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Wednesday, October 7, 2026

Bereshis 7

Corrections
  • [17:02] The story of the snake and the heel is Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa, not Shimon ben Shetach (Berachos 33a).
  • [41:15] Confirmed: Adam gave seventy of his years to King David (Pirkei d'Rabbi Eliezer 19).

Bereshis 3:14–19 tells of the curses that followed the sin of the Tree of Knowledge. The serpent, Chava and Adam each receive ten curses, and many of them match the sin they punish, measure for measure. One idea keeps coming back: the serpent's sin was a sin of speech, and that is why its punishments carry such a strong warning about lashon hara (speaking badly about others). It all ends on death itself: why it came into the world, how it also cleanses a person, why Adam still lived 930 years, and the promise that in the days of Mashiach death will be swallowed up forever.

The pesukim

Bereshis 3:14–15

וַיֹּ֩אמֶר֩ יְהֹוָ֨ה אֱלֹהִ֥ים ׀ אֶֽל־הַנָּחָשׁ֮ כִּ֣י עָשִׂ֣יתָ זֹּאת֒ אָר֤וּר אַתָּה֙ מִכׇּל־הַבְּהֵמָ֔ה וּמִכֹּ֖ל חַיַּ֣ת הַשָּׂדֶ֑ה עַל־גְּחֹנְךָ֣ תֵלֵ֔ךְ וְעָפָ֥ר תֹּאכַ֖ל כׇּל־יְמֵ֥י חַיֶּֽיךָ׃

God said to the serpent, "Because you did this, cursed are you more than all the livestock and all the wild beasts. On your belly you shall crawl, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

וְאֵיבָ֣ה ׀ אָשִׁ֗ית בֵּֽינְךָ֙ וּבֵ֣ין הָֽאִשָּׁ֔ה וּבֵ֥ין זַרְעֲךָ֖ וּבֵ֣ין זַרְעָ֑הּ ה֚וּא יְשׁוּפְךָ֣ רֹ֔אשׁ וְאַתָּ֖ה תְּשׁוּפֶ֥נּוּ עָקֵֽב׃

I will plant hatred between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike you in the head, and you will strike him in the heel."

Hashem tells the serpent that because it did this, it is cursed more than all the livestock and wild beasts. It will crawl on its belly and eat dust all the days of its life, and there will be hatred between it and the woman. A person will strike its head, and it will strike his heel. These verses hold ten curses, each one matching what the serpent did. The first curse is that angels cut off its hands and feet. A murderer is someone who lets himself be dragged after his passions, and the serpent let its passions drag it into bringing death to Adam and Chava. So from now on it has to drag itself along the ground.
Bereshis 3:16

אֶֽל־הָאִשָּׁ֣ה אָמַ֗ר הַרְבָּ֤ה אַרְבֶּה֙ עִצְּבוֹנֵ֣ךְ וְהֵֽרֹנֵ֔ךְ בְּעֶ֖צֶב תֵּֽלְדִ֣י בָנִ֑ים וְאֶל־אִישֵׁךְ֙ תְּשׁ֣וּקָתֵ֔ךְ וְה֖וּא יִמְשׇׁל־בָּֽךְ׃

To the woman He said, "I will greatly increase your anguish and your pregnancy. It will be with anguish that you will give birth to children. Your passion will be to your husband, and he will dominate you."

To the woman Hashem says that He will greatly increase her anguish and her pregnancy, that she will give birth in pain, and that her desire will be for her husband, who will rule over her. The Me'am Loez counts ten curses here, drawing on the Gemara in Eruvin 100b, though in its own order and with a few curses the Gemara does not count. They begin with the monthly cycle and the pain of pregnancy, birth and raising children, and they end with death. Hashem also gave women three mitzvos that answer the sin of bringing death into the world: the laws of niddah (family purity), separating challah, and lighting Shabbos candles.
Bereshis 3:17–19

