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Reader,
We left off in the garden, where day after day,
man and woman lived in harmony—
frolicking in the flowers and fields of a flourishing friendship.
Until one day…
🐍 a slippery tongued serpent showed up.
Genesis 3:1 describes the serpent as “the most cunning of all the wild animals.”
In classic predator fashion, it starts by identifying and honing in on its target.
Although there were plenty of other creatures available, it chose to engage the humans.
It drew them into conversation with a question:
“Did God really say, ‘You can’t eat from any tree in the garden’?” Also known as manipulative inquiry or baited curiosity,
this is a classic predatory tactic—
a question not used to seek truth, but to:
- Provoke doubt
- Destabilize reality
- Elicit information
- Gain emotional proximity
- Lower the target’s defenses
It’s a soft relational entry point,
designed to make the target feel seen or engaged,
while subtly planting confusion.
The serpent isn’t just asking this question randomly— its offered with surgical precision,
already warping God’s original directive while pretending to be puzzled, concerned or genuinely curious.
The woman, perhaps being of a friendly, trusting, and helpful nature, perhaps speaking up to correct him or
defend the truth of God's character, answers:
“We may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden.
But about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden,
God said, ‘You must not eat it or touch it, or you will die.’”
The serpent responded:
“No! You will certainly not die. In fact, God knows that when you eat it
your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So, why ask the question if it already had the answer?
Because this was a whole setup.
The serpent wasn't just winging it.
He reverse-engineered the entire conversation, starting with his end goal and working backwards to craft each manipulative move. This wasn't opportunistic evil - this was a strategic, calculated, premeditated annihilation.
Not to frighten you, but in this short reply, the serpent unleashes a devastating barrage of predatory tactics—each one strategically aimed at a different vulnerability.
The common purpose? To distort, destabilize and disconnect her from love, truth, and her own sense of self.
Look at the sheer scope of the attack:
- Gaslighting: He directly contradicts what she knows to be true
- Authority undermining: He smears God’s character, implying God is selfish, deceptive, and withholding good things from her.
- Identity displacement: He suggests she’s inadequate as she is—that her current state of being isn’t enough.
- Forbidden knowledge seduction: He promises wisdom, understanding, and godlike knowledge that’s supposedly being kept from her.
- Value weaponization: He exploits her God-given desires for nourishment, beauty, and wisdom—twisting good impulses into his trap
But notice—each tactic reinforces the others.
The contradiction triggers confusion, the character assassination makes her distrust,
the assertion of inadequacy makes her vulnerable, and the promised knowledge exploits her fear of missing out.
It’s not just a handful of separate lies—it’s a strategically coordinated psychological assault.
The serpent systematically dismantles every anchor she has:
what she knows, who she trusts, how she sees herself, and what she desires.
Pause and picture this woman in this moment.
Her reality has just been blasted with surgical precision from "the most cunning of all the wild animals".
She's been told that the God she trusts is actually withholding good things from her—
that what she's been led to believe is dangerous, is actually the key to a more desirable life.
(I wonder, does she even know what a lie is?)
And her trusted companion—the one who was here before she was,
and from whose flesh and bone she was crafted from;
the one whom she could reasonably expect to intervene if something was 'off',
who just the other day was composing love poetry about her—
stands there in complete silence.
She's not stupid. She's not wicked. She's not weak-willed.
She's making choices based on the totality of the circumstances as she believed them to be in that moment.
She relies on what she can see,
which has been carefully framed by the one who already has her believing the lie he planted.
So what does she do?
“The woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” Oh, woman.
She trusted the words of a serpent and the silence of a man rather than the love of the God who was behind her—
the One from whom she came, the One who gave the original boundary.
She wasn’t tempted by lust for power or rank rebellion.
It appealed to her good, human desires— for nourishment, for beauty, for wisdom.
These weren’t evil desires. They were God-given.
Evil simply exploited them for its own ends.
The woman genuinely chose—
but her choice was based on systematically distorted information and exploitation of her values.
Her understanding of the reality itself had been diabolically reframed.
Also known as engineered consent,
this is how manipulation completes its arc while maintaining plausible deniability.
This tactic works because it:
- Leverages natural desires (hunger, beauty, wisdom)
- Twists trust into extraction of a desired outcome
- Presents what’s harmful as what’s helpful
- Blurs the line between victimization and willing participant
- Relies on the silence of those who could’ve intervened
This is what predators do.
They twist and manipulate what is beautiful, good, and sacred
to work us over according to their concealed agenda.
The Silent Observer
And the man from whose bone she was fashioned—
the one who was so recently wonderstruck and bursting with joy at her existence,
poetically professing his gratitude and delight at finally having an ezer kenegdo—
Watched this whole tragic scene unfold.
And said nothing. Did nothing.
Watched as his beloved ezer kenegdo was victimized in broad daylight by the most diabolical con-artist to ever exist.
He knew what God had told him about fruit from that tree.
He wasn’t deceived in the slightest.
Need that fact checked?
I like receipts too, so I've got you:
“Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and transgressed.” (1 Timothy 2:14) Let this sink in—because if it’s true,
the implications are many, and the clarity is liberating.
There is no evidence that this man was manipulated, deceived, or bamboozled in any way.
So, with no undue influence and with full mental, emotional, and physical sobriety...
He chose silence.
He chose complicity.
He chose collusion with evil in the betrayal of his beloved.
He chose to let her die-
watching her being systematically deceived about something that would kill her,
while knowing the truth about it himself.
And then–
only after seeing that she ate and didn't die,
he chose to share in the bite-sized fruity spoils that came
from the exploitation and betrayal of his own flesh and bone,
his ezer kenegdo.
Disappointed, depressed and devastated,
Camille
ps. All un-notated Scripture is from Genesis 3 (CSB).
Bonus points if you pull out your Bible and fact-check me.
Drink something strong while you do, because this is...this is harrowing.
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