Everyone should go on thy breast and eat the earth, says the serpent

A man has been telling the serpent that if he does not do what God wants bad things will happen to him.

“But what does God want me to do?”, the serpent asked the man.

“You should do what I want because God has the same wants as I do.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to…”

“Wait, I remember what God told me. It has been written in the book.”

Genesis ch 3 v 14

And the Lord God said to the serpent, For thou didest this, thou shalt be cursed among all [the] living things, and unreasonable beasts of [the] earth; thou shalt go on thy breast, and thou shalt eat earth in all the days of thy life.

(Wycliffe Bible 1382-1395)

“That’s a hard read. Let’s find something that makes it easy-to-read. Let’s consult a more modern version — the one named ERV.”

Genesis ch 3 v 14

So the Lord God said to the snake,

    “You did this very bad thing,
        so bad things will happen to you.
    It will be worse for you
        than for any other animal.
    You must crawl on your belly
        and eat dust all the days of your life.

What ‘bad thing’? The original only says ‘this’. And I’m not a snake. I’m a serpent.

They mean the same.

But serpent sounds more authoritative.

Hmmm…

And it should be ‘go on thy belly’, not ‘crawl’. ‘Go’ is fast; ‘crawl’ is slow.

You are saying that that modern version must have been corrupted?

Yes. ‘Breast’ is located on the upper part of the human torso, while ‘belly’ is on the lower part. And the word ‘belly’ gives people this idea that I like to devour things. Bad for me. I like the word ‘breast’ because it gives people the idea that I can also have feelings for them, dark feelings they might be, but at least I have feelings.

Hmmm…

And why does it say ‘dust’, when the original says ‘earth’. This corrupted modern version is making everyone entertain the idea that I like eating humans, because the Bible also says ‘dust they are, and to dust they shall return’, right? And this modern translation is trying to tell me that I should eat dust? Tsk tsk tsk. Bad modern translation.

“Dust they are, and to dust they shall return”? Does the Bible say that? Or is that also a corruption?

It’s not a corruption. It has the same meaning as the original.

Hmmm…

Again, it’s ‘earth’ I should eat, not ‘dust’. And that’s why God created the earth, so we can eat it. The earth is huge. It will take years before we can be able to consume all of it.

We? Where does it say that I should eat the earth too?

It is written in the Bible. And whatever is written in the Bible we all must do, or else we will all be doomed.