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.
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 Num 35:21-22, Eze 25:15; Eze 35:5. LXX , 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, and , 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 shph = “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 ) by the feminine pronoun “ipsa,” ascribing to the woman herself, not to her seed, the crushing of the serpent’s head. The feminine pronoun has given rise to some singular instances of exegesis in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Gen 3:15
I will put enmity between thee and the woman
The believers conflict with Satan
I.
THAT THERE IS A CONTINUAL CONFLICT BETWEEN SATAN AND EVERY BELIEVER IN JESUS CHRIST, WHOM HE REPRESENTED IN THE FIRST PROMISE, ACCORDING TO THE PURPOSE AND GRACE OF ALMIGHTY GOD.
II. In that stern combat which the Lord of glory, God manifest in the flesh, was to wage with Satan, it was declared that the enemy should bruise the heel of the seed of the woman, and that Jesus should not get the victory unwounded. And thus it is with His spiritual offspring; as He was, so are they in this world. We learn, therefore, secondly, THE CHRISTIANS SUFFERING IN HIS CONFLICT WITH THE OLD SERPENT.
III. But although the conflict may be fierce, and long, and stubborn, we are not permitted to doubt on which side the victory will fall. Hence I would observe, thirdly, THE ASSURANCE OF TRIUMPH GIVEN IN THE TEXT TO THE SEED OF THE WOMAN–THE BELIEVING MEMBERS OF CHRIST. Satan will bruise their heel, but, as assuredly, they shall bruise his head. As Jesus assumed human nature, that He might avenge Himself and His people upon Satan, so shall they triumph in Christ. The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly, who are in Christ Jesus. (R. P. Buddicom, M. A.)
The first promise
Here, in this verse, first springs a river which flows right through the broad wilderness of Time, refreshing every generation as they pass; and will yet, beyond the boundary, make glad forever the city of our God. In this verse the gospel of grace takes its rise. If we saw only the tiny spring we should not be able fully to estimate its importance. It is our knowledge of the kingdom in its present dimensions and its future prospects that invests with so much grandeur this first, short message, of mercy from God to man. We know the import of that message better than they who heard it first. And yet, as the negro native on the mountains near the sources of the Nile can drink and satisfy his thirst from the tiny rill that constitutes the embryo river, while he who sails on its broad bosom near the sea can do no more; so those who lived in the earliest days of grace might satisfy their souls at the narrow stream then flowing, as well as those who shall be found dwelling on the earth at the dawn of the millennial day. From the feeble stream that burst through the stony ground near the closed gate of paradise righteous Abel freely drank the water of life: the same, and no more, shall they do who shall see the knowledge of the Lord covering the earth in the latter day. God opened a spring in the desert as soon as there were thirsty souls sojourning there. Here, as we have said, the gospel springs. But this is not the beginning of mercy. Its date is more ancient; its fountainhead is higher. God is love: there, if you will trace mercy to its ultimate source–there Redemption springs, thence Redemption flows. One or two things of an introductory character must be at least stated, inasmuch as they are essential to the comprehension of the main lesson. And the first of these is the existence and agency of an evil spirit, the enemy of man. Didst thou not sow good seed in thy ground? said the surprised and grieved servants to their Master; whence, then, hath it tares? An enemy hath done this, said the Lord. Man has been damaged by the impact of evil after he came from his Makers hands: and the damage, now that help has been laid on the Mighty, may be removed. There is a healing for the deadly wound. The enemy, in this text and in other instances all through the Scripture, is impersonated as the serpent. Now a series of lessons directly practical.
1. There is a kind of friendship or alliance between the destroyer and his dupe. The root of the ailment lies here. If the first pair had not entered into a covenant with the wicked one, there would not have been a fall. Neither at the first nor at any subsequent period has the enemy come forward as an enemy, declaring war, and depending on the use of force. Not the power, but the wiles of the devil have we cause to dread. If either he or we should assume the attitude of adversary, our cause were won.
2. Enmity must be engendered between these two friends. The first and fundamental necessity of the case is that the friendship should be dissolved. As long as the adversary by his wiles succeeds in making it sweet, and as long as the dupe loves it, so long is the captive held. Nothing in heaven or earth can do a sinner any good until he has fallen out with his own sin!
3. God will put enmity between a man and the enemy who has enticed, and so overcome him. When created beings are involved in sin, as a law of their being they cannot break off by an effort or wish of their own. The spirit that launches once into rebellion against God, goes on helplessly in rebellion forever, unless an almighty arm, guided by infinite love, be stretched out to arrest the fallen–the falling star. It is profitable to remember that we are helpless. It is only a cry out of the depths that will reach heaven, and bring help from One that is mighty. Lord, save me, I perish, is a prayer that reaches the Redeemers ear: it melts His heart, and moves His hand. To put enmity between a man and the devil who inhabits his heart–to change his affections, so that he shall henceforth loathe what he formerly loved, and love what he formerly loathed–this is Gods prerogative. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
4. Notice now the relation which Christ our Redeemer bears to the breach of peace between a man and his Tempter. Over and above the promise that enmity will be put between the serpent and the woman, it is said in the text that enmity will be put between his seed and hers. We are guided by the Spirit of inspiration in the interpretation of this clause. We know certainly from Scripture her seed means first and chiefly the second Adam, the Lord from heaven. As enmity between the two friends must be generated, and as only God can efficiently kindle that enmity, so it is only through Christ the Mediator that such a breach could be made. He is Mediator between God and man, for reconciling the alienated; He is Mediator between man and Satan, for alienating the united. As His acceptance with the Father is our acceptance with the Father, when we are found in Him; so His breach with the adversary is our breach, when we are found in Him. His two-fold mission is to break up one friendship and begin another.
5. The part which Christians act in the quarrel. Christ was the first fruits in this enmity; but, afterwards they that are Christs. In Him the strife began; and it is continued in His members after the Head is exalted. The feud is hereditary, inextinguishable, eternal. The Church on earth is the Church militant; that is, the Church soldiering. There is another wing of the grand army, called the Church triumphant. Those who remain in the body wield the sword: those who have been admitted into heaven wave the palm and wear the crown. The real business in hand for Christians is not heaven, but holiness. The issue may be left in the Leaders hands: the duty of the soldiers is to stand where they are placed, and strike as long as they see a foe. Until the trumpet shall sound, calling the weary to rest, our part is to fight. (W. Arnot, D. D.)
The beginning of the gospel
These words have been appropriately called the Protevangelium, the first gospel. At first sight it seems strange that these words should be considered the beginning of the gospel. The form is not that of a gospel but of a curse. It is the first curse that we meet with in reading the Bible. But think a moment. On whom, on what is it a curse? It is a curse on the great adversary of mankind. It is a curse upon evil–on sin, and death and hell. It is a curse upon our curse. You will observe, and it is well worth noticing, that there is no curse pronounced upon the man, nor upon the woman either. But can the gospel come in the form of a curse? It can–nay, it must. There are those who, shutting their eyes to the terrible fact of sin with all its dreadful consequences, as they are seen in the world, please themselves and try to please others by preaching a gospel of easy good nature, of love and mercy and goodwill to all mankind–a sort of universal salvation on the easiest terms possible, or withoutany terms at all. But sin and its terrible consequences are fearful facts that cannot be ignored. Love is the fulfilling of the law, and the end of the gospel; but hatred–hatred of sin–is the only portal to true, and pure, and holy love. When the Spirit, the Comforter, comes, what is the first thing He does? He convinces of sin (Joh 16:8-9).
I. As soon as we look at it, we recognize, speaking generally, A GREAT CONFLICT ENDING IS VICTORY. Of this conflict there is a threefold presentation.
1. First, there is a personal conflict: I will put enmity between thee and the woman. Here it is worth while to notice that the Hebrew tense admits of a present as well as a future interpretation. So it is not only, I will put enmity; but, I am putting and will put enmity between thee and the woman. The work is begun. The unholy alliance, into which Eve had been beguiled by the Evil One, is already broken. She is already a changed woman. She is no longer on the serpents side. She is on the Lords side. There is enmity between her and the serpent.
2. After the personal comes the general conflict: Enmity between thy seed and her seed. What is meant by the two seeds? We would not have very much difficulty in guessing, but we are not left to guess work. We are very plainly told in the later Scriptures. For example, in the eighth chapter of the Gospel of John, the Jews had been congratulating themselves on belonging to the promised seed–We be Abrahams seed (verse 33). Our Saviour said, in reply: I know that ye are Abrahams seed; but ye seek to kill Me. That is a strange thing for Abrahams seed. You may be Abrahams seed literally, but certainly not spiritually. They answered and said unto Him: Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them: If ye were Abrahams children, ye would do the works of Abraham. Notice how distinctly He recognized the spiritual sense of the term, not the literal. If ye were Abrahams children ye would do the works of Abraham. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning. That is the reason ye seek to kill Me. Or turn to Mat 23:33, where, addressing the same kind of people, the Saviour says–Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers (i.e., ye seed of the serpents)
, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? Or take the parable of the tares (Mat 13:38): The good seed are the children of the kingdom. But the tares are the children of the wicked one. Perhaps most definite of all is a passage in the 3rd chapter of the 1st Epistle of John. Read from the 8th verse: He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. Then follows something like a definition of the two seeds. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one and slew his brother. You see how plainly it is stated that the seed of the serpent are those who follow the deeds of the serpent; they are those who inherit the wickedness of their father the devil, as it is put here. And, of course, if the seed of the serpent are those who inherit the wickedness of the evil one, the seed of the woman are those that inherit the saintliness of the woman. It is as plain as anything can be, that it is the spiritual, and not the literal, seed that is meant; that character is in view, and not simple descent.
3. Not only is there a personal and a general conflict, but there is a special one. Thee and the woman–personal. Thy seed and her seed–general. It (or he, because the pronoun is masculine) shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel–special. Now, I do not say that Christ is very plainly indicated here. The time had not yet come for this. The hope of the coming personal Saviour was only gradually unfolded. But I do say that certain lines are drawn which, when produced, are found to converge on Christ, who occupies the point of sight, away on the distant horizon. Observe, further, that it is only at this point that victory comes in: I will put enmity between thee and the woman, only conflict there; no victory. And between thy seed and her seed, only enmity, no victory. But come to the point of sight, and there is not only conflict, but victory–He shall bruise thy head. Apart from the Captain of our Salvation, there was nothing for us but defeat. Though victory is finally assured to all the true seed of the woman, it will be His victory, made theirs by faith.
II. Let us now look at THE FACTS IN HISTORY, TO WHICH THE PROPHECY POINTS, AND WHICH CONSTITUTE ITS FULFILMENT. In the first place, we see the development of this conflict right along from the time of its first beginning; from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zacharias, slain between the temple and the altar; and from the days of the first martyr, Stephen, down to the present time, when in heathen lands converts still must seal, at times, their testimony with their blood, and when in Christian lands those that will live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer certain kinds of persecution, and keep up a constant conflict with the powers of evil. The conflict will go on, and will not cease until the last of Satans captives shall be rescued from his grasp and brought as sons to glory; when there shall be the great gathering of the people around Shiloh, the Prince of Peace, the Captain of our Salvation. But of all that long conflict, the crisis, the decisive action, is that to which our attention is specially called in the prophecy–the conflict that the Lord Jesus had to wage against the powers of darkness and the machinations of evil men when He was here upon the earth. Our Saviour, having taken our place, had this warfare to fight all through His life. Have you not often asked yourself the reason of the great difference between the death of the Lord Jesus and the death of so many martyrs, who endured unheard of tortures without flinching or uttering a cry? Had the Master less courage than the servants? Was He less able to endure suffering than Stephen, or any of the martyrs? Oh, no! It was because He had sufferings to bear that none of them had any knowledge of. He had their battle to fight as well as His own. As the Captain of their Salvation and ours, He stood in the front and thickest of the battle, and by His strong agony gained the victory for them and us. Now that He has gained the victory, that victory is secured for all the rest, who may well face death in any form bravely, now that the Captain of their Salvation has conquered all its terrors for them. It is secured for all the seed; and we have a picture of its consummation in the book of Revelation, where is celebrated in thrilling imagery the final victory of the saints of the Lord by the blood of the Lamb. But while victory has been secured for us, it must also be accomplished in us. There must be a conflict and a victory in every human heart. There is not only the special conflict, which the Lord Jesus so victoriously waged, and the general conflict ending so triumphantly for all the seed, but there must be a personal conflict in each individual soul. (J. M. Gibson, D. D.)
