Genesis 3:15

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman,.... Between whom there had been so much familiarity, not only while they had the preceding discourse together, but before; for it is conjectured by

And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all

Vers. 15. Though now ye be sworn friends, leagued together against me, I will put enmity between thee and the woman; and the man too, but the woman alone is mentioned, for the devil’ s greater confusion. 1. The woman, whom, as the weaker vessel, thou didst seduce, shall be the great occasion of thy overthrow. 2. Because the Son of God, who conquered this great dragon and old serpent, , who came to destroy the works of the devil, , was made of a woman, , without the help of man, . Thy seed; literally, this serpent, and, for his sake, the whole seed or race of serpents, which of all creatures are most loathsome and terrible to mankind, and especially to women. Mystically, that evil spirit which seduced her, and with him the whole society of devils, (who are generally hated and dreaded by all men, even by those that serve and obey them, but much more by good men), and all wicked men; who, with regard to this text, are called devils, and the children or seed of the devil, , , . And her seed, her offspring; first and principally, the Lord Christ, who with respect to this text and promise is called, by way of eminency, the seed, , ; whose alone work it is to break the serpent’ s head, i.e. to destroy the devil, . Compare . Secondly, and by way of participation, all the members of Christ, all believers and holy men, who are called the children of Christ, , and of the heavenly Jerusalem, . All the members whereof are the seed of this woman; and all these are the implacable enemies of the devil, whom also by Christ’ s merit and strength they do overcome. The head is the principal instrument both of the serpent’ s fury and mischief, and of his defence, and the principal seat of the serpent’ s life, which therefore men chiefly strike at; and which being upon him ground, a man may conveniently tread upon, and crush it to pieces. In the devil this notes his power and authority over men; the strength whereof consists in death, which Christ, the blessed Seed of the woman, overthroweth by taking away the sting of death, which is sin, ; and destroying him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, . The heel is the part which is most within the serpent’ s reach, and wherewith it was bruised, and thereby provoked to fix his venomous teeth there; but a part remote from the head and heart, and therefore its wounds, though painful, are not deadly, nor dangerous, if they be observed in time.

Genesis 3:15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.Ver. 15. And I will put enmity.] Instead of that amity and familiarity thou hast lately had with the woman. And here begins the Book of the Lord’ s wars: his hand is here upon his throne, he hath solemnly sworn that he will have war (not with Amalek only, but) with the whole serpentine seed, from generation to generation. There is also a capital antipathy (saith Bodinus) between the woman and the serpent: so that in a great multitude of men, if there be but one woman amongst them, he makes at her, and stings her about the heel. Pliny also tells us, that the fastingspittle of a man is deadly to serpents; and that if a serpent wound a man, he is no more entertained by the earth, or admitted thereinto. Others tell us that a snake fears and flies from a naked man, but pursues him when clothed or covered. "Put on Christ," and thou art safe. His blood, as Polium, is a preservative against serpents. It shall bruise thy head.] And so kill thee quite; as a serpent is not killed dead till knocked on the head, which he therefore carefully saves with the hazard of his whole body. To elude, or elevate at least this sweet promise, this grand charter of our salvation, the devil, no doubt, devised, and by his factors, the poets, divulged that frivolous fable of Hercules, his clubbing down the Lernaean serpent, and cutting off his many heads. But Christ alone is that stronger man, that, drawing the dragon out of his den, hath cracked his crown, destroyed his works, made him to fall as lightning from the heaven of men’ s hearts, and "will tread him also under our feet shortly," as he hath already done under his own, when "spoiling these principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them on his cross." As in the mean while, till this be fully done, nibble he may at our heel, but cannot come at our head. Achilles is said to have taken his death by a wound in his heel. But "he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one [the devil] toucheth him not." That is, Tactu qualitativo , saith Cajetan, with a deadly touch; he thrusteth not his sting so far into him as to do him to death. For Christ, "who is our life," can as soon die at the right hand of his heavenly Father, as in the heart of a faithful Christian; since "our life is hid with Christ in God"; his life is bound up in his child’ s life. He shall make the broken horns of Satan to be the trumpets of his glory, and the cornets of our joy.

(14, 15) Unto the serpent.—As the serpent had tempted our first parents purposely and consciously in order to lead them into sin, he stood there without excuse, and received a threefold penalty. The outward form of the condemnation is made suitable to the shape which the tempter had assumed; but the true force and meaning, especially in the last and most intense portion of the sentence, belong, not to the animal, but to Satan himself. The serpent is but the type: diabolic agency the reality. First, therefore, the serpent is condemned to crawl. As he is pronounced to be “cursed above (or rather, among) all cattle”—that is, the tame animals subjected to man’s service—and also “among all beasts of the field”—that is, the wild animals, but a term not applicable to reptiles—it has been supposed that the serpent was originally erect and beautiful, and that Adam had even tamed serpents, and had them in his household. But such a transformation belongs to the region of fable, and the meaning is that henceforward the serpent’s crawling motion is to be to it a mark of disgrace, and to Satan a sign of meanness and contempt. He won the victory over our guileless first parents, and still he winds in and out among men, ever bringing degradation with him, and ever sinking with his victims into deeper abysses of shame and infamy. Yet, even so, perpetually he suffers defeat, and has, secondly, to “lick the dust,” because his mean devices lead, as in this place, only to the manifestation of God’s glory. In the Paradise Lost Milton has made Satan a hero, though fallen; really he is a despicable and mean-spirited foe, whose strength lies in man’s moral feebleness. Finally, there is perpetual enmity between the serpent and man. The adder in the path bites man’s heel, and is crushed beneath his tramp. It has been noticed that in spite of the beauty and gracefulness of many of the species, man’s loathing of them is innate; while in hot countries they are his great enemy, the deaths in India, for instance, from snake-bites being many times more than those caused by the carnivora. Her seed . . . shall bruise thy head.—We have here the sum of the whole matter, and the rest of the Bible does but explain the nature of this struggle, the persons who wage it, and the manner and consequences of the victory. Here, too, we learn the end and purpose for which the narrative is cast in its present form. It pictures to us man in a close and loving relation, not to an abstract deity, but to a personal and covenant Jehovah. This Being with tender care plants for him a garden, gathers into it whatever is most rare and beautiful in vegetation, and, having given it to him for his home, even deigns at eventide to walk with him there.

