These are all wounds, which have been inflicted on nature on account of sin; just in the same way we have lost the glory of our nakedness, the rectitude of our will and the soundness of our intellect and understanding. I believe also, that the serpent lost much of his subtlety, which Moses here lauds, as a distinguishing gift of God. Moreover, I believe that in the same proportion as the serpent is now an evil creature amidst the beasts, so it was then a good creature; and a blessed and lovely creature; a creature with which not man only, but all the other beasts also, lived in perfect freedom and with great pleasure. The serpent therefore was a creature, the best adapted of all the other living creatures for the purpose of Satan. By it he could secure the most easy access to Eve, and could the most effectually converse with her so as to draw her into sin. Such is my opinion concerning the natural serpent, the beautiful nature of which Satan planned thus to abuse. I believe it was originally a most beautiful creature, without any poison in its tail and without those filthy scales with which it is now covered. For these grew upon it after the sin of the fall. Hence we find it a precept given by Moses that any beast, which should kill any person, should itself immediately be killed, Exod. 21:28; and for no other reason than because Satan sinned by using a beast when he murdered man. Hence also a serpent is killed wherever found, as a lasting memorial of this diabolical malice and this fall of man, wrought by his means. With reference to the grammatical expression here used, the Latin interpreter renders the Hebrew APHKI by cur. Though this rendering is not very wide of the real sense of the passage, yet it does not convey the true and proper meaning. For it is the highest and greatest of all temptations, when a dispute is entered upon, concerning the counsel of God, why God did this or that. But my judgment is, that the weight of the matter does not rest on this particle of expression why? or wherefore? But rather on the name God, ELOHIM. It is this that constitutes the greatness and awfulness of the temptation.