'The sinners of Genesis 3, like so many after them, imagined themselves greater in the arrogance of their gesture. Were they not making a superhuman challenge against heaven? Rebellion seeks to masquerade as heroism. But it is a laughable disguise, for at the very moment that the sinner is intoxicated with the sense of his own power, he is being manipulated by another mind. In actual fact, sin is defeat. At the same time, it is from another perspective an inversion of the true order of things. The fact that the other party takes on the form of an animal (the text underlines the fact that the snake belonged to that category, Gn.3:1) is not an insignificant detail. Reptiles were part of the animal kingdom over which the man and woman were to have dominion.'
Henri Blocher, In the Beginning, p.142.
