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naming the creatures, had been more at liberty; whatsoever Adam named every living creature, that was the name thereof. He might have called them by other names than he did; he might have fixed this or that sound, just as he inclined to call this or that creature, and therefore had no innate names for any; but, having determined with himself what sound to use for the name of one, and what for another, God Almighty herein not interposing, he was left to himself, and so fixed what he determined for the name of each. But,

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I must confess, that an incident which follows may require our examination before we dismiss this point. If we consider how Eve was affected when the serpent spake to her, we see no reason to think she had any difficulty in understanding any part of what was said to her. She as readily took the meaning of what the ser pent expressed to her, as either she or Adam had before apprehended what had been spoken to them by the voice of God. God doth know, said the serpent, that in the day that ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. God had said nothing to them concerning their eyes being opened, nor their being as gods; and therefore, if they had no farther knowledge of the meaning of words, than of those only which the voice of God had spoken to them; here seem to have been sounds never before heard by them, and how could these be so readily received and apprehended? We

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can in no wise suppose that the serpent had God's power to make his words instantly as intelligible to Eve as he pleased.

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And it will increase the difficulty, if we should consider the words here spoken as bearing not a plain but a metaphorical meaning. Their eyes were to be opened; i. e. say some, their understandings were to be enlarged; open thou mine eyes, said the Psalmist, and I shall see wondrous things from thy law. The Psalmist here prays for what he elsewhere expresses in words without the figure, that God, through his commandments, would make him wiser, would give him more understanding than he should have had without them. And it may seem that, according to Moses, the event of their eyes being opened was, they knew they were naked; they had knowledge of themselves, different from what they had before; so that we may perhaps think, that Moses here used the eye of the body metaphorically, for the sense of the understanding, intending by the opening of the one the increase of the judgment of the other. Now, if this was the meaning of the words of the serpent to Eve, and if Eve thus understood them; we cannot conceive that she had been at this time a mere novice in language, just beginning to form first notions of a few original and plain words. We must rather think her an adept in the tongue which the serpent used, that she had a ready conception of all the elegance of its diction; could give its

e Psalm cxix. 18.

f Ver. 98, 99.

8 Gen. iii. 7.

metaphors' and figurative expression their true meaning; could receive and feel their full and real import. But to all this I answer:

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1. There was no metaphor intended by Moses in the words in which he has expressed what the serpent said to Eve. The diction of the Psalmist is indeed figurative, open thou mine eyes, and I shall see wondrous things from thy law; but the word used for open, is not the same with that of Moses: [gal nainai] says the Psalmist: the word here used is a termination of the verb galah: but Moses expresses the serpent's words to Eve, your eyes shall be opened, B [niphkechu neineicem,'] Moses' word for shall be opened, is a termination of the verb pakach. The Hebrew language has both these verbs, and we render both by the word open; but the one only, namely galah, speaks in the metaphorical sense, means by opening the eye instructing the understanding, either by our forming a better judgment of things, or when God by vision, or in any other manner, was pleased to give an extraordinary revelation. Pakach nain signifies no more than to see, what is the object of the natural eye; and to this meaning it is confined so strictly, that although pakach nain is sometimes said of God, when he is spoken of after the manner of men; yet it is used only where God is said to look upon such outward actions as can come under the observation of

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h Psalm cxix. ubi sup.

k See Numb. xxxiv. 4.

2 Kings iv. 35. vi, 17, 20. Prov. xx. 13.

i Gen. iii. 5.

1 Gen. xxi. 9.

the eye; wherever God is said to regard what can be matter of the attention of the mind only, the expression pakach nain is, I think, not used.

Pakach nain, therefore, carries the intention no farther than to the outward sight; signifies no more than to open the eye of the body: I might say, it has such a propriety to express this and this only, that as facere in Latin may be put as it were idiomatically for to sacrifice,

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So a participle of the verb pakach, without nain (the word for eye) after it, may be used in the Hebrew language for one who has his eye-sight, in opposition to the being blind;" so that we use Hebrew words, not in their Hebrew or true meaning, if we take Moses, by the words he has used, to intend that the serpent had herein said any thing referring farther than to their na tural eye. But,

m See 2 Kings xix. 16. Isa. xxxvii. 17. Dan. ix. 18, &c. n Exodus iv. 11. xxiii. S. • It may perhaps be here questioned, whether the words in this place used by Moses, were the very words spoken by the serpent? Indeed I apprehend they were not, as I do not conceive that Moses' Hebrew was the original unimproved language of the world. See Connect. vol. i. b. ii. But as we have all reason, whether we conceive Moses to have written by an immediate inspiration; or whether, under a divine direction, he wrote from ancient memoirs of his forefathers, which were recorded in an older, and perhaps then obsolete diction; we may and ought to allow, that he expressed in the language of his own

2. Let us observe, that in what the serpent said to Eve, he was for the greater part confined to use the very words, and none other, than what both Eve and Adam had heard and understood from the voice of God; and therefore all these she readily understood as she had before heard and understood them. Accord

ingly, there could be nothing in the serpent's first address to Eve, yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden 2 but what she must have readily understood from God's having said, of every tree of the garden ye may freely eat; only we may remark, that though Moses has in divers places historically called God, Elohim, yet that God not having as yet so named himself to her and Adam, the word Elohim, God, might not have been heard by Eve before the serpent spake it to her. But, if this was in fact true, as there was no other person but one, who had spoken before this to her or Adam, there could be no confusion in her hearing the serpent call him Elohim, God; she must readily understand whom he intended by that name. To go on-The serpent's next words, ye shall not surely die, must instantly, when spoken, be sufficiently understood, from her having understood what God had said before, ye shall surely die; as any

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times, with a strict propriety, what the serpent had spoken in words of the same meaning, though probably of a more antique form, construction, and pronunciation.

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