Jennings' Satan -- Chapter Two

SATAN by F. C. Jennings

CHAPTER II
THE SERPENT

Contents.
The most popular conception of the Devil--The possible basis for this
in Scripture--First introduction in Scripture.--Was the natural serpent
originally evil in craft?--Was it originally as now in form?--Object of
universal worship--Suggested meaning of “Dust shall be the Serpent’s meat.”

In considering the person of Satan, it may be well first to look at the common, vulgar, popular idea, such as is still held by the masses of Christendom, and such as is made the basis, or one of the bases, for the rejection of his very existence by many of the “learned” of the day.

The lowest possible, and yet the most widespread conception we have is in what one may term the stage idea, as we constantly see it on the posters in our streets. A human form, with leering face, characterized by a grin of low cunning, horns, hoofs, and forked tail; utterly obscene, and provoking nothing but contempt, ridicule, and disgust.

You have probably seen Albert Dürer’s pictures of him: a swine-like face, a bestial body, with, of course, the inevitable horns, hoofs, and tail. It is not very surprising, since that is the popular idea, men of refinement, or learning, should have pushed the whole thing on one side, and declared him to be the mere offspring of the superstitions of the dark ages. If such a picture were given in Scripture there might indeed possibly be some excuse not only for rejecting the person, as being only worthy of those dark ages, but also the authority for such a conception.*[The nearest approach to any Scriptural source for such a picture may possibly be found in a word used by Isaiah Ch. xiii. 21 translated “satyrs” in both A. V. and R. V. (“hegoats” in mar). We may have occasion to look at this again, but the word searim, there used, meaning literally “hairy ones,” translated also “goats” in Lev. iv, and yet devils in Lev. xvii and 2 Chron., may certainly account for the horns and hoofs of the popular picture referred to, without, however, justifying it at all.] But I hope to show that the Word of God is not responsible for a single line of such a picture as that.

Hardly had the human race been called into existence, than we find a strange enemy making his attack upon it under the guise of a serpent. Although the writer of this account gives no name to this creature, except “the serpent,” other Scriptures leave us no doubt as to who it was. Mere serpent, mere animal, it could not possibly be; for speech is the distinctive characteristic of the spirit, and that this serpent possessed the faculty of speech was, and is enough to prove that some one of a higher kingdom and order than that of the beasts was possessing it.

Here, then, this strange thing of a beast speaking, arguing, reasoning, clearly indicated that some spirit had taken possession of it, or had assumed the form.

But we are not left to these inevitable deductions. Subsequent Scripture fully confirms them. The apostle in writing to the Church in Corinth, likens that church to Eve, and the serpent to the Devil (2 Cor. xi), until finally and conclusively we hear the Devil plainly called “that old serpent” (Rev. xii. 9).

But as thus our first introduction to the Devil in Holy Writ is under this guise of a serpent, and as this points to some kind of harmony between the malign spirit and the beast whose form he assumed, and as that reptile is held to be amongst the lowest and most abhorred of the animal creation--ever loathed and loathsome--so the evil spirit is assumed to be, and ever to have been, not one of exalted dignity, but contemptible and base.
But even admitting the premises, the consequence need not so inevitably follow. Have we not been rather hasty in assuming that the serpent was always, from his very incipiency, exactly as we know him now, either in nature, form, or movement?

The word for serpent in Hebrew (and these Hebrew words are intended to give us valuable assistance in determining the nature of that to which they are applied) is nachash, which may come from the root nachash, to hiss; or, as Dr. Taylor Lewis writes, “is far more likely to have had its sense from the secondary meaning of that root--to shine, whence brass, the shining metal. This gives, as the first thought in the word for serpent, ‘splendour,’ ‘glistening,’ ‘bright,’ ‘shining,’ either from its glossy appearance, or, more likely, from the bright glistening of the eye. The first impressions of mankind in regard to the serpent were of the splendid and terrible kind--beauty and awe.” We shall find this absolutely confirmed, and in a most striking way later.

Nor does the fact that the serpent is called “more subtle than any beast of the field” necessarily predicate anything essentially evil in that creature before the fall of man, or apart from diabolical possession. There are words in Hebrew that might have been used here that would have had an unequivocally bad significance;*[eg. mismah always translated deceit, treachery, craft or guile.] yet such is not used; but ahroom, frequently translated prudent in quite a good sense, as “a prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself” (Prov. xxii. 3); so that it may have had, when applied to the denizen of an unfallen creation, a distinctly good meaning. Nay, when we remember that God “saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good”--mark everything, the serpent included--that word “subtle” must have had a good, rather than bad sense.

As we shall see, in the spiritual world the wisdom of the highest creature was admirable, but that wisdom changed to craft after his fall; so in the animal creation of earth, the serpent’s original prudence became craft. The serpent that tempted Eve, being the Devil in that guise, the subtlety was of course unequivocally evil.
Nor would the sentence pronounced “upon thy belly shalt thou go” be of great significance, if this had always been the method of movement. It seems to afford some undoubted justification of the thought that many have had* of some great and radical change in the serpent’s form, quite in contrast with its original glory and beauty.

*So Milton:
Not with indented wave
Prone on the ground as since; but on his rear,
Circular base of rising folds that towered
Fold above fold, a surging maze, his head
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes;
With burnished neck of verdant gold erect
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass
Floated redundant: pleasing was his shape and lovely.

In all this we see why Adam called him Nachash. He looked at him, discerned his qualities thoroughly, and then gave the name that expressed those qualities perfectly: “the bright, shining, splendid one,” filled with a wisdom transcending all the other beasts that he had seen. Did not then the Devil assume his guise with consummate skill, in taking the form before Eve that had already awakened such considerations of admiration on the part of her husband? Might she not safely listen to one he had so named?

There is another phenomenon in connection with the serpent that is of intense significance and profound interest in the fact that we find it as an object of worship in all the ancient countries of the earth; everywhere it has been recognized as a god. This is a simple fact, account for it as one may. Scripture accounts for it by the fall of man from his original place of dependence upon, and confidence in, his Creator, to placing his trust in the opposing word of the enemy. What follows this? Naturally, reasonably, that enemy becomes, even in the likeness of that creature whose form he assumed, the “god of this world” (2 Cor. iv). The sentence “dust shall be the serpent’s meat” may well (I do but suggest it), in that intense pregnancy of meaning that characterizes these earliest Divine utterances, foreshadow this, the serpent’s portion; the serpent’s satisfaction, meat, or food, shall be the external worship of those whose spirit he has destroyed, and who are thus well pictured by the dust whence they came, and to which they return. But no worship willingly, intelligently rendered by man’s inmost being, “in spirit and in truth,” shall the Devil ever have. No loving heart-felt adoration of the soul shall he ever enjoy. No, no, dust, nothing but dust, the outward prostration of the body, and that in horror and terror, must suffice him, and be his “food” on this earth, through all time. Let us mark thankfully the confirmation that our Lord’s words give to this, even in their contrast to the Devil’s meat: when, as He led one poor sinner’s heart back to God, He said, “I have meat to eat that ye know not of.” The Devil’s meat was to get man’s heart away from God, and God let him have it in a consequent external prostration to himself (as, indeed 1 Cor. x. 20 proves): the Lord Jesus’ meat is to get man’s heart back to God, and a consequent willing joyful worship of Him as Father, not external, but “in spirit and in truth”; forever be His Name adored.