The Punishments of the Serpent (Genesis, Chapter 3)

Greetings and blessings

Or HaChaim, Genesis chapter 3, verse 14 

(14) And Hashem Elokim said to the serpent, etc. Three things resulted from its speech. First, it caused the removal of the light of His glory, may He be blessed, which was hovering over Adam and his wife, as we wrote above, and this is the secret of the garments of light.

Second, it caused Adam and Chava to be cut off from this world, so that they would not live forever, as in the punishment written in the verse (2:17), for on the day you eat from it you shall surely die.

Third, it caused that even in the days when they are alive in this world, they would not delight in the garden of Hashem, as stated (verse 24), And He drove out the man.

In correspondence to the three, it was struck with three:

In correspondence to the stripping away of the cloud of glory, which is the aspect of blessing, He said to it, Cursed, etc.

In correspondence to the cutting off of Adam from this world, its legs were severed (Bereishit Rabbah ch. 20), for in relation to Adam they are the aspect of the absence of this world, which is the legs of the world of action. For you should know that if Adam had not eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, he would have existed in this world and in the upper world together, like a person dwelling in a house and an upper story; but when he sinned, he became materialized and cannot dwell in both together, rather in this world by itself, and when he wishes to ascend to the upper story, the material must change, and this is the death of man. For this reason the serpent was deprived of its legs.

And in correspondence to what it caused, to deprive Adam and Chava of the delight of Gan Eden, He said to it, And dust shall you eat, etc. And our sages, of blessed memory, said (Yoma 75a) that whatever it eats will taste only like dust. According to this, the wording of the Holy One, blessed be He, to the serpent at the beginning of His words, Because you have done this, is explained precisely: meaning that the curses with which Hashem curses it are its own actions that it did, and this is exactly what we said; understand:

(15) And enmity, etc. The judge ruled the judgment of the avenger of blood, for since it caused death for all the offspring of the woman, the avenger of blood will pursue and strike the murderer.

With blessing,

Binyamin Shmueli