Christ the conqueror of Satan
The promise plainly teaches that the Deliverer would be born of a woman, and, carefully viewed, it also foreshadows the Divine method of the Redeemers conception and birth. So also is the doctrine of the two seeds plainly taught here–I will put enmity between thee and the woman, between thy seed and her seed. There was evidently to be in the world a seed of the woman on Gods side against the serpent, and a seed of the serpent that should always be upon the evil side even as it is unto this day. The church of God and the synagogue of Satan both exist.
I. THE FACTS. The facts are four, and I call your earnest attention to them.
1. The first is, enmity was excited. Satan counted on mans descendants being his confederates, but God would break up this covenant with hell, and raise up a seed which should war against the Satanic power. Thus we have here Gods first declaration that He will set up a rival kingdom to oppose the tyranny of sin and Satan, that He will create in the hearts of a chosen seed an enmity against evil, so that they shall fight against it, and with many a struggle and pain shall overcome the prince of darkness. The Divine Spirit has abundantly achieved this plan and purpose of the Lord, combating the fallen angel by a glorious man: making man to be Satans foe and conqueror.
2. Then comes the second prophecy, which has also turned into a fact, namely, the coming of the champion. The seed of the woman by promise is to champion the cause, and oppose the dragon. That seed is the Lord Jesus Christ. The conflict our glorious Lord continues in His seed. We preach Christ crucified, and every sermon shakes the gates of hell. We bring sinners to Jesus by the Spirits power, and every convert is a stone torn down from the wall of Satans mighty castle.
3. The third fact which comes out in the text, though not quite in that order, is that our Champions heel should be bruised. Do you need that I explain this? You know how all His life long His heel, that is, His lower part, His human nature, was perpetually being made to suffer. He carried our sicknesses and sorrows. But the bruising came mainly when both in body and in mind His whole human nature was made to agonize; when His soul was exceeding sorrowful even unto death, and His enemies pierced His hands and His feet, and He endured the shame and pain of death by crucifixion. Before the throne He looks like a lamb that has been slain, but in the power of an endless life He liveth unto God.
4. Then comes the fourth fact, namely, that while His heel was being bruised, He was to braise the serpents head. By His sufferings Christ has overthrown Satan, by the heel that was bruised He has trodden upon the head which devised the bruising.
II. Let us now view over EXPERIENCE AS IT TALLIES WITH THESE FACTS. He means to save us, and how does He work to that end?
1. The first thing He does is, He comes to us in mercy, and puts enmity between us and the serpent. That is the very first work of grace. You began to hate sin, and you groaned under it as under a galling yoke; more and more it burdened you, you could not bear it, you hated the very thought of it. So it was with you: is it so now? Is there still enmity between you and the serpent? Indeed you are more and mere the sworn enemies of evil, and you willingly acknowledge it.
2. Then came the Champion, that is to say, Christ was formed in you the hope of glory. You heard of Him and you understood the truth about Him, and it seemed a wonderful thing that He should be your substitute and stand in your room and place and stead, and bear your sin and all its curse and punishment, and that He should give His righteousness, yea, and His very self, to you that you might be saved.
3. Next, do you recollect how you were led to see the bruising of Christs heel and to stand in wonder and observe what the enmity of the serpent had wrought in Him? Did you not begin to feel the bruised heel yourself? Did not sin torment you? Did not the very thought of it vex you? Did not your own heart become a plague to you? Did not Satan begin to tempt you? Did he not inject blasphemous thoughts, and urge you on to desperate measures; did he not teach you to doubt the existence of God, and the mercy of God, and the possibility of your salvation, and so on? This was his nibbling at your heel. He is at his old tricks still. He worries whom he cant devour with a malicious joy.
4. But, brethren, do you know something of the other fact, namely, that we conquer, for the serpents head is broken in us? How say you? Is not the power and dominion of sin broken in you? Do you not feel that you cannot sin because you are born of God? Some sins which were masters of you once, do not trouble you now. Oftentimes the Lord also grants us to know what it is to overcome temptation, and so to break the head of the fiend. I ought to add that every time any one of us is made useful in saving souls we do as it were repeat the bruising of the serpents head. In all deliverances and victories you overcome, and prove the promise true–Thou shall tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shall thou trample under feet. Because he hath set his love upon Me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known My name.
III. Let us speak awhile upon THE ENCOURAGEMENT which our text and the context yields to us; for it seems to me to abound.
1. I want you, brethren, to exercise faith in the promise and be comforted. The text evidently encouraged Adam very much. Adam acted in faith upon what God said, for we read, And Adam called his wifes name Eve (or Life); because she was the mother of all living (Gen 3:20). She was not a mother at all, but as the life was to come through her by virtue of the promised seed, Adam marks his full conviction of the truth of the promise though at the time the woman had borne no children.
2. Notice by way of further encouragement that we may regard our reception of Christs righteousness as an instalment of the final overthrow of the devil.
3. Next, by way of encouragement in pursuing the Christian life, I would say to young people, expect to be assailed. If you have fallen into trouble through being a Christian be encouraged by it; do not at all regret or fear it, but rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy, for this is the constant token of the covenant.
4. Still further encouragement comes from this. Your suffering as a Christian is not brought upon you for your own sake; ye are partners with the great SEED of the woman, ye are confederates with Christ. You must not think the devil cares much about you; the battle is against Christ in you. I have heard of a woman who was condemned to death in the Marian days, and before her time came to be burned a child was born to her, and she cried out in her sorrow. A wicked adversary, who stood by, said, How will you bear to die for your religion if you make such ado? Ah, she said, Now I suffer in my own person as a woman, but then I shall not suffer, but Christ in me. Nor were these idle words, for she bore her martyrdom with exemplary patience, and rose in her chariot of fire in holy triumph to heaven. If Christ be in you, nothing will dismay you, but you will overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil by faith.
5. Last of all, let us resist the devil always with this belief, that he has received a broken head. I am inclined to think that Luthers way of laughing at the devil was a very good one, for he is worthy of shame and everlasting contempt. Luther once threw an inkstand at his head when he was tempting him very sorely, and though the act itself appears absurd enough, yet it was a true type of what that great Reformer was all his life long, for the books he wrote were truly a flinging of the inkstand at the head of the fiend. That is what we have to do: we are to resist him by all means. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The curse of Satan including a blessing to man
There are four things here intimated which are each worthy of notice–
1. The ruin of Satans cause was to be accomplished by one in human nature. This must have been not a little mortifying to his pride. If he must fall, and could have had his choice as to the mode, he might rather have wished to have been crushed by the immediate hand of God: for however terrible that hand might be, it would be less humiliating than to be subdued by one of a nature inferior to his own. The human nature especially appears to have become odious in his eyes. It is possible that the rejoicings of eternal wisdom over man was known in heaven, and first excited his envy; and that his attempt to ruin the human race was an act of revenge. If so, there was a peculiar fitness that from man should proceed his overthrow.
2. It was to be accomplished by the seed of the woman. This would be more humiliating still. Satan had made use of her to accomplish his purposes, and God would defeat his schemes through the same medium: and by how much he had despised and abused her, in making her the instrument of drawing her husband aside, by so much would he be mortified in being overcome by one of her descendents.
3. The victory should be obtained not only by the Messiah Himself, but by all His adherents, blow if it were mortifying for Satan to be overcome by the Messiah Himself, considered as the seed of the woman, how much more when in addition to this every individual believer shall be made to come near, and as it were set his feet upon the neck of his enemy?
4. Finally: though it should be a long war, and the cause of the serpent would often be successful, yet in the end it should be utterly fumed. The head is the seat of life, which the heel is not: by this language therefore is intimated, that the life of Christs cause should not be affected by any part of Satans opposition; but that the life of Satans cause should be that of Christ. (A. Fuller.)
Blessings through Messiah
Through the promised Messiah a great many things pertaining to the curse are not only counteracted, but become blessings. Under His glorious reign, the earth shall yield its increase, and God, our own God, delight in blessing us. And while its fruitfulness is withheld, it has a merciful tendency to stop the progress of sin: for if the whole earth were like the plains of Sodom in fruitfulness, which are compared to the garden of God, its inhabitants would be as Sodom and Gomorrah in wickedness. The necessity of hard labour too in obtaining a subsistence, which is the lot of the far greater part of mankind, tends more than a little, by separating men from each other, and depressing their spirits, to restrain them from the excesses of evil. All the afflictions of the present life contain in them a motive to look upwards for a better portion: and death itself is a monitor to warn them to prepare to meet their God. These are things suited to a sinful world: and where they are sanctified, as they are to believers in Christ, they become real blessings. To them they are but light afflictions, and last but for a moment; and while they do last, work for them a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. To them, in short, death itself is introductory to everlasting life. (A. Fuller.)
It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel
Bruising the head of evil; or, the mission of Christianity
That there were two grand opposing moral forces at work in the world, the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, is manifest from the following conceptions:–
1. The universal beliefs of mankind. All nations believe in two antagonistic principles.
2. The phenomena of the moral world. The thoughts, actions, and conduct of men are so radically different that they must be referred to two distinct moral forces.
3. The experience of good men.
4. The declaration of the Bible. Now in this conflict, whilst error and evil only strike at the mere heel of truth and goodness, truth and goodness strike right at the head. Look at this idea in three aspects:–
I. AS A CHARACTERISTIC OF CHRISTIANITY. Evil has a head and its head is not in theories, or institutions, or outward conduct; but in the moral feelings. In the liken and dislikes, the sympathies and antipathies of the heart. Now it is against this head of evil, that Christianity, as a system of reform, directs its blows. It does not seek to lop off the branches from the mighty upas, but to destroy its roots. It does not strike at the mere forms of murder, adultery, and theft; but at their spirit, anger, lust, and covetousness. This its characteristic.
II. AS A TEST OF INDIVIDUAL CHRISTIANITY. Unless Christianity has bruised the very head of evil within us it has done nothing to the purpose.
1. It may bruise certain erroneous ideas, and yet be of no service to you.
2. It may bruise certain wrong habits, and yet be of no real service to you.
III. AS A GUIDE IN PROPAGATING CHRISTIANITY. The great failure of the Church in its world-reforming mission may be traced to the wrong direction of its efforts. (Homilist.)
Gods great patience, not withstanding mans provocations
Suppose a man should come into a curious artificers shop, and there with one blow dash in pieces such a piece of art as had cost many years study and pains in the contriving thereof. How could he bear with it? How would he take on to see the workmanship of his hands so rashly, so wilfully destroyed? He could not but take it ill and be much troubled thereat. Thus it is that as soon as God had set up and perfected the frame of the world, sin gave a shrewd shake to all; it unpinned the frame, and had like to have pulled all in pieces again; nay, had it not been for the promise of Christ, all this goodly frame had been reduced to its primitive nothingness again. Man by his sin had pulled down all about his ears, but God, in mercy, keeps it up; man by his sin provokes God, but God, in mercy, passeth by all affronts whatsoever. Oh, the wonderful mercy–oh, the omnipotent patience of God! (J. Spencer.)
The first promise
The first promise (Gen 3:15) is like the first small spring or head of a great river, which the farther it runs the bigger it grows by the accession of more waters to it. Or like the sun in the heavens, which the higher it mounts the more bright and glorious the day still grows. (J. Flavel.)
First things
What delight there is to us in first things! The first primrose pushing through the clods telling of winter gone, and summer on the way: the first view of the sea in its wondrous expanse of power: the first sense of peace that came by a view of Christ as Saviour. A certain authoress who became very famous, speaks of the exquisite sense of delight she felt when she began her first literary work in the reviewing of books: the opening of the first parcel was as the bursting of a new world on her eyes. (H. O. Mackey.)
The gospel preached in paradise
The words are considerable–
1. For the person who speaketh them, the Lord God Himself, who was the first preacher of the gospel in paradise. The draught and plot was in His bosom long before, but now it cometh out of His mouth.
2. For the occasion when they were spoken. When God hath been but newly provoked and offended by sin, and man, from His creature and subject, was become His enemy and rebel, the offended God comes with a promise in His mouth. Adam could look for nothing but that God should repeat to him the whole beadroll of curses wherein he had involved himself, but God maketh known the great design of His grace. Once more, the Lord God was now cursing the serpent, and in the midst of the curses promiseth the great blessing of the Messiah. Thus doth God in wrath remember mercy (Hab 3:2). Yea, mans sentence was not yet pronounced. The Lord God had examined him (verse 8-10), but before the doom there breaketh out a promise of mercy. Thus mercy gets the start of justice, and triumpheth and rejoiceth over it in our behalf: Mercy rejoiceth against judgment (Jam 2:13).