וּלְאָדָ֣ם אָמַ֗ר כִּֽי־שָׁמַ֘עְתָּ֮ לְק֣וֹל אִשְׁתֶּ֒ךָ֒ וַתֹּ֙אכַל֙ מִן־הָעֵ֔ץ אֲשֶׁ֤ר צִוִּיתִ֙יךָ֙ לֵאמֹ֔ר לֹ֥א תֹאכַ֖ל מִמֶּ֑נּוּ אֲרוּרָ֤ה הָֽאֲדָמָה֙ בַּֽעֲבוּרֶ֔ךָ בְּעִצָּבוֹן֙ תֹּֽאכְלֶ֔נָּה כֹּ֖ל יְמֵ֥י חַיֶּֽיךָ׃

To Adam He said, "You listened to your wife, and ate from the tree regarding which I specifically gave you orders, saying, 'Do not eat from it.' The ground will therefore be cursed because of you. You will derive food from it with anguish all the days of your life.

וְק֥וֹץ וְדַרְדַּ֖ר תַּצְמִ֣יחַֽ לָ֑ךְ וְאָכַלְתָּ֖ אֶת־עֵ֥שֶׂב הַשָּׂדֶֽה׃

It will bring forth thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the grass of the field.

בְּזֵעַ֤ת אַפֶּ֙יךָ֙ תֹּ֣אכַל לֶ֔חֶם עַ֤ד שֽׁוּבְךָ֙ אֶל־הָ֣אֲדָמָ֔ה כִּ֥י מִמֶּ֖נָּה לֻקָּ֑חְתָּ כִּֽי־עָפָ֣ר אַ֔תָּה וְאֶל־עָפָ֖ר תָּשֽׁוּב׃

By the sweat of your brow you will eat bread. Finally you will return to the ground, for it was from [the ground] that you were taken. You are dust, and to dust you shall return."

To Adam Hashem says that because he listened to his wife and ate from the forbidden tree, the ground is cursed for his sake. It will grow thorns and thistles, he will eat bread by the sweat of his brow, and in the end he will return to the dust he was taken from. The Pirkei d'Rabbi Eliezer counts ten curses for Adam here, and the last and heaviest is death. If Adam had not eaten from the tree, people would have lived forever. Now no one can escape death, and the body, which is mostly earth, goes back to the earth.

English from The Living Torah by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, used with the permission of the Kaplan family. Hebrew: Miqra according to the Masorah (CC BY-SA).

Takeaways

  • It is not the snake that kills, it is sin: a person who guards himself from sin has nothing to fear.
  • Be careful with the 'small' mitzvos people trample on, like needless talk about others and careless oaths, because that is exactly where the snake gets its bite.
  • Lashon hara is so serious that even Mashiach's healing will not reach someone who speaks it without full teshuvah, so repent now and stop.
  • When you look at your fingernails at Havdalah, remember the shining skin we lost through pride and too much talk.
  • Teshuvah always accomplishes something: even before Yom Kippur existed, Adam's teshuvah gave him 930 years.
Going deeper— the stories, Kabbalah and the reasons behind the reasons

The serpent's first curses: crawling, dust, and being despised

  • The Bereshis Rabbah says that when the angels came down and cut off the serpent's hands and feet, it screamed so loudly that it was heard from one end of the world to the other.
  • Before the sin the serpent ate a kind of spiritual food. Now it must eat dust, and part of the curse is that nothing it eats ever satisfies it, because everything tastes like dust to it.
  • It can look like a hidden blessing that the serpent's food is everywhere. But the Bereshis Rabbah says that only dust from the great depths satisfies it, so it has to dig deep to get any.
  • The serpent was the king of the animals and the most intelligent of them all. Being 'cursed more than all the animals' means that now every other animal curses and despises it.

