The serpent— If, in the account of the fall, there should be many difficulties, it will not seem strange to any who observe, that Moses gives only general hints, sufficient to acquaint us indeed with the fact, that man transgressed the divine command; but by no means sufficient to inform us of every minute particular respecting that fact. We are, however, sufficiently assured from those texts, in which Satan is spoken of as the tempter of man, and the introducer of sin and death into the world, that the animal serpent was only an instrument of this fallen spirit's malice to deceive our first parents: Revelation 12:9; Revelation 20:2. John 8:44. 2 Corinthians 11:3. And a reason is given by Moses why he made choice of this creature, because it was more SUBTLE than any other beast of the field; and therefore the properest agent for his diabolical purposes. I conceive the word rendered subtle, ערום arum, to be used here rather in a good than a bad sense. It is used in both senses in scripture: but it seems to me as if the sacred historian meant to inform us, that the serpent was by nature the most sagacious of the animal race, and consequently known to be so by our first parents; on which account it was the properest to be chosen, as the least suspected instrument of this temptation. For its natural subtlety could be no recommendation to the spiritual agent, who, doubtless, could as well have used the organs of the most stupid, as of the most wise, animal to his purposes; a full proof of which is his use of dumb idols afterwards in the heathen world. But the woman would naturally wonder less at this superior wisdom in an animal already esteemed the most wise of the brute creation. The LXX render the word by φρονιμωτατος —, the same used by our Saviour, Matthew 10:16 when he says, Be wise as serpents, where it certainly is used in a good sense.
In the history of the fall of man (says Bishop Warburton in his Divine Legation) it is to be observed, that Moses mentions only the instrument of the agent, the serpent, not the agent himself, the devil; and the reason is plain: there was a close connexion between that agency, the spiritual effects of the fall, the work of redemption, and the doctrine of a future state. If you say, the connexion was not so close, but that the agent might have been mentioned, without any more of his history than the temptation to the fall; I reply, it is true, it might, but not without danger of giving countenance to the impious doctrine of two principles which at that time prevailed throughout the pagan world.
And he said unto the woman— The introduction to the conversation between the woman and the serpent appears abrupt: but if we suppose, which seems extremely probable, that the woman, by some means or other, had been invited by the serpent to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree, especially by his eating of it himself before her, and shewing that no pernicious consequences followed; and if we suppose that upon this she objects to eating herself, on account of the divine interdiction; then the words of the serpent come in with propriety: "You will not eat of this fruit? Why? Is it because God hath forbidden it? Is it because he hath said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" To which the woman replies as in Matthew 10:2.