Genesis 3:1

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’? ”

From Background Notes [BN] for May 19^th & 20^th written by Pastor Bob Brown:

1. The Serpent symbolizes Sin in its personified form and reveals the chaos already lurking within the creation order even before Adam and his wife eat the forbidden fruit. In the ancient world, talking animals generally refer to "the gods,"…

… but in this case the reader is given no additional information about "the serpent" (Hebrew: nāḥāš, ) except that it was "more crafty" (Hebrew: ‘ārûm, "crafty, shrewd, subtle, prudent" usually in a good sense). Whereas the Hebrew word doesn't necessarily refer to evil intent, in this case, the idea of "trickery" may also be involved. Or as Derek Kidner describes the serpent as having "malevolent brilliance."1 It is this clever creature who approaches the woman and engages her in conversation even though it is not her peer (Genesis 2:20b). Recall that among the animals no peer was found for Adam, and thus, likely, the Genesis writer intends to tell us none for the woman either. The serpent comes to the woman as a creature below her in the hierarchy of living things, and yet it presumes to converse with her as if it were her husband.

2. Allowing this conversation to take place, the woman enters dangerous territory, for she is permitting a nonhuman to influence her thinking. Presumably this creature, though sentient and apparently rational, does not have the divine image as the woman and her husband do. Her first obligation is to God and the second is to her husband. With regard to God, she must actively exercise her image-of-God qualities and take charge of this intruder into the garden of God, exercising dominion over it. With regard to her husband, she must consult with him as a peer, seeking wisdom and insight together as a married couple.

3. The consequence of the misguided process on which both man and woman embark is that the knowledge which they acquire ("the eyes of both were opened…") does not give them an advantage within creation but subjects them to an awful truth about themselves. Acting alone and in isolation from the creation covenant, the woman and her husband lose their innocence and acquire shame in its place. One fundamental element in their marriage union has been breeched: intimacy through complete openness is replaced by shame through a fabricated privacy ("they sewed fig leaves…"). Shamelessness through innocence is displaced by secrecy through inventiveness. What enables a return to companionship involves a considerable loss in the original marriage covenant. While Adam and his wife are not technically divorced, their  fellowship virtually is.

4. The use of the word "naked" is instructive for it comes from the Hebrew word ‘ērōm which shares its root with the previous word ‘ārûm which described the cleverness of the serpent. That is, the two words sound very much alike, a feature sometimes called their "assonance." Such a literary device creates a connection between the words ― a play-on-words ― in which the cleverness of the serpent led to the sense of nakedness for the human pair.

Temporarily aided by their technical skills ("fig leaves"), the man and his wife remain hidden from Yahweh God who, as the "Spirit of the Day,"2 seeks them out. God is unwilling to have humankind hidden from Himself. [BN, 2-3]

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