How Rabbi Yehoshua worked out a snake's pregnancy in three hours

  • A philosopher once watched two snakes mate, hid the female away, and waited seven years to learn how long a snake is pregnant. He kept the answer a secret.
  • When sages of the Sanhedrin traveled to Rome, the philosopher asked Rabban Gamliel the question. Rabban Gamliel did not know, and his distress showed on his face. Rabbi Yehoshua saw this, asked what was wrong, and worked out the answer.
  • The Talmud teaches that every animal's pregnancy matches the time some fruit takes to ripen. A chicken takes 21 days, like the almond and the walnut. A dog takes 50 days, like the fig. A horse takes 12 months, like the date. Lions and elephants take three years, like the white fig.
  • Rabbi Yehoshua's reasoning: a dog, a wild animal, carries for about 50 days, and a horse, a domestic animal, carries for 12 months, about seven times longer. The serpent is 'cursed more than the livestock,' so its pregnancy is another seven times longer, which comes to seven full years. (The Talmud uses the cat's 52 days, and 52 times seven is 364, almost exactly a year. The Me'am Loez uses the dog.)
  • When Rabban Gamliel brought back the answer, the philosopher said: how pitiful is a person who does not know Torah. I spent seven years finding this out, and this rabbi worked it out in three hours.

Leprosy and shedding skin: punishments for slander and for Adam's lost glow

  • The fourth curse is leprosy. The white spots on a snake are leprous marks, and leprosy comes from slander.
  • The serpent slandered Hashem. The Bereshis Rabbah says it told Chava that God Himself ate from this very tree, the Tree of Knowledge, and then created the world, and that He forbade it so no one else could reach His level.
  • Leprosy fits slander measure for measure. Malicious speech breaks people apart, so under Torah law the person with tzaraas (biblical leprosy) must live apart from others.
  • The fifth curse: according to the Bereshis Rabbah and the Zohar, the snake sheds its skin every seven years by squeezing between two very smooth stones, which is excruciating. It then stays without skin until a new one grows.
  • This too is measure for measure. Adam was created with shining skin, like our fingernails, and the serpent made him lose it, so the serpent loses its own skin.
  • The Zohar gives this as the reason we look at our fingernails at Havdalah. Over Shabbos a person eats, drinks and dresses well, may start to feel like a boss, and may slip into proud talk or business talk. Looking at the nails reminds him that his whole body once shone like this, and that the serpent's sins of pride and too much talk took it away, and so he comes back in teshuvah.

Hatred, the heel, and the mitzvos people trample on

  • The Talmud (Shabbos 146a) teaches that the serpent actually had relations with Chava. The book of Shmuel shows that people who sin together end up hating each other: after Amnon sinned with Tamar, he hated her. That is the root of the hatred between people and snakes, which we still feel today.
  • The seventh curse: a person can crush a snake's head with his heel, and all the snake can do back is bite his heel.
  • Hashem told Adam that if his children keep the Torah, they need not fear the snake. The bite is not what kills; sin is what kills. Someone without sin cannot be harmed by it.
  • The Gemara (Berachos 33a) tells of a venomous creature, an arvad, that was harming the people of a town. Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa put his heel over its hole, and it bit him and died. He told the people: it is not the arvad that kills, it is sin that kills.
  • The snake bites at the heel because people are careless with the 'mitzvos that are trampled underfoot,' the ones taken lightly. Examples are speaking badly about others, swearing needlessly on the Torah, and eating at a host's table when he does not have enough for himself. Whoever is careful even with these small mitzvos tramples the snake instead.

Poison, death, and the one wound Mashiach will not heal

  • The eighth curse is poison, and it burns the snake's own mouth.
  • The ninth: the serpent brought death into the world, so it is the first to experience it.
  • The tenth: when Mashiach comes everyone will be healed, but the serpent never will. The verse says 'all the days of your life,' and that includes the days of Mashiach. The Zohar and the Bereshis Rabbah both bring this.
  • The Zohar and Targum Yonasan teach that the same is true of anyone who speaks maliciously about others: he will not be healed unless he fully repents. This shows how heavy the sin of lashon hara is. Whoever has spoken that way should do teshuvah and stop.
  • Losing the power of speech is not one of the ten curses. It came on its own: from eating dust the serpent's tongue grew coarse and rough, and it could no longer speak.

