Genesis 3:15, The Seed of a Woman

Posted on Friday, August 1, 2014 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

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.

//This is a rather fascinating verse to me. First, it speaks of the seed of the serpent, whom later Jews came to associate with Satan. In other words, Satan’s children. Let’s read this verse again in the NIV translation:

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.

So Satan’s children, slithering around on the ground, will be crushed underfoot by the seed of Eve. Yet every Jew at this time understood that life comes from the male, not the woman. A woman provides only a womb to grow the seed of a male. How can it be possible, then, that the seed of a woman will crush the seed of Satan?

Answer: according to Christian thinking, the One who crushes the seed of Satan is Jesus, who had no human father. Since Jesus was born of a virgin woman, Mary (Jesus’ mother) provided the “seed.”

Prophecy fulfilled?