Nahash

For other uses, see Nahash (disambiguation).

Nahash is the generic word for snakes in the Hebrew Bible, although other words are used, including "sarap" and "tannin."

The serpent of Genesis appears in the Garden of Eden to tempt Eve. The first man and woman have been placed in the garden of Yahweh to tend it, but he has warned them not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge "lest you die." The snake tells Eve that this is untrue, and that if she and the man eat the fruit they will have knowledge and will not die. So Adam and Eve eat the fruit, but the knowledge they gain is loss of beast-like innocence, and they are banished from the garden. The snake is punished for its role in their fall by being made to crawl on its belly in the dust, from where it will bite the heel of man.

The legged and speaking serpent of Genesis plays the role of trickster, a sapient animal which shares knowledge with God which is hidden from man. As with other trickster-figures, the gift it brings is ambiguous: Adam and Eve gain knowledge, but lose Eden. The choice of a venomous snake for this role seems to arise from Near Eastern traditions associating snakes with danger and death, magic and secret knowledge, rejuvenation, immortality, and sexuality. It is also possible that the association of the snake with the nude goddess in Canaanite iconography lies behind the scene in the divine garden between the snake and naked Eve, "Mother of all life," seemingly a goddess epithet.^[1]

Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible snakes are, by and large, simply snakes. They do, however, carry additional overtones: "sarap" forms the root of "Seraphim", the "tannin" is also a form of dragon-monster, and serpents frequently appear in religious contexts, sometimes as agents of misfortune, sometimes of God. "Nahash," for example, has associated meanings of divination, including the verb-form meaning to practice divination or fortune-telling. During the Exodus, the staffs of Moses and Aaron are turned into serpents, a "nahash" for Moses, a "tannin" for Aaron; Pharaoh's magicians call on their own gods and do likewise, but the serpents of Moses and Aaron eat the serpents of the Egyptians, thus demonstrating the power of Yahweh. In the wilderness Moses constructs a bronze "nahash" (the Nehushtan) against the bite of the "seraphim", the "burning ones"; this is later destroyed as a symbol of idolatry, although in fact it was probably placed in the Temple as a symbol of Yahweh's healing power. The prophet Isaiah sees a vision of "seraphim" in the Temple itself: but these are divine agents, with wings and human faces, and are probably not to be interpreted as serpent-like so much as flame-like.^[2]

Naham/Nagam is the word used for cobra in Tamil language. The word sarai is used to refer to rat snakes in Tamil language.

See also

• Animal names as first names in Hebrew

References

1. ^ K. van der Toorn, Bob Becking, Pieter Willem van der Horst (eds), "Dictionary of deities and demons in the Bible", pp.746-7
2. ^ K. van der Toorn, Bob Becking, Pieter Willem van der Horst (eds), "Dictionary of deities and demons in the Bible", pp.744-6