3. They are considerable for their matter, for they intimate a victory over Satan, and that in the nature which was foiled so lately. In the former part of the verse you have the combat; in the text the success.
(1) The conflict and combat: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. I shall not consider the conflict now as carried on between the two seeds, but between the two heads, Christ the Prince of life, and the devil who hath the power of death (Heb 2:14). It was begun between the serpent and the woman; it is carried on between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent: but the conflict is ended by the destruction of one of the heads; the prince of death is destroyed by the Prince of life.
(2) The success and issue of the combat. Where observe–
(a) What the seed of the woman doth against the serpent, He shall bruise thy head;
(b) What the serpent doth against the seed of the woman, Thou shalt bruise his heel.
(c) There is something common to both; for the word bruise is used promiscuously both of the serpent and the seed of the woman. In this war, as usually in all others, there are wounds given on both sides; the devil bruiseth Christ, and Christ bruiseth Satan.
(d) There is a disparity of the event, He shall bruise thy head, and Thou shalt bruise his heel; where there is a plain allusion to treading upon a serpent. Wounds on the head are deadly to serpents, but wounds on the body are not so grievous or dangerous; and a serpent trod upon, seeketh to do all the mischief it can to the foot by which it is crushed. The wound given to the head is mortal, but the wound given to the heel may be healed. The seed of the woman may be cured, but Satans power cannot be restored. The devil cannot reach to the head, but the heel only, which is far from any vital part. (1st.) For the first clause, It shall bruise thy head. The seed of the woman crushed the serpents head, whereby is meant the overthrow and destruction of his power and works (Joh 12:31; 1Jn 3:8). The head being bruised, strength and life is perished. (2nd.) For the other clause, Thou shalt bruise his heel.
Where–
(1) Note the intention of the serpent, who would destroy the kingdom of the Redeemer if he could; but he can only reach the heel, not the head.
(2) The greatness of Christs sufferings; His heel was bruised, and He endured the painful, shameful, accursed death of the cross. Doctrine: That Jesus Christ, the seed of the woman, is at enmity with Satan, and hath entered the lists with him; and though bruised in the conflict, yet He finally overcometh him, and subverteth his kingdom.
I. That Jesus Christ is the seed of the woman. That He is one of her seed is past doubt, since He was born of the Virgin, a daughter of Eve. That He is The seed, the most eminent of all the stock, appeareth by the dignity of His Person, God made flesh (Joh 1:14; 1Ti 3:16). As also by His miraculous conception (Luk 1:35; Mat 1:23). Now, if you ask what necessity there was that the conqueror should be the seed of the woman, because the flesh of Christ is the bread of life, and the food of our faith? I shall a little insist upon the conveniency and agreeableness of it.
1. That thereby He might be made under the law, which was given to the whole nature of man (Gal 4:4).
2. That He might in the same nature suffer the penalty and curse of the law, as well as fulfil the duty of it, and so make satisfaction for our sins, which as God He could not do. He was made sin for us (2Co 5:21), and was made a curse for us (Gal 3:13; Php 2:8). He became obedient to death, even the death of the cross.
3. That in the same nature which was foiled He might conquer Satan.
4. That He might take compassion of our infirmities, having experimented them in His own person (Heb 2:17-18).
5. That He might take possession of heaven for us in our nature (Joh 14:2-3).
6. That after He had been a sacrifice for sin, and conquered death by His resurrection, He might also triumph over the devil, and lead captivity captive, and give gifts to men in the very act of His ascension into heaven Eph 4:8).
II. That Christ is at enmity with Satan, and hath entered into the conflict with him.
1. We must state the enmity between Christ and His confederates, and Satan and his instruments.
(1) There is a perfect enmity between the nature of Christ and the nature of the devil.
(2) An enmity proper to His office and design. For He Came to destroy the works of the devil (1Jn 3:8); and was set up to dissolve that sin and misery which he had brought upon the world.
2. The enmity being such between the seeds, Christ sets upon His business to destroy Satans power and works.
(1) His power. Satan bath a two-fold power over fallen man–legal and usurped.
(2) His works. There is a two-fold work of Satan–the work of the devil without us, and the work of the devil within us.
III. That in this conflict His heel was wounded, bitten, or bruised by the serpent.
1. Certain it is that Christ was bruised in the enterprise; which showeth how much we should value our salvation, since it costs so dear as the precious blood of the Son of God Incarnate (1Pe 1:18-19).
2. But how was He bruised by the serpent? Certainly on the one hand Christs sufferings were the effects of mans sin and Gods hatred against sin and His governing justice; for it is said, It pleased the Father to bruise Isa 53:10). Unless it had pleased the Lord to bruise Him, Satan could never have bruised Him. On the Other side, they were also the effects of the malice and rage of the devil and his instruments, who was now with the swords point and closing stroke with Christ, and doing the worst he could against Him. In His whole life He endured many outward troubles from Satans instruments; for all His life long He was a man of sorrows, wounded and bruised by Satan and his instruments (Joh 8:44). But the closing stroke was at last; then did the serpent most eminently bruise His heel. When Judas contrived the plot, it is said, the devil entered into him (Luk 22:3). When the high priests servants came to take Him, He telleth them, This is your hour, and the power of darkness (Luk 22:53). The power of darkness at length did prevail so far as to cause His shameful death; this was their day.
3. It was only His heel that was bruised. It could go no further; for though His bodily life was taken away, yet His head and mediatory power was not touched (Act 2:36). Again, His bodily life was taken away but for a while. God would not leave His soul in the grave (Psa 16:10). Once more, though Christ was bruised, yet He was not conquered. So for Christians, He may divers ways wound and afflict us in our outward interests, but the inner man is safe (2Co 4:16).
IV. Though Christs heel was bruised in the conflict, yet it endeth in Satans final overthrow; for his head was crushed, which noteth the subversion of his power and kingdom. To explain this, we must consider–
1. What is the power of Satan.
2. How far Satan was destroyed by Christ. First: What is the power of Satan? It lieth in sin. And Christ destroyed him, as He made an end of sin, and brought in everlasting righteousness, and made reconciliation for iniquities (Dan 9:24). Secondly: How far was Satan destroyed or his head crushed?
1. Negatively.
(1) Non ratione essentiae, not to take away his life and being. No; there is a devil still, and shall be, even when the whole work of Christs redemption is finished (Rev 20:10; Mat 25:41). Then eternal judgment is executed on the head of the wicked state.
(2) Non ratione malitiae, not in regard of malice; for the enmity ever continueth between the two seeds, and Satan will be doing though it be always to loss, The devil sinneth from the beginning (1Jn 3:8).
Therefore he is not so destroyed as if he did no more desire the ruin and destruction of men. He is as malicious as ever.
2. Affirmatively, it remaineth that it is ratione potentiae, in regard of his power. But the question returneth, How far is his power destroyed? for he still governeth the wicked, and possesseth a great part of the world. Therefore the devils are called The rulers of the darkness of this world Eph 6:12). He molesteth the godly, whether considered singly or apart, or in their communities and societies. Singly and apart he may sometimes trouble them and sorely shake them as wheat is winnowed in a sieve. Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat (Luk 22:31). And in their communities and societies. Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth, may Israel now say; many a time have they afflicted me from my youth (Psa 129:1-2).
Use 1. Thankfulness and praise to our Mediator.
1. Satans design was to dishonour God by a false representation, as if envious of mans happiness (Gen 3:5). And so to weaken the esteem of Gods goodness. Now in the work of our redemption God is wonderfully magnified, and represented as amiable to man; not envying our knowledge and delight, but promoting it by all means, even with great care and cost (1Jn 4:8).
2. To depress the nature of man, that in innocency stood so near God. Now that the human nature, so depressed and abased by the malicious suggestions of the devil, should be so elevated and advanced, and be set up far above the angelical nature, and admitted to dwell with God in a personal union, oh! let us now cheerfully remember and celebrate this victory of Christ. Our praise now is a pledge of our everlasting triumph.
Use 2. To exhort us to make use of Christs help for our recovery out of the defection and apostasy of mankind. Oh! let Satan be crushed in you, and the old carnal nature destroyed.
Use 3. To show us the nature of Christs victory, and wherein it consisteth; not in an exemption from troubles, nor in a total exemption from sin for the present.
1. Not in an exemption from troubles. No; you must expect conflicts. Though Satans deadly power be taken away, our heel may be crushed.
2. It is not a total exemption from sin. Necessary vital grace is only absolutely secured; yon shall receive no deadly wound to destroy your salvation. Use:
4. To animate and encourage Christs servants in their war against Satans kingdom, at home and abroad, within and without: Not to give place to the devil (Eph 4:27). Christ whom we serve is more able to save than Satan is to destroy. (T. Manton, D. D.)
Mans restoration promised
The promise of the recovery of mankind out of Satans bondage, and from under Gods curse, contains in it these principal heads, all of them expressed or implied in those few words, being so many grounds of our faith.
1. That Gods promise of grace is every way free, not solicited by Adam, and much less deserved, as being made unto him now, when he had offended God in the highest degree, and stood in enmity against Him, and therefore must needs proceed from Gods free will.
2. That it is certain and infallible, as depending, not upon mans will, but upon Gods, who speaks not doubtfully or conditionally, but positively and peremptorily, that He will do it Himself.
3. That it shall be constant and unchangeable: the inward hatred and outward wars between Satan and the holy seed shall not cease till they end at last in Satans total and final ruin.
4. That it shall not extend to all the seed of the woman according to the flesh, but to some that are chosen out of her seed. For some of them shall join with Satan against their own brethren.
5. The effect of this gracious promise shall be the sanctifying of their hearts, whom God will save, manifested in the hatred of Satan and all his ways; which though they had formerly embraced, yet now they should abhor.
6. This work of sanctification shall not be wrought upon them as a statuary fashions a stone into an image; but God shall make use of their wills and affections to stir them up and to set them against Satan, as this word–enmity–necessarily implies.
7. Those affections shall not be smothered and concealed in the inward motions of the heart, but shall outwardly manifest themselves in serious endeavours for the opposing of Satan and his power, as the war here mentioned and intimated by the wounds on both sides, necessarily supposeth.
8. The work of sanctification, though it shall be infallible and unchangeable, yet shall be imperfect, as is implied in the bruises which the godly shall receive by Satans hand, not only by outward afflictions, but by inward temptations, which shall wound their souls by drawing them into divers sins, all implied in that phrase of bruising the heel.
9. Those wounds which they receive at Satans hands shall not be deadly, nor quench the life of grace, which the devil shall not be able to destroy, as is intimated in that part of the body which shall be wounded, which is the heel, far enough from any vital part.
10. The author of this work of sanctification shall not be themselves, but God by His Spirit. For it is He that shall put enmity into their hearts against Satan and his seed, as the words import.
11. This work of sanctification by the Spirit shall be established by their union with Christ their Head, with whom they shall be joined into one body, as is implied when Christ and His members are termed one seed.
12. By virtue of this union the holy seed shall have an interest in and a title to all that Christ works. For so, in effect, Christs victory over Satan is called their victory, when it is said the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpents head, that is, Christ and His members shall do it.
13. For the making way to this union and communion between Christ and His members, He shall take on Him the very nature of man, so that He shall truly and properly be called the seed of the woman. (J. White, M. A.)
Lessons
1. Let us mark how God proceeds in His inquiries after sin. He first traces it out step by step, tracks it in all its windings, ere He utters one word of judgment. His dealings hitherto had been with Adam, as the head of creation. Therefore He speaks first to him. Then from Adam sin is traced to the woman, then from the woman to the serpent. By this process it was brought solemnly before the conscience of the transgressors, that they might see what they had done. Even in the order of judgment, how careful to mark His sense of the different kinds of criminality! Such is a specimen of the way in which He will judge the world in righteousness!
2. Let us mark the circumstances in which the sentence was given. It was given in the hearing of our parents. It was not specially directed to them. They were but hearers. Yet the scene was designed for them. This curse on the serpent was spoken in their ears, because it contained in it Gods purpose of grace towards them.
