What Does Genesis 3:13 Mean?
And the LORD God said to the woman, What is this you have done? And the woman said, The serpent led me astray, and I ate.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.THE KEY
The woman names both the deception that shaped her choice and the act that followed.
THE MEANING
Deception can influence what seems true, and the act that follows can still be named plainly. The woman says both: the serpent deceived her, and she ate. The question draws the whole sequence into speech.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this verse dissolves is that naming deception means denying the act: her answer names both.
THE ROOT
הִשִּׁיאַנִי
hishiani
GROWS FROM
נָשָׁא
nashaʾ
To deceive or lead astray.
“led me astray” in this verse is hishiani. The verb form is causative: she says the serpent brought deception upon her. That influence has real force in her account, while her next words keep the act itself in view.
ALSO GROWS
nashaʾ: To deceive or lead astray.
נָשָׁא
The base verb names the influence she identifies.
hishia: He deceived or led astray.
הִשִּׁיא
This causative form shows deception as an influence acting upon someone, not merely as a mistaken thought.
עָשִׂית
ʿasít
GROWS FROM
עָשָׂה
ʿasah
To do or make.
The Hebrew verb beneath “done” also means “make,” so the question holds action and making together. Her answer brings the deed into focus with the concrete words, “I did eat.”
ALSO GROWS
ʿasah: To do or make.
עָשָׂה
Its range holds the sense of an action carried out as well as something made.
maʿaseh: A deed or work.
מַעֲשֶׂה
This noun from the same root names a deed as something done; the question asks about the act that her answer names.
THE PATTERN
Deception distorts perception before drawing a person toward an act.
There is a way straight before a man, but its latter end is the ways of death.But each one is tested by his own craving, dragged out and lured.But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve in his cunning, your minds be ruined from the singleness that is in the Anointed One.THE THREAD
But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve in his cunning, your minds be ruined from the singleness that is in the Anointed One.This verse names the serpent’s beguiling as a pattern that can still corrupt perception. Beside Genesis 3:13, it makes the woman’s answer strikingly clear: the deception is named, and so is the act.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us