Q:
This question I have is very complicated I think. When Hashem punished the nachash that it would crawl on its belly and eat dust there was only one nachash. But today we have many types of nachashim and they all crawl on their bellies and eat dust. Now if evolution did not happen, how is it that we have all these different types of nachashim?
A:
Now, listen to my peirush. The nachash wasn’t the only nachash that was created. From the beginning Hakadosh Baruch Hu made nachashim; He made all kinds of snakes. This nachash however wasn’t an ordinary snake. It was the yetzer hara, the satan hamashchis, who was clothed in a certain garb. He was able to speak and able to walk, and he wasn’t a snake at all. Why do we call him a nachash? Because that was his end, his punishment.
You know Nevuchadnetzar was a king but at one time because of his sins he was condemned to be a wild animal and so he crept on all fours. He lived like a wild animal for some time until Hashem had pity on him and restored him. Also the nachash. At the beginning he was almost human. He had a very brilliant mind. And he was created for the purpose of testing men, testing them. However, after the fall of mankind was achieved, Adam and Chava sinned, so Hakadosh Baruch Hu wanted to demonstrate that since this nachash was the cause of their downfall, He’s sentencing him to crawl on his belly like an ordinary nachash. That’s all. Not that he was the first nachash.
And therefore now we see a snake, any snake we see, we’re supposed to think how contemptible, how despicable it is to yield to the yetzer hara. That’s what’s going to happen to people who follow the evil inclination. They’ll become like a reptile. It’s a sentence.
Now it doesn’t mean the yetzer hara died. The yetzer hara continued to be in every other form. Sometimes the yetzer hara could appear like a man, like a goy, like a woman, even like a talmid chacham sometimes – כתלמיד חכם נדמה לו it says in one place. The yetzer hara could look like a talmid chacham too sometimes. Hakadosh Baruch Hu gives him all kinds of guises.
That’s why when Yaakov asked the malach “What’s your name?” the malach said, “Don’t ask my name”, because the yetzer hara has all kinds of names. There’s not one name for the yetzer hara. He wasn’t a snake.
And therefore even before the nachash became a snake there were snakes of all kinds around. Only this nachash, because he was the source of Adam’s sin, he was sentenced to be like a snake.
December 1988
