Genesis 3:1

Summary

The verse introduces the nachash ("snake", H5175) as more shrewd than any other field animal made by Yehovah God, and reports its opening question to the woman, questioning whether God had really prohibited eating from every tree of the garden.

Key words

• nachash ("snake", H5175) — masculine singular noun with definite article ha (H9009), the grammatical subject of the sentence.
• 'arum ("shrewd", H6175) — masculine singular adjective, predicate describing the nachash; forms a comparative construction with the following min (H9006, "more than").
• chayyat ("animal of", H2416C) — feminine singular construct noun, linking to ha-sadeh ("the field", H7704G) to form "animal of the field."
• 'asah ("he had made", H6213H) — qal perfect verb, completed action, introduced by the relative particle 'asher ("which", H0834A), describing what Yehovah God had done.
• tokhelu ("you must eat", H0398) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural, negated by lo' ("not", H3808), expressing an ongoing/future prohibition quoted within the snake's question.

What the text says

The verse opens with the conjunction ve ("and", H9002) attached to ha-nachash, syntactically linking this clause to the preceding narrative while introducing a new subject. The predicate hayah 'arum ("was shrewd") uses the qal perfect of hayah ("to be", H1961) plus the adjective 'arum, establishing a state rather than an action. The comparative phrase mikkol chayyat ha-sadeh ("more than every animal of the field") uses the construct chain kol chayyat ("every animal of") to place the nachash in a hierarchy among creatures Yehovah God had made — expressed by the qal perfect 'asah ("he had made") governed by the relative particle 'asher.

The narrative then shifts with the narrative vav prefixed to yomer ("he said", H0559), a form that in Biblical Hebrew signals sequential action ("and then he said"). The snake's speech opens with the combination 'af ki (H0637 + H3588A), rendered here as "indeed... that," introducing an indirect or rhetorical question about a prior divine statement. The quoted prohibition uses lo' tokhelu — negation plus qal imperfect second-person plural — indicating an ongoing or general command rather than a single completed act. The phrase mikkol 'etz ha-gan ("from any tree of the garden") repeats the construct pattern seen earlier (kol + noun), extending the totalizing scope of the question from "every animal" to "any tree."

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) opens with an additional sentence about Adam and his wife being naked and unashamed, which is not present in the Hebrew word list given for this verse; it also duplicates the phrase "τῶν θηρίων" twice. The Hebrew 'af ki ("indeed, that") is rendered in the LXX as "Τί ὅτι" ("Why is it that"), and in the Vulgate as "Cur praecepit" ("Why did he command"), while the Hebrew construction is a particle combination rather than an interrogative "why." The Vulgate also renders chayyat ha-sadeh ("animal of the field") as "animantibus terrae" ("living things of the earth"), shifting "field" to "earth."