As promised, I’m going to continue the topic the serpent in the Garden. In my last post, I went over how the Hebrew language points to the fact that this wasn’t a serpent, but a supernatural being. More specifically, it was a shining, snake-like (which I’ll explain in my next post), divining being who Eve would have believed belonged with her in the Garden. Why do I say that? How could a fallen being of any kind be expected to be in the Garden of Eden? Well, we’re going to look at that today by studying two other passages that seem to recount the event that led to the sinful fall of Adam and Eve.
As in past posts, I am going to be referencing The Unseen Realm by Michael Heiser quite a bit. I feel like he does a great job of explaining how these two texts relate directly to Genesis 3 and how they bring the nachash into sharper focus. With that, let’s look at the first passage.
The first of these two passages is going to be Ezekiel 28:1-19. I’m not going to quote it all because it is pretty long, so please look it up for yourself. I will, however, hit a few of the key phrases and ideas. So, what is this passage about? Well, first and foremost, it is, as the heading in the ESV says, a prophecy against the prince of Tyre. Tyre was Phoenician city on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, and clearly God was going to bring a judgment upon its prince.
In this passage, Ezekiel starts out in verses 1-10 clearly talking about a human ruler. In verses 2 and 9, Ezekiel points out that this ruler has claimed to a be god, but Yahweh is going to use a foreign nation (v. 7) to destroy him. There is nothing unusual about this passage. This is something that we see God do several times in the Old Testament . . . even to Israel and Judah! What is unusual is how Ezekiel continues.
There is a break in the prophecy, and in verse 11, the word of God comes to Ezekiel again, telling Ezekiel to lament over the prince of Tyre. What follows doesn’t seem to be about this prince, but about someone (or something) else. In verses 12-13, Ezekiel says, “. . . You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God . . .” This is important. I think that we can say that a ruler of a city during the 6th century B.C. was probably not ever the “signet of perfection,” nor were they in “Eden, the garden of God.”
Ezekiel goes on to describe this being as being covered in precious stones and gold. There is some debate on what this means. Some say that it describes the breastplate of the High Priest. I don’t think that is the case, but maybe I’ll talk about it more some other time . . . just not today. Rather, it seems to me that this description describes the shining appearance of whoever Ezekiel is talking about. We see the same idea applied to God on His throne in Revelation 4:3. Anyway, the point of this is that this being that Ezekiel is talking about is shiny. Sound familiar?
What else does this passage say about this being? Well, God calls him an “anointed guardian cherub,” and says, “You were on the holy mountain of God.” So here we see that God calls him a cherub. “What is a cherub,” you might ask. Well, it is not a cute, chubby, little baby with wings like a Precious Moments figurine or what you might see in paintings. No, a cherub (cherubim in plural form) was one of the highest levels of the divine beings.
If we look at Ezekiel 10, the cherubim seem to be the same “living creatures” who surrounded the throne in Ezekiel 1. They are “guardian cherubim,” or cherubim who guard the throne of God. Bernard F. Batto, in his book In the Beginning: Essays on Creation Motifs in the Ancient Near East and the Bible, says, “The ‘serpent’ [was] a semi-divine creature with wings and feet like the seraphs in Isa 6:2, whose function was to guard sacred persons and sacred objects such as the tree of divine wisdom.” So, the being that Ezekiel is writing about here seems to be one of these divine throne guardians – a cherub.
I could go on and talk about some more, but I will leave it at this (so as not to write a novel here): This being was proud and filled with violence because of his beauty and splendor. When paired with the part about the prince of Tyre above, it seems that Ezekiel is using the story of this cherub’s (who was in Eden) pride and arrogance to talk about the prince’s idea that he is equal to God. In that way, we can say that this divine being was doing the same thing, and we can see this as another account of what transpired in the Garden between the serpent and Eve. There is, however, debate on who exactly this being is, but I can’t get into that here.
The second passage is Isaiah 14. Unlike Ezekiel 28, scholars are nearly unanimous in believing that this is about the serpent of Genesis 3. Isaiah 14:3-23 are a taunt of the king of Babylon. Most of it seems to be straightforward and directed at the actual king. There is, however, a small section in the middle where Isaiah seems to be envisioning someone other than the king of Babylon . . . a divine rebel from the past.
In v. 12, Isaiah writes, “How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn!” This is the passage where we get the word Lucifer, which is a Latin translation of “Day Star.” Here we see this being has fallen from heaven, and is called the Day Star (or Morning Star in some translations) which is like in Job 38:7 where the sons of God are called morning stars. The Hebrew is different though. In Isaiah it says helel ben-shachar, which literally means “shining one, son of the dawn.” (Unseen Realm, 85).
This “shining one” wanted to be above the stars of heaven. This means that he wanted to rule over the heavenly host, a thing that only God can do. He wanted to take the place of God, making himself “like the Most-High.” He wanted to “sit on the mountain of assembly on the summit of Zaphon.” Now, there is a lot in that little sentence, but basically, he is saying that he wants to take God’s throne and rule over the divine council. The summit of the mountain of assembly would be where God is enthroned, above the stars (the heavenly host).
Ok, so those are the passages I wanted to look at. Let me take just a little bit here to tie this all up and make sense of it. We saw in the last post that the serpent was really a shiny divine being. In these two passages, what we see is a shiny divine being, in Eden, who sees himself to be equal to God and deserving of His place of authority. This being wants to take that authority, but God stops him and casts him down, out of Eden, to the pit.
I don’t know about you, but when I put all of that together, what I see is that the serpent in the Garden was this same being who, trying to usurp God’s authority, deceived God’s beloved humans in order to separate them from God forever. This helel ben-shachar is the serpent of Eden, and both Ezekiel and Isaiah used the story of this divine rebellion in Eden to show the depths of evil and pride that were responsible for God’s judgment on the rulers of Tyre and Babylon.
There is SO much more I want to say here, but this is too long already. My next post is going to go more into the cultural background of all of this and more into the throne guardian idea. Anyway, this was a lot, but I hope it was interesting. I hope that it helps you to see how so much of the Bible is interconnected. Anyway, I love you all. Thanks for reading my ramblings, and I hope you all have an amazing day!
Uncovering the Bible 