Plenty of Christians over the centuries have assumed the serpent went after Eve because she was the weaker vessel, more emotional, or simply easier to fool. That reading has been popular in sermons and commentaries alike. The text does not support it. Eve was made as Adam’s equal, his ezer kenegdo—a strong counterpart formed face to face with him, not a lesser assistant. The same word is used elsewhere of God Himself as the helper of His people.
She was no soft target.
The serpent’s choice was tactical. God had given the prohibition directly to Adam in Genesis 2:16-17, before Eve was even formed. The primary target was always Adam. He was the one whose disobedience would implicate the race. But Adam had heard the words straight from God’s mouth. There was little chance of talking him out of a command he had received firsthand. So the serpent went around him to the one whose knowledge of the rule was secondhand.
“Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” The question is aimed first and foremost at God—casting doubt on His goodness, His generosity, and whether He could be trusted. It plants the idea that God is holding something back. At the same time it probes the reliability of the relay. Could she trust Adam?
Eve’s answer reveals the crack. She correctly notes that they may eat of the other trees, but then adds “neither shall ye touch it,” a restriction nowhere in the original command. Jewish tradition long ago noted that someone—Adam in the telling, or Eve in the hearing—had added a protective fence. The serpent exploited it.
Once she ate and did not immediately drop dead, her experience carried weight. As his equal she could speak from what she had just seen and tasted. Adam hearkened to the voice of his wife. That is the charge God levels against him: not that the serpent deceived him, but that he listened to her.
Some still claim Adam stood right there the whole time, silent while the serpent spoke. The conversation itself undercuts that. When God confronts Adam, he does not say the serpent beguiled him or that he heard the snake’s words. He points to the woman: “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.”
Eve is the one who names the serpent. Adam was not deceived by the creature’s talk. He chose to follow her after she had already eaten. As Paul later puts it, “Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.”
The serpent knew the difference between a command received from God and one received through another person. He attacked the link he could bend, then used that link to reach the man who could not be bent the same way. That is the real reason he went after Eve.