***
To make a long story short, Adam blamed the Fall of Man on Eve.
Eve blamed the snake.
I hurried away, hoping to shed my snake disguise.
I was not quick enough. Yahveh grabbed me by the neck. "You snake!" He shouted. "Because you have done this thing, you are cursed!" (Gen. 3:14).
He shook me so hard He nearly broke my spine.
But then, instead of cursing me, the Lord began cursing snakes. Go figure! His voice thundered from one side of Eden to the other. Every snake in the Garden heard Him: "You snakes are hereby cursed!" he bellowed. "Cursed beyond all livestock! You are cursed beyond all the beasts of the field! Upon your belly you shall go, nevermore standing erect! and you shall eat dirt all the days of your life...." (Gen. 3:15-19).
(A word from Lucifer to every snake who ever lived, crawled, and ate dirt: I'm sorry, fellas, it wasn't really your fault. I should have told Him I wasn't really a snake, but His anger frightened me. I feared He would bite off my head and tie me in a Windsor knot, and wear me in Heaven for a necktie. You cannot talk to Him when He is in one of those moods. But I really should have told Him that you snakes were not to blame.)
Yahveh threw me to the ground in disgust, wiped his hand on His toga, and turned toward Eve. I slithered on my belly into the bushes, but I could still hear the Lord shouting. He cursed Eve with the Bible's infamous "triple curse" on women: 1. pain in childbirth, 2. subservience to men forevermore, and 3. fear of snakes (Gen. 3:16).
Adam stood there listening with his arms folded and a smug grin on his face. He agreed with Yahveh that Snake and Eve were the two main culprits.
But then the Lord turned to Adam. "You!" said God.
Adam suddenly erased that fruit-eating grin from his face and dropped to his knees.
"You!" said God, again. "Because you listened to your wife, you ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'Thou shalt not eat of it.' Now, therefore, cursed is the whole Earth because of you! Only through painful toil shall you eat hereafter. I curse you with work outside the home, all the days of your life – plus a worse thing" (Gen. 3:17-19),
"Labor by the sweat of my brow all the days of my life?" asked Adam, with a note of self-pity. "What thing could be worse than that?"
--L.
("What could be worse than that?" Tune in tomorrow!)
