CONGREGATION MELECH YISRAEL OF TORONTO

On your belly shall you go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. {3:15} I will put enmity between you and the ishah, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel."

Certainly you can take this passage literally; snakes do crawl on their bellies and they do eat dust, in that they have sensors on their tongues which pick-up particles in the air as part of their sensory perception. However, Satan is being referred to here and not an actual snake, as evidenced by verse 15. What I believe HaShem is telling us here is that as of the time of this curse, Satan will be considered less then a dumb animal. In fact the word translated as "cattle" is from the Hebrew "be-hay-ma" which can be translated as "dumb animal." Crawling on his belly and eating dust can, and does even today, refer to a person who is of the lowest moral character in western society.

Man, as a result of his rebellion and disobedience would now be restricted to the physical realm, which I believe was signified by him being thrown out of the Garden. The Gan (Garden of) 'Eden being the utopian state to which restoration Torah and all of Scripture points to:

Bereshit {3:22} HaShem G-D said, "Behold, the ish (man) has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Now, lest he put forth his hand, and also take of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever..." {3:23} Therefore HaShem G-D sent him forth from the Gan 'Eden), to till the ground from whence he was taken. {3:24} So he drove out the man; and he placed Cherubs at the east of the Gan 'Eden, and the flame of a sword which turned every way, to shomer (watch over) the way to the Tree of Life.

Satan’s deceptiveness is something we should all be aware of, and it something we should all be wary of. You might think that HaShem made a mistake in restricting man to the physical realm because now Satan can deceive us without being detected. But to anyone who has been blinded into voting for a deceptive, lying politician who you can see, will know that it really does not make a difference. How many of us have been deceived by a used car salesman or other unscrupulous person? It really makes no difference whether or not we can actually see Satan or not, his deception would work anyway. The point is that HaShem is warning us of Satan’s subtleness and of his deceptive character; we must therefore always be on our guard against deception. Another thing to remember! It is the little things, the small compromises that cause us the most harm.

Shir HaShirim (Song of Songs) {2:15} Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.

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Baruch HaShem
Rabbi Ya'acov Farber