THE SERPENT
Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field
that the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman,
“Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’”
“We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but about the fruit
of the tree in the middle of the garden, God has said,
‘You must not eat of it or touch it, or you will die.’”

“You will not surely die,” the serpent told the woman.
For God knows that in the day you eat of it,
your eyes will be opened and you will be like God,
knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the tree was good for food
and pleasing to the eyes, and that it was desirable
for obtaining wisdom, she took the fruit and ate it.
She also gave some to her husband who was with her,
and he ate it. And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; so they sewed together fig leaves and made coverings for themselves.
—Genesis 3:1-6

“There is a charm about the forbidden
that makes it unspeakably desirable.”
—Mark Twain

“ I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have
is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
—Abraham Maslow

(This composition was composed by melding a number of pictures from my files.)