Bible Questions and Answers

A visitor writes,

"Can you explained Genesis 3:14 with verses and references and concise explanation"

Genesis 3:14 So the LORD God said to the serpent: "Because you have done this, You are cursed more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you shall go, And you shall eat dust All the days of your life.
The serpent was an animal created by God with greater intelligence than the other creatures and endowed with the power of speech such that it could converse with Eve.
Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made… 
Using Strongs Concordance:
Cunning <06175> ערום ‘aruwm pass. part. of <06191>; adj;  
Translated in the KJV – ‘prudent’ 8 times, ‘crafty’ 2 times, subtil 1 time 
Meaning:
1) subtle, shrewd, crafty, sly, sensible 
1a) crafty 
1b) shrewd, sensible, prudent.
Adam had been given one commandment to keep. 
Failure to keep this commandment would be punished by death.
Genesis 2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 17  "but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
The serpent knew this.
Genesis 3:1… And he said to the woman, "Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?" 2  And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; 3  "but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’" 4  Then the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. 5  "For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
I think we must conclude that the serpent didn’t understand that death would come as a judicial punishment but reasoned that the fruit was not poisonous (nothing in the Garden was) and therefore eating of it wouldn’t cause them to die. Further, as God (and the angels) had ‘the knowledge of good and evil’, eating of the fruit would make them ‘like God’ in this respect.
The serpent was part of the creation described as ‘very good’.
Genesis 1:31 Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good…
Created ‘very good’ the serpent had no evil intention in speaking to Eve, it simply used it’s animal reasoning to arrive at the wrong conclusion. 
In opposing the words of God with animal reasoning, the serpent became the symbolic representation of the descendants of Adam and Eve who would disobey God’s commandments and do evil.
Thus, we have the description by Jesus:
Matthew 23:33  "You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell (Gehenna)?
We are given the prophecy concerning the ‘seed’ of the woman versus the ‘seed’ of the serpent. This is the first prophecy concerning the Messiah (born of a woman without a man) who would undo the consequences of the serpent’s deception.
Genesis 3:14 So the LORD God said to the serpent: "Because you have done this, You are cursed more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you shall go, And you shall eat dust All the days of your life. 15  And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel."
The form the serpent was created in was changed to that we see today. Snakes are no longer ‘more cunning than any beast of the field’ and go about ‘on their belly’ as a visual reminder of the consequence of ‘animal reasoning’ in opposition to God.
We might also conclude that the creation of the serpent was to put Adam and Eve to the test – created with freedom of choice, would they believe and obey God or not?
The same choice we have today.
I hope this helps,
God bless.
Glenn