229. Genesis 3:11, 12, 13. And he said, "Who pointed out to you that you were naked? You ate from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat, didn't you?" And the human said, "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree and I ate." And Jehovah God said to the woman, "Why have you done this?" And the woman said, "The snake deceived me and I ate."
The symbolism in all of this is established by previous explanations [§§99, 128-129, 196]: our rational capacity allows itself to be deceived by our sense of autonomy — which we love tenderly — or in other words, by self-love, so that we give no credit to anything we cannot see or feel.
Anyone can see that Jehovah God did not talk to a snake 1 and that in fact there was no snake. Nor did he talk to the sensory part of the mind, symbolized by the snake. Rather, other things are involved. Specifically, people perceived that they had been deceived by their senses, and because they loved themselves, they were eager to know whether the things they heard about the Lord and about faith in him were true. Only then would they be willing to believe.
Footnotes:
1. This is a reference to Genesis 3:14, in which God curses the snake. [LHC]
