Dear Nana,
Why did the serpent go after Eve first to tempt her? And what were Adam's weaknesses that allowed it?
- Wondering
Dear Wondering,
Satan, or in this personification the Serpent, only has a small bag of tricks but he counts on them always working on foolish humans and they usually do. However, we can learn those tricks that he uses and then set up a successful guard against them for ourselves and our family.
He used two of his tricks here against Eve and one against Adam. The first trick is seen clearly in Deuteronomy 25:17,18 where an evil Satan-serving nation called the Amalekites attacked Israel from behind where the exhausted stragglers were. This was so repugnant to God that He commanded Israel to blot them and their memory out forever. Satan doesn't like to confront the strong warriors and those who would have the power of God given authority over him. He attacks those who were supposed to be protected by that authority and gets them to make decisions out from under their God given covering against Satan. Eve should have said, "Why don't you ask my husband about that?". But she liked being her own authority. That was part of the second trick Satan used on her. This is a three part trick which he uses on everyone of us even Jesus when He was tempted in the wilderness. First John 2:16 names the three parts as The Lust of the Flesh, The Lust of the Eyes, and The Boastful Pride of Life. Satan showed Eve that the fruit was GOOD FOR FOOD - The Lust of the Flesh, that it was a DELIGHT TO THE EYES - the Lust of the Eyes, and that it was DESIRABLE TO MAKE ONE WISE - the Boastful Pride of Life. She fell for it and damaged the entirety of Creation and history.
Now, I said she should have chosen to run to the covering authority of her husband but being her own authority over her own life was just too tempting to her pride. Here also is where Adam blew it. Genesis 3:6 says she gave the fruit to her husband WITH HER. That Hebrew word WITH is 5973 in the Hebrew concordance. It is the word im or imma meaning with her. Im means along with or beside. Adam was right there the whole time but did nothing. He should have stepped up and said, "Wait a minute we can't disobey God." But he didn't. He responded passively. We aren't told why he did this but here are some possibilities. In this day and age many men show a reluctance to step up and pick up responsibility if they can get out of it. This is Satan's trick of saying, "Oh don't let it bother you. It'll come right in the end." Maybe that mind set was there, "Eve is handling it. Let's watch the show." Or maybe the two of them had experienced a few disagreements and he didn't want to face an argument if he didn't have to. You know the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." mindset. Only it was going to be broke BIG TIME. He also may have been tempted by the big three lusts and just wanted the fleshly taste of the fruit figuring he could always blame Eve if God got mad. Does any of that sound familiar?
All of the vileness, death, waste and loss in this world could have been avoided if only Eve had seen authority as protective rather than restrictive and if Adam had stepped up to his God given responsibilities. Because they failed to do these things they started the self-centered blame game that is faithfully played by humans to this day. It is against human nature now to humble our pride or to step up to our God given responsibilities. That's why we need a personal relationship with Jesus to help us do the right thing and bring our world back to the beautiful life that was once in the Garden of Eden.
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