(1) That God meant to save them, and not to give them up to the snares of their enemy;
(2) That they could only be saved by their enemy being destroyed;
(3) That this destruction would be attended with toil, and conflict, and wounds;
(4) That it was easy to ruin a world, but hard to save and restore.
3. Let us mark how God hated that which Satan had done. Because thou hast done this, are the words of awful preface to the sentence. God had no pleasure in the snare or the ruin it had wrought. His words are the expression of deep displeasure against him who had done the horrid deed, and at the deed which had been done. And let us not forget how much of that which Satan has since then been doomed to suffer, as well as of that which be shall hereafter suffer, has its origin here. His sin, by means of which he succeeded in casting man out of Eden, shall be the sin by which he himself shall be cast wholly out of earth, to deceive the nations no more.
4. In undoing the evil God begins at its source. The drying up of the stream will not do; the source must be reached. Sin was the real enemy, and love to the sinner must proceed at once against this enemy, not resting till it is utterly destroyed.
5. God shows that Satan shall not be allowed to triumph. His victory is only temporary and partial. God is taking the sinners side; and this is the assurance that Satans victory shall be reversed!
6. God Himself undertakes mans cause. It is not, there shall be enmity; but I will put it. God Himself will now proceed to work for man. The serpents malice and success have but drawn forth the deeper love and more direct interposition in mans behalf.
7. God promises a seed to the woman. All that this implied she could not know at the time. But it is evidently declared that she was not to die immediately. The salvation was to come from God, and yet it was to come through man.
8. God is to put enmity between the serpent and the woman, and between the serpents seed and the womans seed.
(1) The enmity between Satan and the Church. There can be no friendship with him, and no sympathy with his works. Thus the distinction between the Church and the world is as old as Eden; and it is not merely distinction, it is hostility.
(2) The enmity between Christ and Satan; between Him who is the representative of heaven and him who is the representative of hell; between Him who is the friend and him who is the enemy of man.
(3) The name given to the ungodly–the seed of the serpent. And it was this expression that Christ took up when He spoke of the generation of vipers, and said to the unbelieving Jews, Ye are of your father the devil. By birth we are the serpents brood, till grace transforms us, and we become the womans seed; then our friendship with the accursed race is forever broken.
(4) The name of the Church–the seed of the woman. Yes, the seed of her who sinned, who was in the transgression–offspring of Eve–of her who was first in apostasy. What tender favour is thus shown to her!
(5) The name of Christ. The same as the Churchs, the seed of the woman. Yes, He was indeed born of a woman–the Son of Mary–the Son of Eve–the Son of her that had transgressed.
9. There is not only to be enmity, but conflict. That these two parties should keep aloof from each other was not enough. There must be more than this. There must be alienation and hatred; nay, there must be warfare, and that of the most desperate kind. Satan and the Church must ever be at open warfare.
The world and the Church must ever be foes to each other.
1. The bruising of the heel of the womans seed. It is not the womans heel that is to be bruised, but the heel of her seed; neither is it the woman that is to bruise the serpents head, but her seed–it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. It was an inferior part that was to be wounded, not a vital one. Yet still there was to be a wound. The serpents seed was to have a temporary triumph, and this was fulfilled when Jesus hung on the cross. Then the heel was bruised. Then Satan seemed to conquer. That was the hour and power of darkness. Then He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities. Then that wound was given which defeated him who gave it, and began our victory.
2. The bruising of the serpents head. It was his most vital as well as his most honourable part that was to be bruised. An intimation this of utter defeat and ruin. He has received many a stroke. His deadly wound was given upon the cross, in that very stroke by which he bruised the heel of the womans seed. So that from that moment our victory was secure, But the final blow is reserved for the Lords second coming. Then it is that the great dragon, that old serpent, is to be bound in chains, and shut up in the abyss. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
The remedy
Near the manchaneel, which grows in the forests of the West Indies, and which gives forth a juice of deadly poisonous nature, grows a fig, the sap of which, if applied in time, is a remedy for the diseases produced by the manchaneel. God places the gospel of grace alongside the sentence of death. (W. Adamson.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
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, 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; Ac 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.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
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 devils 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, Rev 12:9, who came to destroy the works of the devil, 1Jo 3:8, was made of a woman, Gal 4:4, without the help of man, Isa 7:14; Luk 1:34-35.
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, Joh 6:70; 8:44; Act 13:10; 1Jo 3:8.
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, Gal 3:16,19; whose alone work it is to break the serpents head, i.e. to destroy the devil, Heb 2:14. Compare Joh 12:31; Rom 16:20.
Secondly, and by way of participation, all the members of Christ, all believers and holy men, who are called the children of Christ, Heb 2:13, and of the heavenly Jerusalem, Gal 4:26. All the members whereof are the seed of this woman; and all these are the implacable enemies of the devil, whom also by Christs merit and strength they do overcome.
The head is the principal instrument both of the serpents fury and mischief, and of his defence, and the principal seat of the serpents 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, 1Co 15:55-56;
and destroying him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, Heb 2:14.
The heel is the part which is most within the serpents 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. If it be applied to the Seed of the woman, Christ, his heel may note either his humanity, whereby he trod upon the earth, which indeed the devil, by Gods permission, and the hands of wicked men, did bruise and kill; or his saints and members upon the earth, whom the devil doth in diverse manners bruise, and vex, and afflict, while he cannot reach their Head, Christ, in heaven, nor those of his members who are or shall be advanced thither.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
15. thy seednot only evilspirits, but wicked men.
seed of the womantheMessiah, or His Church [CALVIN,HENGSTENBERG].
I will put enmity betweenthee and the womanGod can only be said to do so by leaving”the serpent and his seed to the influence of their owncorruption; and by those measures which, pursued for the salvation ofmen, fill Satan and his angels with envy and rage.”
thou shalt bruise hisheelThe serpent wounds the heel that crushes him; and so Satanwould be permitted to afflict the humanity of Christ and bringsuffering and persecution on His people.
it shall bruise thy headTheserpent’s poison is lodged in its head; and a bruise on that part isfatal. Thus, fatal shall be the stroke which Satan shall receive fromChrist, though it is probable he did not at first understand thenature and extent of his doom.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
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 some y, that she took a particular liking to that creature, and was delighted with it, and laid it perhaps in her bosom, adorned her neck with its windings, or made it a bracelet for her arms; and being a peculiar favourite, the devil made choice of it as his instrument to deceive her; but now being beguiled hereby, she conceived an antipathy against it, and which is become natural between the serpent and man; man abhors the sight of a serpent, and the serpent the sight of man; and the spittle of a man and the gall of a serpent are poison to each other; and this antipathy is observed to be stronger in the female sex: and this was not only true of the particular serpent that deceived Eve, and of the particular woman, Eve, deceived by him, but of every serpent and of every woman in successive ages; and is also true of Satan and the church of God in all ages, between whom there is an implacable and an irreconcilable hatred, and a perpetual war:
and between thy seed and her seed; the posterity of Eve, mankind, and the production of serpents, between whom the antipathy still continues, and mystically the evil angels and also wicked men called serpents; and a generation of vipers on the one hand, and the people of God on the other, the seed of the church; the latter of which are hated and persecuted by the former, and so it has been ever since this affair happened: and especially by the seed of the woman may be meant the Messiah; the word “seed” sometimes signifying a single person, Ge 4:25 and particularly Christ, Ga 3:16 and he may with great propriety be so called, because he was made of a woman and not begotten by man; and who assumed not an human person, but an human nature, which is called the “holy thing”, and the “seed of Abraham”, as here the “seed of the woman”, as well as it expresses the truth of his incarnation and the reality of his being man; and who as he has been implacably hated by Satan and his angels, and by wicked men, so he has opposed himself to all them that hate and persecute his people:
it shall bruise thy head; the head of a serpent creeping on the ground is easily crushed and bruised, of which it is sensible, and therefore it is careful to hide and cover it. In the mystical sense, “it”, or “he, Hu”, which is one of the names of God, Ps 102:27 and here of the Messiah, the eminent seed of the woman, should bruise the head of the old serpent the devil, that is, destroy him and all his principalities and powers, break and confound all his schemes, and ruin all his works, crush his whole empire, strip him of his authority and sovereignty, and particularly of his power over death, and his tyranny over the bodies and souls of men; all which was done by Christ, when he became incarnate and suffered and died, Heb 2:14
And thou shall bruise his heel; the heel of a man being what the serpent can most easily come at, as at the heels of horses which it bites, Ge 49:17 and which agrees with that insidious creature, as Aristotle z describes it: this, as it refers to the devil, may relate to the persecutions of the members of Christ on earth, instigated by Satan, or to some slight trouble he should receive from him in the days of his flesh, by his temptations in the wilderness, and agony with him in the garden; or rather by the heel of Christ is meant his human nature, which is his inferior and lowest nature, and who was in it frequently exposed to the insults, temptations, and persecutions of Satan, and was at last brought to a painful and accursed death; though by dying he got an entire victory over him and all his enemies, and obtained salvation for his people. The Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem paraphrase this passage of the days of the Messiah, and of health and salvation in them: what is here delivered out in a way of threatening to the serpent the devil, carries in it a kind intimation of grace and good will to fallen man, and laid a foundation for hope of salvation and happiness: reference seems to be had to this passage in Ps 40:7 “in the volume”, in the first roll, , as in the Greek version, at the head, in the beginning “of the book, it is written of me, to do thy will, O my God.”
y See the Universal History, vol. 1. p. 126. z Hist. Animal. l. 1. c. 1.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
15. I will put enmity. I interpret this simply to mean that there should always be the hostile strife between the human race and serpents, which is now apparent; for, by a secret feeling of nature, man abhors them. It is regarded, as among prodigies, that some men take pleasure in them; and as often as the sight of a serpent inspires us with horrors the memory of our fall is renewed. With this I combine in one continued discourse what immediately follows: ‘It shall wound thy head, and thou shalt wound its heel.’ For he declares that there shall be such hatred that on both sides they shall be troublesome to each other; the serpent shall be vexatious towards men, and men shall be intent on the destruction of serpents. Meanwhile, we see that the Lord acts mercifully in chastising man, whom he does not suffer Satan to touch except in the heel; while he subjects the head of the serpent to be wounded by him. For in the terms head and heel there is a distinction between the superior and the inferior. And thus God leaves some remains of dominion to man; because he so places the mutual disposition to injure each other, that yet their condition should not be equal, but man should be superior in the conflict. Jerome, in turning the first member of the sentence, ‘Thou shalt bruise the head;’ (192) and the second, “Thou shalt be ensnared in the heel”, (193) does it without reason, for the same verb is repeated by Moses; the difference is to be noted only in the head and the heel, as I have just now said. Yet the Hebrew verb whether derived from שוף ( shooph,) or from שפה ( shapha,) some interpret to bruise or to strike, others to bite (194) I have, however, no doubt that Moses wished to allude to the name of the serpent which is called in Hebrew שפיפון ( shipiphon,) from שפה ( shapha,) or שוף ( shooph). (195)
We must now make a transition from the serpent to the author of this mischief himself; and that not only in the way of comparison, for there truly is a literal anagogy; (196) because God has not so vented his anger upon the outward instrument as to spare the devil, with whom lay all the blame. That this may the more certainly appear to us, it is worth the while first to observe that the Lord spoke not for the sake of the serpent but of the man; fur what end could it answer to thunder against the serpent in unintelligible words? Wherefore respect was had to men; both that they might be affected with a greater dread of sin, seeing how highly displeasing it is to God, and that hence they might take consolation for their misery, because they would perceive that God is still propitious to them. But now it is obvious to and how slender and insignificant would be the argument for a good hope, if mention were here made of a serpent only; because nothing would be then provided for, except the fading and transient life of the body. Men would remain, in the meanwhile, the slaves of Satan, who would proudly triumph over them, and trample on their heads. Wherefore, that God might revive the fainting minds of men, and restore them when oppressed by despair, it became necessary to promise them, in their posterity victory over Satan, through whose wiles they had been ruined. This, then, was the only salutary medicine which could recover the lost, and restore life to the dead. I therefore conclude, that God here chiefly assails Satan under the name of the serpent, and hurls against him the lightning of his judgment. This he does for a twofold reason: first, that men may learn to beware of Satan as of a most deadly enemy; then, that they may contend against him with the assured confidence of victory.