Verse 15. I will put enmity between thee and the woman] This has been generally supposed to apply to a certain enmity subsisting between men and serpents; but this is rather a fancy than a reality. It is yet to be discovered that the serpentine race have any peculiar enmity against mankind, nor is there any proof that men hate serpents more than they do other noxious animals. Men have much more enmity to the common rat and magpie than they have to all the serpents in the land, because the former destroy the grain, c., and serpents in general, far from seeking to do men mischief, flee his approach, and generally avoid his dwelling. If, however, we take the word nachash to mean any of the simia or ape species, we find a more consistent meaning, as there is scarcely an animal in the universe so detested by most women as these are and indeed men look on them as continual caricatures of themselves. But we are not to look for merely literal meanings here: it is evident that Satan, who actuated this creature, is alone intended in this part of the prophetic declaration. God in his endless mercy has put enmity between men and him; so that, though all mankind love his service, yet all invariably hate himself. Were it otherwise, who could be saved? A great point gained towards the conversion of a sinner is to convince him that it is Satan he has been serving, that it is to him he has been giving up his soul, body, goods, c. he starts with horror when this conviction fastens on his mind, and shudders at the thought of being in league with the old murderer. But there is a deeper meaning in the text than even this, especially in these words, it shall bruise thy head, or rather, הוא hu, HE; who? the seed of the woman; the person is to come by the woman, and by her alone, without the concurrence of man. Therefore the address is not to Adam and Eve, but to Eve alone; and it was in consequence of this purpose of God that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin; this, and this alone, is what is implied in the promise of the seed of the woman bruising the head of the serpent. Jesus Christ died to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, and to destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil. Thus he bruises his head - destroys his power and lordship over mankind, turning them from the power of Satan unto God; Acts 26:18. And Satan bruises his heel-God so ordered it, that the salvation of man could only be brought about by the death of Christ; and even the spiritual seed of our blessed Lord have the heel often bruised, as they suffer persecution, temptation, &c., which may be all that is intended by this part of the prophecy.

15. and I will put enmity] The first meaning of this sentence refers to the instinctive antipathy of mankind towards the serpent, and the frequently deadly character of the wounds inflicted by serpents upon human beings. But this explanation does not exhaust the full meaning of the verse. The narrator tells the story, not in the spirit of a compiler of folk-lore, but with the purpose of embodying in it the truths of religion. The hostility between the serpent and the woman, between the serpent’s seed and the woman’s seed, typifies the unending conflict between all that represents the forces of evil on the one hand, and all that represents the true and high destiny of mankind on the other. Upon this antagonism Jehovah has, as it were, set His seal from the very beginning. He has ordained it. There must be war between every form of evil and the children of man. This verse has been called the Protevangelium. There is no prediction of a personal victor, or even of an ultimate victory. Commentators used to see in the words, “thou shalt bruise his heel,” a prediction of the sufferings and crucifixion of our Lord, as “the seed” of the woman; and in the words, “it shall bruise thy head,” the victory of the Crucified and Risen Son of Man over the forces of sin and death. We are not justified in going to the full length of this interpretation. The victory of the Cross contains, in its fullest expression, the fulfilment of the conflict, which God here proclaims between Mankind and the symbol of Evil, and in which He Himself espouses the cause of man. The Conflict and the Victory are oracularly announced. But there is no prediction of the Personal Messiah. enmity] An unusual word in the Hebrew, occurring elsewhere in O.T. only in Numbers 35:21-22, Ezekiel 25:15; Ezekiel 35:5. LXX ἔχθραν, Lat. inimicitias. It denotes the “blood-feud” between the man and the serpent-race. bruise] The Hebrew word rendered “bruise” is the same in both clauses. Suitable as it is in its application to the “crushing” of a serpent’s head beneath a man’s foot, it is unsuitable as applied to the serpent’s attack upon the man’s heel. Accordingly some scholars prefer the rendering “aim at,” from a word of a similar root meaning to “pant” or “pant after.” So the R.V. marg. lie in wait for (which, however, the root can hardly mean). The LXX has watch, τήρησει and τήρησεις, probably with the same idea. Vulg. has conteret = “shall bruise,” in the first clause; insidiaberis = “shalt lie in wait for,” in the second clause. It has been conjectured that the root shϋph = “bruise,” may have had some special secondary meaning in which it was used of the serpent’s bite. The Vulgate ipsa conteret caput tuum is noticeable. By an error, it rendered the Heb. masc. pronoun (“he” = LXX αὐτός) by the feminine pronoun “ipsa,” ascribing to the woman herself, not to her seed, the crushing of the serpent’s head.

15. Enmity between thee and the woman — That a sense of enmity exists between the entire serpent race and mankind is a conspicuous fact, account for it as we may.