We can’t outsmart Satan, but we can overcome him with the power of Jesus. The serpent was more cunning than any beast: Satan’s effectiveness is often found in His cunning, crafty ways. “It is idle to call the narrative of the Fall a mere allegory one had better say at once that he does not believe the Book… There was a real serpent, as there was a real paradise there was a real Adam and Eve, who stood at the head of our race, and they really sinned, and our race is really fallen.

We may not understand everything involved in the way Satan used the body of a serpent, but we can know it was true and this is no mere fable. Isaiah 14 tells us Satan’s fall had to do with his desire to be equal to or greater than God, to set his will against God’s will. Ezekiel 28 tells us Satan, before his fall, was an angel of the highest rank and prominence, even something of a leader of worship in heaven. The lifting of a bronze serpent is the lifting up of sin judged, in the form of a cross. This is because, in this picture, the serpent (a personification of sin and rebellion) is made of bronze (a metal associated with judgment, since it is made with fire). The representation of Satan as a serpent makes the idea of Moses saving Israel by lifting up a bronze serpent all the more provocative (Numbers 21:8-9), especially when Jesus identifies Himself with that very serpent (John 3:14). Revelation 12:9 and 20:2 speak of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan. Many other passages associate a serpent or a snake-like creature with Satan (such as Job 26:13 and Isaiah 51:9). In Ezekiel 28:13-19 tells us that Satan was in Eden.

The serpent: The text here does not, by itself alone, clearly identify the serpent as Satan, but the rest of the Bible makes it clear this is Satan appearing as a serpent.

And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”Ī. Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made.

Different than all the rest synonym