Now, though all do not dissent in their minds from Satan yea, a great part adhere to him too familiarly — yet, in reality, Satan is their enemy; nor do even those cease to dread him whom he soothes by his flatteries; and because he knows that the minds of men are set against him, he craftily insinuates himself by indirect methods, and thus deceives them under a disguised form. (197) In short, it is in grafted in us by nature to flee from Satan as our adversary. And, in order to show that he should be odious not to one generation only, God expressly says, ‘between thee and the seed of the woman,’ as widely indeed, as the human race shall be propagated. He mentions the woman on this account, because, as she had yielded to the subtlety of the devils and being first deceived, had drawn her husband into the participation of her ruin, so she had peculiar need of consolation.
It shall bruise (198) This passage affords too clear a proof of the great ignorance, dullness, and carelessness, which have prevailed among all the learned men of the Papacy. The feminine gender has crept in instead of the masculine or neuter. There has been none among them who would consult the Hebrew or Greek codices, or who would even compare the Latin copies with each other. (199) Therefore, by a common error, this most corrupt reading has been received. Then, a profane exposition of it has been invented, by applying to the mother of Christ what is said concerning her seed.
There is, indeed no ambiguity in the words here used by Moses; but I do not agree with others respecting their meaning; for other interpreters take the seed for Christ, without controversy; as if it were said, that some one would arise from the seed of the woman who should wound the serpent’s head. Gladly would I give my suffrage in support of their opinion, but that I regard the word seed as too violently distorted by them; for who will concede that a collective noun is to be understood of one man only ? Further, as the perpetuity of the contest is noted, so victory is promised to the human race through a continual succession of ages. I explain, therefore, the seed to mean the posterity of the woman generally. But since experience teaches that not all the sons of Adam by far, arise as conquerors of the devil, we must necessarily come to one head, that we may find to whom the victory belongs. So Paul, from the seed of Abraham, leads us to Christ; because many were degenerate sons, and a considerable part adulterous, through infidelity; whence it follows that the unity of the body flows from the head. Wherefore, the sense will be (in my judgment) that the human race, which Satan was endeavoring to oppress, would at length be victorious. (200) In the meantime, we must keep in mind that method of conquering which the Scripture describes. Satan has, in all ages, led the sons of men “captive at his will”, and, to this day, retains his lamentable triumph over them, and for that reason is called the prince of the world, (Joh 12:31.) But because one stronger than he has descended from heaven, who will subdue him, hence it comes to pass that, in the same manner, the whole Church of God, under its Head, will gloriously exult over him. To this the declaration of Paul refers,
“
The Lord shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly,” (Rom 16:20.)
By which words he signifies that the power of bruising Satan is imparted to faithful men, and thus the blessing is the common property of the whole Church; but he, at the same time, admonishes us, that it only has its commencement in this world; because God crowns none but well-tried wrestlers.
(192) “ Conteres caput.” The version of the Vulgate is, “ conteret caput.” But this does not affect the validity of Calvin’s criticism, his object being to show the inpropriety of translating the same Hebrew word by Latin words of such different meaning as contero and insidior. — Ed.
(193) “ Insidiaberis calcaneo.”
(194) See Cocceius, Gesenius, and Professor Lee, sub voce שוף. — Ed
(195) There would appear greater force in Calvin’s criticism if this had been the name given to the serpent in the narrative of Moses. The word here used, however, is נחש, ( nachash,) which gives no countenance to the supposed reference; besides, the word quoted by Calvin only refers to a particular kind of serpent, not to the whole species. — Ed
(196) Anagogy . This word is inserted from the original for want of a more generally intelligible term in our own language to express the author’s meaning. It is from the Greek Αναγωγή, which signifies “a raising on high, especially elevation of the mind above earthly things to abstract speculations, (in ecclesiastical writings,) to the contemplation of the sublime truths and mysteries of Holy Scripture.” The meaning of Calvin is, that there was an intentional transition from the serpent to the spiritual being who made use of it. — Ed
(197) “ Et les decoit en se masquant de la personne d’autruy.” — French Trans.
(198) “ Ipsum vulnerabit.”
(199) See the Vulgate. “ Ipsa conteret,” — She shall bruise. The following judicious note from Professor Lee’s Hebrew Lexicon confirms the criticism of Calvin: — “The attempt that has been made gravely to justify a blunder of the Vulgate, which here reads ipsa for ipse, is a melancholy proof of the great neglect of the study of Hebrew in this country. Any one acquainted with the first elements of the grammar would see that, to make the Vulgate correct, we must substitute תשופר for ישופך, and תשופנה for תשופנו,” — that is, both the form and the affixes of the verb would require alteration, in order to accommodate themselves to the change of gender. — Ed
(200) The judicious reader will hardly acknowledge the reasoning of Calvin to be valid. The whole subject here referred to is discussed with great learning and acuteness, as well as with great force of language, by Bishop Horsley, in his second Sermon on Peter 1Pe 1:20. — Ed.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
PARADISE REOPENED
I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel (Gen 3:15).
So He drove out the man, and He placed at the east of the garden of Eden a cherubim and the flame of a sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life (Gen 3:24).
And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground, an offering unto Jehovah, and Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof (Gen 4:3-4).
SOMETIME since I talked to you for an hour on Paradise Lost of the Greatest Sin of the Centuries. It was a scandalous procedure, the heated season considered. Tonight I want to speak to you for thirty minutes and no more, on Paradise Reopened.
The opening chapters of Genesis present events after the manner of the moving pictures. Your eyes scarcely rest upon one statement until another has supplanted it, and the period intervening between the events may be as easily a millennium as a moment. Unquestionably God was ages upon ages building the world. And yet when this brief report of His work is read, it sounds as if He accomplished it all in a week while the record of creation in Gen 1:1 is as if perfected by an act of the will. The same movement is carried into the third and fourth chapters of Genesis. How long a time intervened between the moment when Paradise was lost and that in which God gave some promise of restoration to our despairing first parents, we cannot know. The one thing of which we may feel fairly certain is thisthat quite a time elapsed. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. It is not His present custom to follow acts of rebellion against Himself with instant pardon. He takes time, for the work of the Spirit is conviction. He grants the rebel time to meditate upon his iniquity, and time for genuine repentance. The sight of tears does not stir Him to instant speech, for He knows that the more deeply the soul is moved over its sin, the longer time it spends in despair of pardon, the sweeter will be the release when once it is spoken.
I am confident that days, and possibly weeks, if not months, went by between the moment when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, and that in which God gave them promise of deliverance; between the hour when Paradise was lost, and that blessed moment when God reopened it again. This reopening rests in the three texts selected for this discourse.
It was prophesied in Gen 3:15; it was consummated in Gen 3:24, and it was appropriated in Gen 4:4.
THE REOPENING PROPHESIED.
In the curse pronounced upon the agent of sin.
And Jehovah God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, cursed art thou above all cattle and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life; and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; he shall bruise thy head.
Men may say what they please about this affliction upon the Adversarys agent, but any kind of justice demands that, always and everywhere. It may be true that every sin originates in Satans mind, but the moment a man adopts his suggestion, and becomes his agent for its execution, he puts himself in the way of the curse. It was Satan who entered into Judas, and prompted him to betray his Lord, but Judas could not escape the consequences of his evilly-inspired act. It will be Satan who will enter into the Anti-Christ, and suggest all his devilish endeavors, but the Anti-Christ must himself go into the pit with the Beast and the False Prophet.
Last week an old man entered our state penitentiary who had long been a most respected citizen in the place where he dwelt and had held an office of special responsibility and peculiar honor. There came a time when Satan tempted him to violate the eighth commandment, Thou shalt not steal, and when the prison bars closed behind him, he went sobbing his way to his cell, to begin a penal servitude of eight years. He was but experiencing the curse that must come upon the beast or man who consents to be Satans agent. There never was a man so erect but sin could bring him down; so strong but this same transgression could compel him to crawl as the serpent; or so cultured that its commission would not compel him to bite the dust.
In the war declared against the author of sin!
I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed.
It is a remarkable thing, that so far as mans knowledge goes, there has never been a truce in this war. There is not a serpent that crawls the earth but is hated by all natural men and all natural women. The moment man or woman reveals another disposition and shows friendliness to the poison-fanged creature, we feel that such a person is uncanny, unmanned, unwomaned! Who ever believed that such were not themselves leagued with the Adversary and hence at peace with his first agent? And if this war is to go on, while time lasts, with the bestial agent of sin, is there ever to be a truce with the author himself, that old serpent, Satan? Nay, verily! In not a foot of earth has he a right; in not a nook of the mind nor corner of the heart.
Paul was troubled to find that he had any possession in him and grieved, saying, I am carnal, sold under sin. His cry was, Wretched man that I am; who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? He speaks of his experience as a fight against this adversary, saying, I have fought a good fight. He enjoins upon Timothy, Fight the good fight of faith. He writes to the Hebrews, But call to remembrance the former days, in which after you were illuminated ye endured a great fight.
A few years since General Maximo Gomez wrote to General Blanco, Spains commander, asking why he had come to Cuba and reminding him he could neither exterminate nor conquer the people of that land, saying at the conclusion of his letter, Victory always crowns those who fight for justice, he followed his letter with his sword; and never laid down the latter until the enemy was vanquished. But the recovery , of Paradise requires a more royal battle. A few years and Spain the oppressor was defeated, but our Adversary has held his way through millenniums and his oppressions increase.
In the promise of Christ as Satans Conqueror. He shall bruise thy head. R. J. Campbell thinks that this reference in Gen 3:16 is not to the coming Christ. That only proves that he is not among the prophets. For Moses and all the prophets believed that this was the prophecy of the coming Christ, and the conquering Christ. Paul was familiar with it and when he was writing to the Romans he said, The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. As the members of Christs body they shared in this conquest.
I heard a man say, not long since, that Milton, in Paradise Regained, made a mistake in putting the recovery of Paradise in the fourth chapter of Matthew; but a more careful reading of Milton shows that he did not so locate this event. Speaking of Christs victory over temptation in the wilderness, Milton says,
There He shall first lay down the rudiments
Of His great warfare, ere I sent Him forth
To conquer sin and death, the two grand foes
By humiliation and strong sufferance.
His weakness shall oercome satanic strength,
And all the world and mass of sinful flesh;
That all the angels and ethereal powers,
They now, and man hereafter, may discern
From what consummate virtue, I have chose
This perfect man, by merit calld my
Son To earn salvation for the sons of men.
There is no more interesting study conceivable than that of Christ as Conqueror. He conquered prejudice, the strongest passion of the Jew. He conquered pride, the enemy of the Greek. At His touch sickness surrendered; before His face, leprosy fled. At His word, death yielded, and He who humiliated the proud, healed the sick, cleansed the lepers, raised the dead, is the very same of whom it is promised that He shall reign until he hath put all enemies under His feet; yea, the arch-enemy, Satan himself, shall feel that holy hand at his evil throat, and being bound, shall be cast for a thousand years into the abyss which the conquering Christ shall shut and seal, that Satan should deceive the nations no more until the thousand years shall be finished. Aye more, eventually that same hand shall hurl him into the lake of fire and brimstone, where also are the beast and false prophet, and they shall be tormented day and night, forever and ever.
Alexander Maclaren reminds us that while man is unable to conquer the least of his sins, Gods own Son is adequate to the greatest of them. He came down from heaven like an athlete ascending into the arena to fight with and overcome the grim wild beastsour passions and our sins, and trusting to Him, by His power and life within us, we may conquer. They that follow Him shall trample on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the adder they shall trample under foot.
THE REOPENING CONSUMMATED.
So He drove out the man, and placed at the east of the garden of Eden a cherubim, and a flaming sword, which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life (Gen 3:24).
Bible readers commonly interpret this to mean the last act in excluding Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden! Quite to the contrary, it is the first act in reopening Paradise.
Gods pity is evidenced in the dispossession of Eden. The text says,
Behold, man has become as one of us, to know good and evil, and now, lest he put forth his hand and take of the tree of life, and eat and live forever,
therefore Jehovah God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden. The tree of life seemed to have had power to confirm a man in whatsoever state he was; to take of it when one was innocent is to be confirmed in innocence; to partake of it when one is in sin is to be confirmed in sin. God drove Adam from Eden lest he should eat and become an immortal sinner. The worst estate to which a man can come is to that consummation of sin.
