The waters are universally understood to be the place of primeval chaos. The serpent-dragon is the symbol that personifies this.
Conclusion
What application does all of this have for those of us living east of Eden?
I would state it this way. Though fallen and bound to return to the dust that we were created from, man’s chief end is still to be an image of God who lives as an agent of order. This is what we were created for, and the command to cultivate (עבד — ‘bd) and guard (שׁמר — ‘smr) are still repeated to men even after the fall (Gen. 9:1; Num. 1:34, 3:7-8). It is our duty to stand between heaven and earth and to push the chaos back to the margins of the world. To fight against the serpent’s message of confusion which leaves the world as unordered, unnamed, undefined, unknown, and undifferentiated.
In our age of dark enchantment that tells men and women they can become like gods; we must be here to defend the perimeter. While many think that it’s a god-given right for humans to self-identify, to decide if they’re male or female or an animal, we must be here to create, guard, and perpetuate order and create communities that do the same thing. Our cosmic imagery tells us that when there’s chaos, there’s a world serpent behind it. We just need the eyes to be able to see.