alliteration in the Latin: Quae illospoena peccatipostperpetrationem praevaricationis secuta
430 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis figuratively in order to signify something more profound. That it was said, though, it is in no way lawful to doubt. This, after all, is required of us by the trustworthiness of the author and the commitment of the expositor.
3.So then, they were both naked. lt is true, the bodies of the two human beings living together in Paradise were stark naked. And they were not ashamed (Gn 2:25). What should they be ashamed of after all, when they were aware of no law in their members fighting back against the law of their minds (Rom 7:23)? This punishment of the sin dogged their steps after their deviation from the due direc tion,3 with disobedience daring to do what had been forbidden, and justice punishing what had been committed. Before this happened they were naked, as has been said, and were not embarrassed; there was no movement in their bodies ofwhich to be shy; they did not think anything needed to be covered up, because they had not experienced anything needing to be held in check. How they were going to breed children has already been discussed earlier on;4 but in any case it is not to be supposed that it would have been in the same manner as they did after the retribution just mentioned had followed the commission of the offense; from that moment on, though, before they died, death already conceived would whip up the disorderly behavior of disobedient members in the bodies of disobedient human beings as an eminently just tit for tat. Adam and Eve were not yet persons of that sort, when they were both naked and not embarrassed.
The serpent's cleverness; the relation of the serpent to the devil
2, 4. Now the serpent was the cleverest—there, yes indeed; but—of all the wild beasts that were upon the earth which the Lord God had made (Gn 3: 1 ). It was called "the cleverest," you see, by straining the word's meaning a little; several Latin manuscripts have "the wisest," not in its proper meaning, in which wisdom is usually taken as being something good whether in God or angels or in the rational soul; it's as though we were also to call bees and ants wise because of their constructions which seem to reflect wisdom. Though this serpent could be called the wisest of all wild beasts not in its own non-rational soul, but with an alien spirit, the devil's, that is. However much, after all, the rebellious angels deserved to be cast down from their heavenly thrones for their forwardness and pride, they are still by nature superior to all wild beasts in virtue of their supreme intelligence. So what is so surprising about the devil now filling the serpent with his own inspiration, joining his own spirit to it in the way the oracles of demons
3. An attempt, a little forced, perhaps, to convey the rather startling, and 1 think deliberate, alliteration in the Latin: Quae illospoena peccatipostperpetrationem praevaricationis secuta est. The word perpetrationem seems entirely superfluous to the sense, and so looks as if it were introduced simply to hammer the alliteration home. 4. Book 1X.3.5— 11,19.