We may grieve over a man who has been drunken once, and feel the shame of his transgression, but our grief will be assuaged by the hope that he will not repeat it, but when a man has been drunken a thousand times, that hope dies and we feel the awfulness of his disaster. We may grieve over the lad who has been found once at a gambling table, but we despair of the man who has followed it for years. The woman who has made one misstep may be recovered, but when she who is tempted has become confirmed in her sin and has turned temptress, we despair.
The Bible seems to teach that death does for men in sin what the tree of life would have accomplished for Adam, had he in impenitence tasted the same, and so John has penned in his Epistle concerning its confirming power, There is a sin unto death, I do not say that he shall pray for it. The father who finds his boy lifting the goblet to his lips and strikes the damning liquid from his hand, is doing for him in a small measure what God did for Adam when He dismissed him from the place of the tree of life. To be confirmed in sin is Hell!
The cherubim are the expression of Gods truce with the penitent. They were not put at the gate of Eden to keep men out, but to invite men back. Any good student of the Scriptures will note that the cherubim not only stood at each end of the mercy seat, but they were made of one piece with it. Their eyes were also full upon it; their wings covered the mercy seat. What is the significance? It is the Old Testament declaration of salvation by grace. That salvation was symbolized by these cherubim. The God of justice who exercised justice in driving Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, is also the God of mercy who prepares a way for their return in holiness, their repented sins having been put away. The mercy seat is the revelation of the Divine heart. That mercy seat is between the cherubim. The Lord thy God is a merciful God, is the statement of Moses (Deu 4:31). Thou art a gracious and merciful God, is the testimony of Nehemiah (Neh 9:31). Unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy, is the Psalmists loving cry, and His mercy endureth forever. The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great mercy. Ezekiel in his lamentations, declares it is of the Lords mercy that we are not consumed, because His mercies fail not. Daniel joyfully boasts, To the Lord our God belongs mercies and forgiveness (Dan. p: 9). Isaiah has called upon the sinner to hope, Let the wicked man forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return unto the Lord and He will have mercy upon him, unto our God for He will abundantly pardon.
This flame is the revelation of the Fathers face.
And the flame of the sword which turned every way to keep the way of the Tree of Life.
It is not a sword to cut off the way of men who would come to the tree of life, but it is a sword flame, revealing the Fathers face to those who seek the tree of life. No less an authority than Dr.
William Smith, revised by Professors Hackett and Abbott, consents in his dictionary that this flame is the shekinah, admitting that this is the earliest notice of that glorious appearance, under the symbol of the pointed flame and constituting that local presence of the Lord from which Cain went forth, and before which the worship of Adam and succeeding patriarchs was performed. It is fitting, indeed, that God should manifest Himself to sinful men in the form of flame; fire consumes dross and refines true gold.
The genuine man has no need to fear the God who reveals Himself by fire, but woe to the hypocrite who attempts to pass that way. God used to reveal Himself by fire when the burnt offering was consumed, and when all the people saw it they shouted and fell on their faces. On the day of Pentecost, fire, in the form of swords or tongues, sat upon the disciples, and they were at once approved and empowered. Yet, when our works are brought into this glorious presence, those of them that are self-centered are consumed away, while those that are Spirit-prompted are glorified.
THE REOPENING APPROPRIATED.
Abel employed it. He came in the way appointed for propitiation. A man who would approach the presence signified by a flame must first have put his sins away. Apparently from the day of the promise that the seed of woman was to bruise the serpents heel, God foretells His coming by the bloody offering. The life of the bullock or of the he-goat, was taken. As he died, Abel saw the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, and understood that God was making the atonement for sin. It is a strange thing that men should object to this, and call it the shambles theory of salvation. Shambles they were indeed, but of what did they speak? Not so much of an innocent animal suffering for a guilty man, as they did of a just God, enduring mans cross that He might by His own affliction win men to holiness again. When did you ever hear a father condemned for having laid down his life in defense of his family? How much greater is his virtue if that family has shown itself unworthy of his love, having been in rebellion against his will.
You will remember, in The Sky Pilot, that Ralph Connor gives a beautiful interpretation of Pauls speech in Rom 9:3. The Pilot was reading one night to Bill and the group about him. He seemed to be serious, this Bill whom we all learned to love so much, and they came across this word, Brethren, I could wish myself accursed from Christ for my brethrens sake. What does it mean, asked the Pilot. They thought a moment; one tried, and then another, and Bill said this, Why it meansit means he would go to hell for em. And Connor says, We must not be shocked; that was the exact meaning of the word. Paul would go to hell to save his kinspeople. But I bring you a more wonderful message. God went to hell in the person of Jesus Christ, that men might be saved. I believe that the Psalmist means to suggest the agony of hell Christ suffered, and if so He suffered it for our sakes. Where in all the world outside of the Bible was such a plan of salvation conceived as this plan, this plan of a crucified Son of God!
Again, Abel discovered without the shedding of blood there is no remission. Charles Spurgeon reminds us that in the Old Testament account of it a man who was too poor to bring two turtle doves then he that sinned should bring for his offering the tenth part of an ephah of fine flour for a sin offering (Lev 5:11). This was that no man might be condemned because he was poor and of himself incapable! God does not ask what we have not! Being in mercy rich toward all men, He has provided an offering for all men, that is His own Son, slain from the foundation of the world. Is it then too much to ask that men should accept the offering which God has provided without expense to them? Is it too much that this evidence of Divine goodness should lead them to repentance for sin and beget within them an eternal loyalty to the Saviour?
Again, it is written, The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin. Cain did not believe it; he trusted to the fruits of his own labor for his salvation, and God refused him. The principle was as certainly established then as now. For the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight. The man who would not have Gods way back in the garden of Eden would not find his way accepted. There is no other name given under heaven whereby ye must be saved except the name of Jesus Christ. There is no cleansing element but the blood of Christ. There is no access to the tree of life except by the way of the tree upon which He hung. As for me, I want no other way; and, no man could have a better.
It was March and midnight. The air was full of driving sleet, and the streets were vacant. Not even the form of a policeman broke the monotony of slippery pavement glittering under the waving shadows of the electric lights. Presently a boyish form emerged from a dark corner and crept slowly up the steps of a corner house. It was a large, handsome residence, not utterly dark and quiet. What business had one to creep stealthily into that house at that hour? Was the boy a burglar?
He fumbled in his pocket and drew forth a tiny key. Yes, it opened the door; he stood within. The hall was dark but warm. He moved eagerly to the register; he seemed to know just where to find it; and crouched shivering over its heat.
After some moments he started up the stairs, O, so carefully, lest he make a sound; but the steps were padded and carpeted and his old wet shoes sank into them noiselessly. At the head of the stairs he felt his way to the door. It was closed, and he hesitated, leaning against the frame and breathing heavily. At last he laid his hand on the knob, and turned it a little. Was the door locked? No, it swung open quietly and he stepped in.
The street light shone upon the dainty bed all made up and turned open, ready for an occupant. A dressing gown hung on a chair near the bed, and a pair of slippers stood before it. The rest of the room was in darkness. The boy gave a great sob and fell on his knees by the bedside.
No, he was not a burglar, only a sick boy stealing home under cover of the night. It was nearly two years since he had knelt by that bed. His mother had died; he had thought his father stem and cold and he had run away to live as he chose. Once in his miserable wanderings a much-forwarded letter from home had reached him. It contained no writing, just a tiny latch-key to the home door. For months the little key had burned as it lay in his pocket. It had reminded him of the Saviour whom his mother trusted, and in the time of his deepest distress he had said, I will trust Him. Still he was afraid; but the little key had still lain in his pocket and at last had drawn him home.
The next morning the father opened his sons door, as he had done every day since the key had been sent. He expected nothing, but it had become a habit. Did his eyes deceive him? No, it was true! Ralph was in the bed, asleep. The face was thin and haggard, but it was Ralphs! The father fell on his knees and the boy opened his eyes.
Oh, father, he sobbed, Ive come home to die. Ive been wicked, wicked. Can you forgive me? Oh, my son, indeed I can. And Godhave you asked His forgiveness?
Yes, and I wanted to tell you before I die.
Die! exclaimed the father, gathering him into his arms. No, indeed.
The doctor at the hospital said that I would not live long.
Well see about that, replied the father stepping to the phone.
When the family physician looked Ralph over he smiled. The Hospital doctor knew that you had little chance, wandering about with no care, he said, but well send you off to Florida and if you lead a sensible, pure life, youll live to be the stay of your fathers old age.
When the physician had gone Ralph turned to his father. Im so glad you sent the latchkey. I never would have come home by daylight, but when I was out in the cold, wet night, I could not resist the comfort at the end of that key.
It was God who gave me the thought, my boy. I asked Him what to do.
Our lesson is Gods latchkey to all who are exiles from Him. It will fit in the gate of Paradise. Use it tonight and come home!
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
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 . But no better reason for it can be given than that presented in this Scripture, namely, because it was basely associated with man’s original sin .
It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel . It is difficult to ascertain the precise meaning of the word , here rendered bruise . It occurs but three times, namely, here, Job 9:17, and Psa 139:11. The Septuagint renders it here by , to watch for; in Job by , to rub; in the Psalm by , to tread upon . The Vulgate translates it by two different words in this passage, contero, to bruise, in the first sentence, and insidior, to lie in wait for, in the second, but in Psalms 139 it has conculco, to tread upon . The word evidently denotes some sort of deadly stroke or wound, and the universal habit of man to seek to wound the serpent’s head, while the serpent is apt to wound the heel, (comp . Gen 49:17,) confirms the realistic character of this narrative .
But while this Scripture is capable of such a simple and literal interpretation, it has also its profounder allusions. As the serpent was but the instrument of the devil, the father of lies, (see note on Gen 3:1,) so the curse pronounced against the crooked, crawling beast has a deeper application to Satan and his seed. The base crawling, the dust-eating, and the heel-biting of serpents symbolize the habits of the old serpent, the devil. He evermore moves about his demoniacal work in conscious condemnation, as if in trembling (Jas 2:19) and in torment .
Mat 8:29. Like unto the natural enmity existing between the serpent-race and man is that irrepressible conflict between Satan and the redeemed man . Tayler Lewis suggests that head and heel in this Scripture may denote the strong contrast between the methods of contest of these two eternal foes . The seed of the woman fights in a bold and manly way, and strikes openly at the head. Biting or striking at the heel, on the contrary, “denotes the mean, insidious character of the devil’s warfare, not only as carried on by the equivocating appetites, but also as waged by infidels and self-styled rationalists in all ages, who never meet Christianity in a frank and manly way.”
But who, in this deeper sense, is that “seed” who shall bruise the serpent’s head? The masculine pronoun HE ( ) is not without significance . The reading is not ipsa, she herself, as the Vulgate has it, and which some Romanists understand of the Virgin Mary; nor it, of the English version, which fails to convey the force of the Hebrew, . We fully accord with the great body of Christian interpreters who recognise here the first Messianic prophecy, the protevangelium . But this prophecy, given in Paradise before the expulsion of the transgressors, should not be explained exclusively of the personal Messiah . That promised seed comprehends also the redeemed humanity of which he is Head that great company who both suffer with him and with him shall also be glorified. Rom 8:17. The final triumph will not be won without much bloodshedding and many wounds. The old serpent has more than once bruised the great Conqueror’s heel, and many of the faithful “have resisted unto blood, striving against sin.” Heb 12:4. So only those who belong to Christ as their great head and leader, are the seed of promise; all others, though born of woman, by espousing the serpent’s cause and doing the lusts of the devil (Joh 8:44) are of the seed of the serpent, a “generation of vipers,” (Mat 23:33,) whose end is perdition .
