Genesis 3:14

3:14 The Lord God said to the serpent, ¹ 

“Because you have done this,

cursed ²  are you above all the wild beasts

and all the living creatures of the field!

On your belly you will crawl ³ 

and dust you will eat ⁴  all the days of your life.

Genesis 7:23

7:23 So the Lord ⁵  destroyed ⁶  every living thing that was on the surface of the ground, including people, animals, creatures that creep along the ground, and birds of the sky. ⁷  They were wiped off the earth. Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark survived. ⁸ 

Genesis 24:3

24:3 so that I may make you solemnly promise ⁹  by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of the earth: You must not acquire ¹⁰  a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I am living.

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¹ sn Note that God asks no question of the serpent, does not call for confession, as he did to the man and the woman; there is only the announcement of the curse. The order in this section is chiastic: The man is questioned, the woman is questioned, the serpent is cursed, sentence is passed on the woman, sentence is passed on the man.

² tn The Hebrew word translated “cursed,” a passive participle from אָרָר (’arar), either means “punished” or “banished,” depending on how one interprets the following preposition. If the preposition is taken as comparative, then the idea is “cursed [i.e., punished] are you above [i.e., more than] all the wild beasts.” In this case the comparative preposition reflects the earlier comparison: The serpent was more shrewd than all others, and so more cursed than all others. If the preposition is taken as separative (see the note on the word “ground” in 4:11), then the idea is “cursed and banished from all the wild beasts.” In this case the serpent is condemned to isolation from all the other animals.

³ tn Heb “go”; “walk,” but in English “crawl” or “slither” better describes a serpent’s movement.

⁴ sn Dust you will eat. Being restricted to crawling on the ground would necessarily involve “eating dust,” although that is not the diet of the serpent. The idea of being brought low, of “eating dust” as it were, is a symbol of humiliation.

⁵ tn Heb “and he”; the referent (the Lord) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁶ tn Heb “wiped away” (cf. NRSV “blotted out”).

⁷ tn Heb “from man to animal to creeping thing and to the bird of the sky.”

⁸ tn The Hebrew verb שָׁאָר (sha’ar) means “to be left over; to survive” in the Niphal verb stem. It is the word used in later biblical texts for the remnant that escapes judgment. See G. F. Hasel, “Semantic Values of Derivatives of the Hebrew Root só’r,” AUSS 11 (1973): 152-69.

⁹ tn Following the imperative, the cohortative with the prefixed conjunction indicates purpose.

¹⁰ tn Heb “because you must not take.”