The huge red dragon—the ancient serpent, the one called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world…
Revelation 12:3, 9 NET
Strange, isn’t it? To my mind, a dragon and a serpent aren’t the same. Maybe you could say that a dragon has a serpentine-like body or that they’re both reptilian, but that’s about it. After all, snakes don’t have wings, legs, or breathe fire, right? So, how is it that John connects this dragon in Revelation with the ancient serpent of Genesis 3?
To be clear, this topic is a pretty big rabbit trail that we don’t have the space to adequately cover here. In the last post, we looked at the fact that heavenly creatures like cherubim and seraphim were at home with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Since we’re after the question of how a good God could allow pain and suffering, we need to understand why Satan was in the Garden in the first place. And before we get to why God would do such a thing, chasing down what kind of creature Satan is or was will help us better understand why.
We ended the last post indicating that seraphim is a Hebrew word that is often translated “serpent” in our English Bibles. Now, this is not the same Hebrew word used for serpent in Genesis 3. That word is nachash. And again, to our eyes, serpents and seraphim (see Is. 6) and dragons are dramatically different creatures. But the Hebrew writers of the Old Testament leave plenty of purposeful ambiguity in the terminology they used for serpents that leave an opening for John to call Satan both a dragon and a serpent.
The mysteriousness of the “serpent” terminology in the Old Testament begins in Exodus. In Exodus 7:15, God tells Moses to take the staff that had been turned into a serpent (nachash) before Pharaoh. However, just a few verses earlier (7:9-10), that same staff had been turned into a tannin, not a nachash. Tannin is the Hebrew word used in Genesis 1:21 and Psalm 148:7 to describe the great sea creatures or sea monsters that God had created. Sea serpents, perhaps?
The serpent (nachash) of Genesis 3 gains further mysteriousness in Numbers 21. After the Israelites had sinned, God sent “fiery serpents” (Nu. 21:6 ESV) among them. But these same creatures are referred to as both nachash and seraphim (Nu. 21:6-7, 9). Remember the seraphim flying around God’s throne from Isaiah 6? For the writers of the Old Testament, plenty of semantic overlap exists between sea monsters, snakes, and flying heavenly seraphim.
Isaiah combines more of this terminology in Isaiah 27:1, this time lumping in Leviathan (famous from Job 41) and a dragon.
In that day the LORD with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent [nachash], Leviathan the twisting serpent [nachash], and he will slay the dragon [tannin] that is in the sea.
Isaiah 27:1 ESV
Interestingly, the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible in use when John wrote Revelation) uses the Greek word drakon to translate the Hebrew word tannin (great sea creatures/monsters) in Isaiah 27:1. Look familiar? Drakon is where we get our English word “dragon.”
This explains how John could connect the dots to understand Satan as both a dragon and a serpent. John knew his Old Testament. But how does this affect how we should read the serpent (nachash) of Genesis 3? Did Satan show up as a dragon or a sea monster or as a heavenly seraphim with six wings when Eve saw him?
Scholars and non-scholars alike enjoy debating these things. Quite frankly, we don’t really know exactly what that video camera footage would have looked like. Scripture purposely leaves the semantic range of the “serpent” open to be capable of including all the nuances that we’ve covered. It allows the Scriptural writers lots of creative space to emphasize and highlight the devil and his impact on the world, as well as the devil’s place in the story we live in. The devil is at war with humanity and will ultimately be crushed by humanity (Gen. 3:15, Rom. 16:20). (Remember, Jesus became a human so humanity could defeat the devil.) But the devil will also be punished by God (Is. 27:1, Rev. 20).
If we’re wondering how a good God could allow pain and suffering, then part of our question has to be why a good God would allow Satan in the Garden in the first place. On the simple side, as we’ve seen, Eden was Heaven on earth. Satan was a heavenly creature (Rev. 12:8), so Eden was his home. Or, if we consider him an earthly creature since Genesis 3:1 described him as a “beast of the field,” even the beasts of the field were brought into Eden where Adam was (Gen. 2:8, 19). To play devil’s advocate (bad pun intended), why would a good God keep a heavenly (or earthly) creature out of Eden, the land of Heaven on earth?
This question leaves us with two potential questions about God, depending on your view of Satan’s fall. As some believe, if Satan’s fall in Revelation 12 was primeval (before the creation of the world), why would God allow a bad guy in the land of Heaven on earth to deceive Eve? Or, as others believe, if Genesis 3 was Satan’s fall narrative, why would a good God allow Satan in Eden if He knew Satan would make a bad choice?
It seems to me that there are some pretty high stakes here for understanding what God is like. So, before we can ask why a good God would allow Satan in the Garden with Adam and Eve, perhaps we better chase down whether Satan was or wasn’t a bad guy when God created humanity.
Up Next: The Problem of Pain: 8. When was Satan kicked out of Heaven?
Epic Gospel 