“Against the natural serpent,” says Keil, “the conflict may be carried on by the whole human race by all who are born of woman but not against Satan. As he is a foe who can only be met with spiritual weapons, none can encounter him successfully but such as possess and make use of spiritual arms. Hence the idea of the seed is modified by the nature of the foe. If we look at the natural development of the human race, Eve bore three sons, but only one of them, namely, Seth, was really the seed by which the human family was preserved through the flood, and perpetuated in Noah. So, again, of the three sons of Noah, Shem, the blessed of Jehovah, from whom Abraham descended, was the only one in whose seed all nations were to be blessed; and that not through Ishmael, but through Isaac alone. Through these constantly repeated acts of divine selection, which were not arbitrary exclusions, but were rendered necessary by differences in the spiritual condition of the individuals concerned, the seed to which the victory over Satan was promised was determined, and ceased to be co-extensive with physical descent. This spiritual seed culminated in Christ, in whom the Adamitic family terminated, henceforward to be renewed by Christ as the Second Adam, and to be restored by him to its original exaltation and likeness to God. On the other hand, all who have not regarded and preserved the promise, have fallen into the power of the old serpent, and are to be regarded as the seed of the serpent, whose head will be trodden under foot.” Mat 23:33; Joh 8:44; 1Jn 3:8. Comp . the conflict between Michael and his angels, and the dragon and his angels in Rev 12:7-9.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Gen 3:15. And I will put enmity, &c. If it be evident, that the former part of this sentence principally refers to the natural serpent; it seems no less so, that the latter part refers principally to the spiritual one. For though it is undeniable, that there is a natural enmity between the serpentine and the human race; though, as it is asserted, their juices* are alike destructive to each other: yet it does not appear worthy the majesty of God, or of the Scripture, and by no means adequate to the circumstances of our fallen parents, to suppose, that God should only pronounce a ceaseless enmity between mankind and serpents, and declare, that men should sometimes bruise their heads, destroy their lives, yet not without harm to themselves, as the serpents would avenge themselves by bruising their heels. On this account it will not admit of a doubt, but in these words there is an immediate reference to that prime source of comfort to fallen man, his redemption and conquest over Satan and sin, by Jesus Christ, the seed of the woman; peculiarly the seed of the woman, as being incarnate of a pure virgin. And though it cannot be asserted, how much of this original promise and prophecy our first parents understood, yet it is reasonable to believe, that they understood enough to raise their drooping spirits, and to fix their faith and hope upon their future and promised Deliverer. We who have lived to see this prophecy fulfilled, have opportunities to understand it in the clearest manner.
* That prince of Naturalists, the elder Pliny, who, as a heathen, must have been disinterested, asserts, that if the human spittle do but enter the serpent’s mouth, it presently dies. See Nat. Hist. lib. Gen 7:2. How true this is, I know not: how deadly the serpent’s poison is to man we all know.
I will put enmity between thee and the woman By these words is expressed that enmity and contest which then began (and will only cease, when death is swallowed up in victory) between Satan and his seed, that is, all wicked angels and wicked men, and the woman and her seed, that is, Jesus Christ, and all pious and true believers. It may be observed, that the sacred writer says, I will put enmity between thee and the WOMAN: not the man, whence one would be led to suppose, that the true seed of the woman, Jesus Christ, was more immediately referred to. See Mat 3:7; Mat 23:33. 1Jn 3:10.
It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel It, the seed, (Christ, who is also called the seed of Abraham, see Gal 3:16.) shall bruise thy head, destroy thee, and work thy total overthrow. The phrase of bruising the head, expresses the total destruction of the serpent, whose life and power, it is known, lie in the head. And thou shalt bruise his heel, shalt wound and crush his lower and inferior part; that is, shalt put to death and destroy him in the body, whose divine nature shall raise him from death, triumphant over Satan and the grave, and leading captivity captive: for he was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.
As the present poisonous, groveling state of the serpentine kind is a proof to us of the original curse; so the great veneration in which serpents were held among the heathens, in the idolatrous world, is a great collateral proof of this account: since no rational solution can be given of the introduction of so extraordinary a worship, except that which this history affords. It would be long to enumerate the instances of serpentile worship, which prevailed in all parts of the earth, in AEgypt, Greece, Italy, America, &c.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
DISCOURSE: 7
THE SEED OF THE WOMAN
Gen 3:15. 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 was the first promise that was ever given to fallen man. The occasion on which it was given was this: Satan had beguiled our mother Eve, and, through her, had prevailed on Adam to transgress: and he had thereby destroyed both them and all their posterity: for, since they were corrupt, nothing but what was corrupt could proceed from them. But God, in his abundant mercy, interposed for our fallen race, who must without such interposition have been involved in all the misery of the fallen angels. Against Satan he denounced a curse suited to his crime: and at the same time informed him, that, though for the present he had prevailed over the woman, a seed should spring from her who should execute on him the vengeance he deserved, and rescue mankind from the misery he had entailed upon them.
Now, as the oak with all its luxuriant branches is contained in the acorn, so was the whole of salvation, however copiously unfolded in subsequent revelations, comprehended in this one prophecy; which is, in fact, the sum and summary of the whole Bible. And on this promise all the Saints lived, during the space of 2000 years: yes, all from Adam to the time of Abraham were encouraged, comforted, and saved by this promise alone, illustrated as it was by sacrifices appointed by the Lord.
In explaining this prophecy, I shall call your attention to,
I.
The person here predicted
[It was the Lord Jesus Christ; who was in a peculiar way the seed of the woman: for he was formed in the womb simply by the agency of the Holy Ghost, and was born of a pure virgin altogether without the intervention of man. And this was necessary: for, had he been born like other men, he would have been in the loins of Adam, like other men; and therefore would, like them, have been partaker of his guilt and corruption. But, being the sole and immediate workmanship of God, he was absolutely perfect, and therefore capable of sustaining the office of a Saviour for fallen man: whereas, if he had been otherwise formed, he would have needed a Saviour for himself, and been incapable of effecting salvation for others. Thus you see, that when it was impossible for man to restore himself to God, God laid help for him upon One that was Mighty; on one who, being God and man in one person, was able to effect for men all that their necessities required. As man, he could atone for sin; and as God, he could render that atonement available for all who should trust in him.]
At the same time that this prophecy announced the Messiahs advent, it declared,
II.
The conflicts he should sustain
[Between Satan and him, God put an irreconcilable enmity; which, without a moments intermission, has raged, from that very time even to the present hour. Satan, having, thus introduced sin into the world, instigated every child of Adam to the commission of it. And how far he prevailed, may be seen in this, that he induced the very first-born of man to murder his own righteous brother, for no other reason than because he was more righteous than himself. At times he had so entirely reduced the whole race of man to his dominion, that scarcely a righteous man existed upon earth. And, when God sent prophets to reclaim the world, Satan stirred up the people of every age and place to destroy them. At last, when the promised Seed himself came, Satan only exerted himself the more violently against him, if by any means he might prevail to destroy the Saviour himself. No sooner was Jesus born into the world, than Satan stimulated Herod to destroy all the males around Bethlehem from two years old and under, that so it might be impossible for Jesus to escape. And, when Jesus was entering upon his ministry, he urged him to cast himself down from a pinnacle of the temple, if peradventure he might thus induce him, under an idea of trusting in God, to destroy himself. Afterwards he stirred up Peter to dissuade him from executing the work he had undertaken; saying, Master, spare thyself. When he could not prevail in any of these ways, he put it into the heart of Judas to betray him, and stirred up all the Priests and Elders to put him to death. In like manner has this wicked adversary still prosecuted his malignant work even to the present hour, blinding the eyes of men, and hardening their hearts, and leading them captive at his will: and if any have dared to resist his will, he has stirred up all his own agents, to persecute them, and to put them to death.
On the other hand, Christ has also fought against him from the beginning, rescuing men from his dominion, and turning millions from darkness unto light, and from the power of Satan unto God. In the days of his flesh especially he shewed his superiority to Satan, by dismissing him from many whom he had possessed, and constraining him to relinquish the hold which he had gained, both of their bodies and their souls. And though he seemed himself to sink under Satans attacks, yet did he, in fact, defeat Satan by the very means which that adversary had used for his destruction: for by death he overcame death, and him that had the power of death, that is, the devil [Note: Heb 2:14.]: yes, on the very cross itself he spoiled all the principalities and powers of hell, triumphing over them openly in it [Note: Col 2:15.]. And in his ascension, he led captivity itself captive; and has bound all the hosts of hell, reserving them in chains of darkness unto the judgment of the great day. In his people, too, he gets the victory from day to day, enabling them to resist him manfully, and to trample both Satan and all his hosts under their feet.
This conflict is still passing from day to day. The God of this world, and the God of heaven, are contending for us, and in us [Note: 2Co 4:4; 2Co 4:6.]: and as long as the world shall stand, will this contest continue.]
But in our text we are informed, that Jesus will prevail, and enjoy at last,
III.
The victory assured to him
[In the conflict, the Saviours heel is bruised: but he bruises the head of his great adversary, and breaks his power for evermore. Behold the Saviour on his throne of glory, far above all the principalities and powers, whether of heaven or hell! Behold the progress of his Gospel in every age! and see in heaven the multitudes which no man can number, continually increased by fresh accessions from every quarter of the globe, from the most blinded votaries of Satan amongst the Heathen, as well as from his more specious servants amongst ourselves! See the weakest of the children of men enabled to triumph over him, and, though persecuted like their divine Master, made more than conquerors through him that loved them! This is going forward amongst ourselves: so that you see the most devoted vassals of Satan casting off his yoke, and brought into the liberty of the sons of God: and soon shall you behold those whom once he held in the most miserable bondage, seated upon thrones of glory, and actually sitting in judgment upon the angels, as assessors with their divine Master [Note: 1Co 6:2-3.]. Yes: it is but a little time, and the seed of Christ, as well as Christ himself, will be seated upon thrones of glory; whilst Satan, and his seed, shall be cast into the lake of fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
Such is the prophecy before us: and in this way is it accomplishing yet daily; and shall be accomplished, till the final destinies of each shall terminate the contest for evermore.]
Behold then, brethren,
1.
How marvellous is the grace of God!
[Think under what circumstances he made this promise to man. He had placed our first parents in Paradise, where there was every thing that could conduce to their happiness; and he himself visited and communed with them, as a friend. Yet did they, on the very first temptation, violate his express command: and then, instead of humbling themselves before him, they fled from him; and, when summoned into his presence, excused themselves, and even cast the blame of their iniquity on him:The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat: The woman, whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. What might we expect now that he should do unto them? surely, that he should consign them over to the misery they deserved. But no: unsought and unsolicited, he promised them a Saviour, even his only dear Son, who should rescue both them and all their believing posterity out of the hands of their great adversary. Now then, I ask, If God, unsolicited, bestowed the Saviour himself on these impenitent offenders, will he refuse salvation to any penitent who calls upon him? Let no sinner in the universe despond: but let every one see in this prophecy how abundant and inconceivable is the grace of God ]
2.
How complete shall be the victory of all who believe in Christ!
[You appear to be in a hopeless condition, because your corruptions are so great and your enemies so mighty. Go, then, to the cross of Christ, and there see the Saviour himself hanging, an helpless and inanimate corpse! What hope has he of victory? Wait a moment, and you will see. Behold him rising from the grave, ascending to heaven, sending down the Holy Spirit, establishing his kingdom upon earth, surrounded in heaven by myriads of his redeemed, and sealing up his great adversary, with his hosts, in the bottomless abyss of hell! See all this; and then know what shall be the issue of your conflicts. You are fighting with a vanquished enemy: and it is but a little time, and he, your Almighty Saviour, will bruise Satan under your feet, and will elevate you to thrones of glory, like unto his own. Only follow him in his conflicts, and you shall be partakers with him in all his victories and triumphs for evermore.]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
Gen 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. Exo 17:16 There is also a capital antipathy (saith Bodinus) a 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 b 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 c 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. Rev 12:9
It shall bruise thy head.
Thou shalt bruise his heel.
a Bodin. Theat ., lib. iii.
b Plin., lib. ii., cap. 63, and lib. vii., cap. 2.
c Sphinx. Philos , Plin., lib. ii., cap. 20.
d [Make light of.]
e
f Bradford.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
it. i.e. Christ. The corruption of this in the Vulgate into “she” lies at the root of Mariolatry: the verb in singular. Masculine shows that zer’a (seed) is here to be taken in singular, with Septuagint, i.e. Christ; see note on Gen 17:7; Gen 21:12, and Gal 1:3, Gal 1:16.
head . . . heel. See App-19. No more literal than 1Co 11:8, or Psa 41:9, and Joh 13:18. They denote the temporary sufferings of the Seed, and the complete destruction of Satan and his works (Heb 2:14. 1Jn 3:8). Heel = lower part. Head = vital part. This is the first great promise and prophecy. Note its position in the centre of Structure above.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
thou shalt bruise his heel
The chain of references which begins here includes the promises and prophecies concerning Christ which were fulfilled in His birth and works at His first advent. See, for line of unfulfilled promises and prophecies: “Christ (second advent)” Deu 30:3. (See Scofield “Act 1:11”) “Kingdom”; Gen 1:26-28; Zec 12:8 “Kingdom (N.T.)”; Luk 1:31; 1Co 15:28 “Day of the Lord”; Isa 2:10; Rev 19:11
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
The Conflict of the Ages
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.Gen 3:15.
