God. The freedom not to trust God becomes the doorway to the loss of freedom itself. And the human being is faced with that choice by the tempting voice of the snake. The snake has often been taken as a symbol for the devil—the Book of Revelation speaks of the devil as that ‘ancient serpent’40 and it well may be that in Genesis some supernatural evil stands behind the voice of the tempting snake. An author who is at home in the world of cherubim with flaming swords would not have difficulty with