Genesis 3:1-5
Yea, hath God said
The opening move is a question with one word wrong in it. The denial only comes after the answer has already been unsettled.
People of the Bible
The serpent and the accuser
Opens with a question about what God actually said, and is last seen losing a court case he brought himself.
Genesis introduces him as an animal, more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made, and gives him no origin story at all. His method is one sentence long: yea, hath God said. He does not contradict first, he asks, and the answer Eve gives has a phrase added to it that was never in the command. Only at the very end of the Bible are the threads tied together, when the dragon is called that old serpent, the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of The serpent and the accuser
- 01
- 02
Job 1:6-12
Doth Job fear God for nought
The charge is not against Job but against the worth of his devotion. The limits set on it are stated precisely and he keeps to them.
- 03
Zechariah 3:1-5
Standing at his right hand to resist him
The high priest is clothed with filthy garments and the accusation is true. The reply is not a denial but a change of clothing and a rebuke.
- 04
Revelation 12:9-10
The accuser of our brethren
Four names are given in one verse, and the work is described as accusing them before our God day and night. The casting down is what ends it.
- 05
Revelation 20:1-10
That old serpent
The last chapter about him closes the first: the same creature, bound, loosed, and finally cast into the lake of fire.
Why it matters
The Old Testament mostly shows him in a courtroom. In Job he appears among the sons of God and asks whether Job fears God for nothing, which is a question about motive, and he is allowed to test it. In Zechariah he stands at the right hand of Joshua the high priest to resist him, and loses when the filthy garments are removed rather than defended. The accusation is always technically accurate and always answered by a change of clothes rather than a change of verdict. Revelation names the pattern: the accuser of our brethren, which accused them before our God day and night.
14 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