Chava's curses and the three mitzvos that answer them

  • The ten curses are: the discomfort of the monthly cycle, the bleeding of a virgin, nine months of pregnancy, the pain of miscarriage, the pains of childbirth, raising children, covering the hair, subjection to her husband, not being accepted as a witness in a Jewish court, and death.
  • Miscarriage is a particular anguish. After all the work and discomfort of pregnancy, a woman is left feeling: what was it all for?
  • Raising children is its own curse: nursing them, dressing them, rocking them, carrying them, cleaning up after them.
  • Covering her hair after marriage is also counted. A Jewish woman's honor is inward and private (tznius, modesty), not put on display the way a man shows off his greatness.
  • Keeping niddah, challah and Shabbos candles atones for bringing death into the world and brings great reward. A woman who keeps them is less likely to die in childbirth.

Adam's stature, the cursed ground, and how the earth could 'disobey'

  • Adam's first curse: his stature was reduced. He had reached from east to west and from the earth to the sky, whether that is meant literally or as the reach of his vision and understanding. The Zohar brings this curse too.
  • The second: a man is weakened, and his face changes, after an emission of seed.
  • The third, thorns and thistles, goes back to Creation. Hashem commanded that the wood of the trees should taste like their fruit, but the earth brought forth trees whose fruit alone was edible. The ground deserved a curse for this, but Hashem held it back until Adam sinned, so that Adam would not suffer from thorns, mosquitoes or ants beforehand.
  • The earth had a reason: it feared that if the whole tree were edible, people would cut down every tree for food and the trees would die out. It was cursed anyway, because it should have trusted that Hashem can make up for any lack in the world.
  • The Toldos Yitzchak asks how the earth, which has no mind, could disobey. Every creation has an angel on high in charge of it. When the Torah says a creation complained or disobeyed, like the moon complaining about the sun, it means that angel.

Without the sin, every tree would bear fruit

  • Because of this curse, many trees do not produce edible fruit. The Ramban says that if not for the sin, every tree would bear fruit.

Livelihood, bread instead of grass, and the loss of Adam's beauty

  • The fourth curse is the struggle to earn a living. That is why most people spend nine to five at work.
  • The fifth curse was 'you will eat the grass of the field.' Before the sin, beautiful food grew everywhere; now the ground would fill with grass. Adam's eyes filled with tears, and he said: Master of the Universe, am I to graze like an animal?
  • So Hashem changed it to the sixth curse: 'by the sweat of your brow you will eat bread.' In a way this is harder, because grass is easy to get, while bread takes a long process.
  • The seventh: Adam was so beautiful that no creature dared look him in the face. After the sin he lost that beauty, and the gap between him before and after is like the gap between a person and an ape.
  • The eighth: the serpent losing its hands and feet was also a curse for man. The serpents were very intelligent and efficient and would have been man's servants, carrying things and delivering messages. Instead of robots, we would have had serpents.

Banished from Eden, facing west

  • The ninth curse is banishment. In Eden Adam was master of the world and could open and close springs with his hands. He lost that position.
  • The Zohar says he was placed east of Eden, surrounded by destructive angels that would drive him away if he tried to go back.
  • Why the east? The Divine Presence rests in the west, so from the east Adam would always face west toward Hashem, to pray and do teshuvah.
  • Some say he was placed on Har HaMoriah, the mountain where the Beis HaMikdash (the Holy Temple) would stand. That is where he was created and where his children were born.

Why death came, and what it does for us

  • A few people never died, such as Serach bas Asher and Eliyahu the prophet, who we say was Pinchas. But humanity as a whole cannot escape death.
  • A person is made of four elements: fire, water, air and earth. At death each one returns to its source. The body is mostly earth, so it returns to the earth.
  • Without the sin, people would have lived forever, and Hashem would have shielded them from every accident and harm.
  • Death also brings a benefit: it purifies a person from the sins he did in the physical world and makes him worthy to receive his reward in the World to Come.

