Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Yes. Snakes are also dust-feeders. Right?
I take the story to be historical. However it may have been passed down orally by early people. In the hands of the inspired prophet of God he under the direction of the Spirit of God as the rest of Scripture wrote it for spiritual purposes. What Moses wrote was under the sovereignty of God as the rest of Scripture.
And as the rest of Scripture he may have indicated things beyond his present wisdom but to be illuminated upon by future generations by the Spirit of God.
"Concerning this salvation the prophets who prophesied concerning the grace that was to come unto you, sought and searched deligently,
Searching into what time or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ n them was making clear, testifying beforehand of the sufferings of Christ and the glores after these." (1 Peter 1:10,11)
This passage says that the prophets who wrote Old Testament Scriptures searched the things written to try to ascertain when and what was the manner of the coming suffering and rising Savior. The Spirit of the pre-incarnated Son of God was testifying within the writers of the Old Testament of events about the coming of the Messiah.
Having said that this is how you should understand the snake eating dust matter:
The serpent is to be understood to represent Satan a cosmic evil spiritual being who has set himself up against God. Eating of the dust to which he was condemned may have been the words passed down from early generations in a folkish way. But the true significance is that man was made of dust and Satan's "food" would be the sinful and fallen mankind.
The dust eating serpent represents that you and I in our sins are a tasty meal for the Devil. He is feed and nourished and made strong by his "feeding" on our corruption and trangressions before God.
Satan entered into man as a parasitic evil being. This is told to in Ephesians which says:
And you, though dead in your offenses and sins, in which you once walked according to the age of this world, according to the ruler of the authority of the air, of the spirit who is now operating in the sons of disobedience, among whom we also conducted ourselves once in the lists of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the thoughts, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest." (Eph. 2:1-3)
The Satanic spirit is
"operating in the sons of disobedience". That is the sons of Adam who do not repent to be saved.
The Satanic spirit operating is also the
"ruler of the authority of the air". Somehow this evil spirit is in the atmosphere of the planet and is a ruler of this sinful world which is lost in trangressions and rebellions against God. That constitutes us children of wrath - meaning candidates for the eternal punishment from a righteous God.
So you should understand the dust as YOU. And the eating of the dust as SATAN eating YOU. Me too. But I have turned to Christ Jesus the Savior who crushed the head of the serpent
(Gen. 3:11) but had His own human life crucified in the process.
The prophecy concerning the coming of the Savior to deal with fallen man's predicament here:
"And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed; He will bruise you on the head, But you will bruise him on the heel." (Gen. 3:11)
The seed of the woman is the Son of God who was latter to be born of the virgin woman Mary. She is the only woman in the Bible of which is speaks of a female SEED. Every other place speaks of the seed of a male. The woman's seed points to the virgin birth of the only man to defeat Satan directly - Jesus Christ.
If you make light of the story you lose out. It concerns Christ coming to defeat Satan from eating you as a dusty meal.
Turn to Jesus and don't let Satan the Devil eat you up.