Why didn't Adam and Eve find it strange that a serpent was talking to them?

The serpent is introduced in this chapter as being more cunning than all other beasts. This was evidently so just by the fact of Satan's using the serpent for his mouthpiece. It is not likely that the woman had heard any other animal speak, and when the serpent spoke to her, she ought to have been doubly on her guard. God has never allowed Satan to appear to mankind as he is in his own person, except in his temptation of the Lord Jesus (Mt.4:3-11). Satan's awesome dignity would be too much for us (Ezekiel 28:13-19). However, God allowed him to use a lower creature to tempt the woman. when the serpent questioned her in an insinuating way, "Has God indeed said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" there was no reason for her to entertain any questioning thought herself. God's word was final.

The serpent is introduced in this chapter as being more cunning than all other beasts. This was evidently so just by the fact of Satan's using the serpent for his mouthpiece. It is not likely that the woman had heard any other animal speak, and when the serpent spoke to her, she ought to have been doubly on her guard. God has never allowed Satan to appear to mankind as he is in his own person, except in his temptation of the Lord Jesus (Matt. 4:3-11). Satan's awesome dignity would be too much for us (Ezekiel 28:13-19). However, God allowed him to use a lower creature to tempt the woman. When the serpent questioned her in an insinuating way, “Has God indeed said, 'You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?'” there was no reason for her to entertain any questioning thought herself. God's word was final.

In the judgment of the serpent, we must remember first of all the essentially typical character of the language used. We have no reason to believe that Adam knew as yet the mystery of who the tempter was. "That old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan," was doubtless for him nothing more than the most subtle of the beasts of the field which the Lord God had made. And herein, indeed, were divine wisdom and mercy shown, the tempter being not permitted to approach in angelic character, as one above man, but in bestial, as one below him; one indeed of those to which man as their lord had given names, and among which he had found no helpmeet. How great was thus his shame when he listened to the deceiver! he had given up his divinely appointed supremacy in that moment.

Many think that the serpent as originally created by God was a beautiful creature with an erect carriage, and able to express itself in language. Whether it be so, or not, whether speech was the serpent's, or Satan's in possession of the body of the serpent for his own purposes, we cannot say, but it is clear that the approach to Eve did not terrify her, as anything unusual. Up to then no sin had come into God's fair creation. Creatures were then in all the innocence and grace of sinless creation. We gather this must have been so when we are told that the fall of man involved the fall of creation.

The serpent is introduced to us without any explanation as to the power working in and through him. From verse 1 we gather that he was amongst the beasts of the field that God had made, and that he was "more subtil," — of a higher order of intelligence — than any other, so that when energized by a higher power, speech was a possibility. The whole serpent tribe, as we know it today, is in a state of great degradation, as verse 14 of our chapter would lead us to expect. As originally created it stood at the head of the animal world, which had been made subject to Adam.

Adam, though surrounded with mercies that should have spoken to him of the goodness of his Creator, had not this confidence in God. God Himself had prepared that garden, and everything that a wise and beneficent Creator could devise and supply was placed in it. Adam, though thus blessed and provided for, turned to an inferior creature, over which he had been placed as head, and to which he had but recently given the name "serpent." It was the most subtle thing in creation, and Adam had given it a suitable name. Satan uses this creature, and Adam listens to one whom he should have known was an enemy of his Lord, for he suggested that he would gain by disobeying the One whose goodness was manifested everywhere around him. He listens and trusts this one who thus assails him because he lacked perfect confidence in the One who had displayed such thoughtfulness and kindness towards him.

Here was affected surprise — a suggestion of strangeness, no doubt, but no positive charge of wrong. Such an insinuation, if it were even that, a heart true to God need scarcely find much difficulty in repelling. This was in paradise, where all the wealth of blessing which the munificent hand of God had spread around her filled every sense with testimony of His love. Was reason demanded? or did intellect need to find the way through any difficult problem here? Assuredly not. A heart filled with divine goodness would be armor of proof in such a conflict as this. The effort of the enemy was just to make a question for the reason what ought to have been one of those clear perceptions not to be reasoned about, because the basis of all true reason. As a question for the mind the woman entertained it, and thus admitted a suspicion of the divine goodness which has been the key-note of man's condition ever since.

Genesis 3. It was by subtlety, not by force, that man was overcome. No force could have overcome him, had not he himself departed, as he was induced by deception to do, from God. How important to examine God's whole word, seeing that it is so near the close of scripture as Revelation 12 that we have an explicit declaration as to who "the serpent" is of whom we here read so near the beginning of the inspired record! How evident, from the mode of the enemy's attack, that faith is the root and spring of all obedience in the creature, even in innocence, as well as that which receives the Saviour and His great salvation when man has fallen! No wonder that such stress is laid on it as the fundamental principle of the Christian's life, walk, endurance, and victory. Perfect confidence in God's goodness would have assured our first parents, though they knew nothing of the reason for the prohibition, that it must be, and was, for their good and happiness. They would then have repelled the base insinuation against God's goodness, implied rather than expressed in the artful question, "Yea, hath God said?" etc. How much more was contained in such an inquiry than appears on the surface!

1892 145 The procedure of the enemy was indeed subtle. It was to awaken distrust of God in Eve's heart. Could it be good to refuse man the fruit of any tree in the garden? Distrust of God opens the door to every sin. Eve ought at once to have turned away. She knew the goodness of Jehovah Elohim. Why then parley a moment more with one who questioned it? To allow it was to sit in judgment on Him, to doubt His love, to accept the serpent as a better friend. She was deceived. Her obvious and urgent duty was to repulse the malicious overture with indignation.

305 Notice, the first thing introduced here is the subtility of Satan. It was not flagrant open sin and wickedness when Eve replied to it; it is not, I am the devil come to deceive you. He puts the present pleasantness of the thing, and with subtility inquires, "Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" The Holy Ghost does not say the devil was wicked, but He says, "Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?"