The full spelling of 'toldos' and the end of death

  • Almost everywhere in Tanach, the word toldos ('generations' or 'chronicles') is written missing one of its two vavs. In 'Eleh toldos hashamayim veha'aretz' (Bereshis 2:4) it is written in full.
  • That verse describes the world before death, when man was still immortal. The complete word fits only a complete, deathless world. After the sin, the word is written lacking a letter.
  • The only other place it is written in full is Megillas Rus, 'Eleh toldos Peretz,' the line that runs through Boaz and Rus to King David. From David comes Mashiach.
  • This shows that when Mashiach comes, death will be gone, as Yeshayahu (25:8) says: 'He will swallow up death forever.'

The Tree of Life and why Adam lived 930 years

  • Adam was never commanded not to eat from the Tree of Life, which also stood in the middle of the garden. After the sin he wanted to eat from it and become immortal again, but the destructive forces guarding Eden kept him out.
  • Hashem had said 'on the day you eat from it you will surely die,' yet Adam lived 930 years. The Ibn Ezra and others explain that Adam did teshuvah. He could not undo the damage and stayed mortal, but he reached a compromise: he would not die that day.
  • Adam lived before Yom Kippur was given with the second Luchos. The teshuvah of Yom Kippur has the power to repair even this kind of damage. Had Adam done teshuvah on Yom Kippur, he could have become immortal again.
  • The Bereshis Rabbah gives another answer: a day of Hashem is a thousand years, as Tehillim (90:4) says, 'a thousand years in Your eyes are like yesterday.' Living 930 years was still within that one 'day.'
  • Adam was meant to live a full thousand years, and he gave seventy of them to King David.

A third answer: he became mortal that day

  • The Ramban, Bachya and Targum Yonasan read 'on the day you eat from it you will surely die' differently: on that day Adam would become mortal, and he would die when his time came.
Review questions
  1. Why were the serpent's hands and feet cut off, and how does crawling fit its sin?
  2. How did Rabbi Yehoshua work out that a snake is pregnant for seven years?
  3. Why is leprosy the punishment for slander, and whom did the serpent slander?
  4. What do we remember when we look at our fingernails at Havdalah?
  5. Which three mitzvos answer Chava's sin, and what do they accomplish?
  6. Why is the word toldos spelled in full only in Bereshis 2:4 and in Megillas Rus?
Sources
  • Me'am Loez — the main text of the class; its lists of the ten curses of the serpent, Chava and Adam
  • Bereshis Rabbah — the serpent's scream; dust only from the depths; its slander about the tree; shedding skin every seven years; never healed; a day of Hashem is a thousand years
  • Talmud, Bechoros 8a — Rabbi Yehoshua and the philosopher: matching pregnancies to ripening fruit and working out the snake's seven years
  • Zohar — the serpent's skin; looking at fingernails at Havdalah; Adam's reduced stature; Adam placed east of Eden; no healing for the serpent or the slanderer
  • Talmud, Shabbos 146a — the serpent had relations with Chava
  • Shmuel II 13:15 — Amnon and Tamar: those who sin together come to hate each other
  • Talmud, Berachos 33a — Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa and the arvad: it is sin that kills
  • Targum Yonasan — whoever speaks maliciously is not healed without full teshuvah
  • Gemara, Eruvin 100b — the source of Chava's ten curses
  • Pirkei d'Rabbi Eliezer 14 — Adam's ten curses
  • Ibn Ezra — Adam's teshuvah lengthened his life
  • Tehillim 90:4 — a thousand years are like one day in Hashem's eyes
  • Megillas Rus — 'Eleh toldos Peretz,' the second place toldos is spelled in full
  • Yeshayahu 25:8 — 'He will swallow up death forever'
  • Pirkei d'Rabbi Eliezer 19 — Adam gave seventy of his years to King David