1. This passage is known as the Protevangelium or earliest Gospel. It has obtained this name because of the promise contained in the words, It shall bruise thy head. The meaning of the words in the original is a little uncertain, but if we take the translation of the Authorized and Revised Versions we have the metaphor of a man crushing a serpent with his foot and a serpent fastening its teeth in a mans heel. The crushing of the head is more than the biting of the heel; and thus is found in the passage the good news of God that Christ will trample Satan under foot and gain a complete victory over him, although He Himself may be wounded in the struggle.
2. The merely literal explanation of the verse clearly does not exhaust its meaning. There is something more in the words than a declaration that the human race will always view with feelings of instinctive aversion the serpent race. There is something more than a prediction that mankind will be able to assert superiority over this reptile foe among the beasts of the field. We need not doubt that, whichever of the alternative renderings of the verb be preferred, the underlying thought is that of a spiritual conflict between the race of man and the influences of temptation, between humanity with its gift of choice and the Principle of Evil which ever suggests the satisfaction of the lower desires. But, in addition to this main thought, a twofold encouragement is given to nerve man for the fray. He is endowed with capacities enabling him, if he will use them, to inflict a deadly blow upon the adversary. He stands erect, he is made in the image of God. Furthermore, the promise of ultimate victory is assured to him. How it is to be effected is not explained in the context. Both Jewish and Christian interpretation have given to the promise the significance of a Messianic prediction. From the time of Irenus (170 a.d.) the seed of the woman has been understood in the Christian Church as an allusion to a personal Messiah. Calvin, followed by the majority of the Reformers, explained the words in a more general sense, regarding the seed of the woman as the descendants of the first woman, but yet as those from among whom, according to the flesh, the Messiah should come.
3. The most prominent note in the passage is not that of final victory but of the long-continued struggle. Christ will gain the victory and the victory will be ours in Him; but before that, there is the conflict with the serpent which every man is expected to take his part in. It is a conflict that is to be carried on throughout all the ages until Christ comes, and even after Christ has come and won the victory the conflict continues. Every man upon this earth must face temptation, and win his battle. The difference is that, whereas before Christ came all that man had to sustain him in the conflict was the promise of victory through a coming conqueror, in Christ the promise has been turned into a fact, and in order to gain the victory a man has now only to identify himself with Christ by faith.
4. The Protevangelium lays down a great ethical principle. There is to be a continual spiritual struggle between man and the manifold temptations by which he is beset. Evil promptings and suggestions are ever assailing the sons of men; and they must be ever exerting themselves to repel them. It is of course true that the great and crowning defeat of mans spiritual adversary was accomplished by Him who was in a special sense the seed of the woman, the representative of humanity, who overcame once and for all the power of the Evil One. But the terms of the verse are perfectly general; and it must not be interpreted so as to exclude those minor, though in their own sphere not less real, triumphs by which in all ages individuals have resisted the suggestions of sin and proved themselves superior to the power of evil. It is a prolonged and continuous conflict which the verse contemplates, though one in which the law and aim of humanity is to be to resist, and if possible to slay, the serpent which symbolizes the power of temptation.
I have a theory, says Hubert Bland in his volume of essays entitled, With the Eyes of a ManI have a theory that the nation which shortens its weapons wins its battles. I am not clear as to how that theory would work out in the sphere of lower warfare; although even there the practice of long range artillery must be pressed home at the point of the bayonet if victory is to be secured. But in the sphere of the higher warfare it is certainly true; if you want to win you must shorten your weapons; you must look your enemy in the white of his eyes; you must come to close grips with him.1 [Note: E. W. Lewis.]
And evermore we sought the fight, but still
Some pale enchantment clouded all our will,
So that we faltered; even when the foe
Lay, at our sudden onset, crushed and low,
As a flame dies, so passed our wrath away
And fatal to us was the battle-day.
Yet we went willingly, for in our ears
With shrill reiteration, the blind years
Taunted us with our dreamsour dreams more vain
Than on bare hills the fruitless fall of rain;
Vain as the unaccomplished buds of spring
Which fade and fall, and know no blossoming.
Wherefore we, being weary of the days
Which dumbly passed and left no word of praise,
And ever as the good years waned to less,
Growing more weary of lifes barrenness,
Strove with those dreams which bound our spirits fast,
Lest even death should prove a dream at last.
So evermore we foughtand always fell;
Yet was there no man strong enough to quell
Our passionate, sad life of love and hate;
Tireless were we and foes insatiate.
Though one should slay usweaponless and dim
We bade our dreams ride forth and conquer him.2 [Note: Margaret Sackville.]
The subject, then, is the struggle of man with temptation. It is represented as a conflict between the seed of the woman, for every man must take his part in it, and the seed of the serpent, for the struggle will be according to the circumstances of our own time and our own life. Let us look first at the origin of this conflict, next at the progress of it, and then at the end of it.
I
The Origin of the Conflict
i. Its Beginning
1. Creation of Men and Angels.God made three different orders of creatures. The first we call Angels; the second Men; and the third includes the lower animals and all other created things. He created them all for obedience. But with a difference. The third orderthe lower animals and all other lower things, whether living or deadHe created for obedience pure and simple; but angels and men He created for obedience through love. The beasts obey because they have no choice. The sun rises and sets with unvarying regularity, and we use it to point the moral of punctual obedience.
It never comes a wink too soon,
Nor brings too long a day.
But it has no credit for that. It simply cannot help it. It was made to obey, and it has no choice but unwavering obedience. Angels and men were made for obedience also, but not for mechanical obedience. They were made to obey through love. The sun was made to do Gods bidding; angels and men were made to love the Lord with all their heart. Now love implies choice. There must be freedom. I cannot love if I cannot do else but love. I cannot love unless I am also free to hate. There must be freedom of choice. So angels and men were left free to choose good or evil, and it is recorded that some angels and all men chose evil.
2. Fall of Angels and of Men.The fall of the angels is not fully related in Scripture, since it does not concern us to know its circumstances. We do not even know for certain what was the cause of it. Shakespeare makes Wolsey say
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition:
By that sin fell the angels.
And we have accepted that view of it. But whatever was the cause, we know that some of the angels chose the evil and fell. Man chose the evil and fell also. The story of his Choice and Fall is told in this third chapter of Genesis. And the first point to notice about it is that it was brought about through the temptation of one of the fallen angels. The narrative in Genesis speaks of the serpent. And throughout the narrative the language is accommodated to the beast. But he would be a dull interpreter who saw no more in this story than an old serpent myth. We interpret Scripture by itself. And it is certain that in later Scripture it is freely recognized that the author of Eves temptation was Satan, the first of the fallen angels. What does that mean? It means that when an angel falls, he falls more utterly than man. No one tempted the angels to their fall. They deliberately chose the evil of themselves. And so their fall was into evilevil absolute. Henceforth the fallen angels are only evil in will and in purpose. And their work is to do evil continually. So the prince of the fallen angels comes, and, out of the evil that is in him, tempts man to his ruin.
3. Redemption of Men, not of Angels.Thus both angels and men have fallen, but the difference in their fall is very great. First, men have not fallen into evil absolutely like the angels. Their moral darkness is still pierced with some rays of light. And, secondly, men may be redeemed from their evil; the fallen angels may not. For there is an organic unity among men. There is a human nature. And when men fall they fall togetherit is man that falls, not men. There is no angel nature; for, are we not told that they neither marry nor are given in marriage? Each of the fallen angels fell by himself alone. Deliberately he chose the evil for himself. So, when he fell, he fell never to rise again. Robert Burns may say
Auld Nickie-ben,
O wad ye tak a thought an men!
Ye aiblins mightI dinna ken
Still hae a stake:
Im wae to think upo yon den,
Evn for your sake!
But it is a purely human sentiment. There is no warrant for such expectation or possibility in Scripture. The warrant is very plainly all the other way. But man falls that he may rise again. For there is a solidarity in man. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. And if One will but come and take this human nature on Him, enter this flesh of sin and condemn sin in the flesh, then will the way be open to man to return to the love and obedience of his God. And He has come. And when He came he took not hold of angels; but he took hold of the seed of Abraham (Heb 2:16).
ii. Its Meaning
Thus the great conflict began. Tempted by Satan, man fell, but not utterly or irrecoverably. He will henceforth keep up a continuous warfare with Satan. There will be enmity between Adam and Satan, and between their seed, from generation to generation, till One shall come to win the victory for man.
1. There is a gospel in the very strife itself. For to begin no battle is to leave the victory with the Serpent. To open no world-wide conflict is to leave the world to the Prince of the world. To put no enmity between the seed of the Serpent and the seed of the Woman is to see no difference at last between them.
When you send your boy to college or into the world, you do not ask for him a wholly easy life, no obstacles, a cordial, kindly reception from everybody. You do not expect to see him free from anxious doubts and troublesome experiences of soul, and cruel jarrings of his life against the institutions and the men whom he finds in the world. It would be very strange if they did not come to him if he is genuinely good and pure. Marvel not, said Jesus Christ to His disciples, if the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.1 [Note: Phillips Brooks.]
2. The enmity between man and sin has been the great impressive truth of human history. Mankind has never been reconciled with sin, never come to have such an understanding with it that the race everywhere has settled down and made up its mind to being wicked, and asked nothing better, and been at peace. That is the greatest fact by far, the deepest fact, the most pervasive fact, in all the world. Conscience, the restlessness that comes of self-reproach, the discontent that will not let the world be at peace with wrong-doingit runs everywhere. No book of the remotest times, no country of the moat isolated seas, no man of strongest character, no crisis of history so exceptional, but that in them all you find man out of peace because he is in sin, unable to reconcile himself with living wrongthe enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. It is the great fact of human existence.
Hercules, the fabled deliverer of Greece, always wore on head and Shoulders the skin of a lion killed in his first adventure, which Ruskin thus interprets: Every mans Nemean lion lies in wait for him somewhere It is the first ugly and strong enemy that rises against us, all future victory depending on victory over that. Kill it; and through all the rest of life, what once was dreadful is your armour, and you are clothed with that conquest for every other, and helmed with its crest of fortitude for evermore. Alas, we have most of us to walk bareheaded.1 [Note: Ruskin, Queen of the Air, 173.]
3. And is it not a blessed fact? Think how different it would all have been if this fact had not been true from the beginning, if man had been able to settle comfortably into sin and be content. Men read it as a curse, this first declaration of God in Genesis, after the Fall. Is it not rather a blessing? Man had met Satan. Then God said, Since you have met him, the only thing which I can now do for you, the only salvation that I can give you, is that you never shall have peace with one another. You may submit to serve him, but the instinct of rebellion shall never die out in your heart. It was the only salvation left. It is the only salvation left now when a man has begun to sin, that God should perpetually forbid him to be at peace in sinning. It is what has saved earth from becoming hell long agothis blessed decree of God that, however man and sin might live together, there should always be enmity between them, they should be natural foes for ever. No man has ever yet been bold enough, even in any mad dream of poetry, to picture the reconciliation of the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, mans perfect satisfaction in sin, as the consummation and perfect close of human history.
There is an Indian fable that a swan came down to the shore one day, where a crane was feeding. This bird had never seen a swan before, and asked him where he came from. I came from heaven, said the swan. Said the crane, I never heard of such a place. Where is it? Far away; far better than this place, said the swan. The old crane listened to the swan, and at last said, Are there snails there? The swan drew itself up with indignation. Well, said the crane, you can have your heaven then. I want snails.1 [Note: L. A. Banks, The Kings Stewards, 281.]
There is an awful possibility of giving over prayer, or coming to think that the Lords ear is heavy that He cannot hear, and His arm shortened that He cannot save. There is a terrible significance in this passage, which we quote from a recent book: Old Mr. Westfield, a preacher of the Independent persuasion in a certain Yorkshire town, was discoursing one Sunday with his utmost eloquence on the power of prayer. He suddenly stopped, passed his hands slowly over his heada favourite gestureand said in dazed tones: I do not know, my friends, whether you ever tried praying; for my part, I gave it up long ago as a bad job. The poor old gentleman never preached again. They spoke of the strange seizure that he had in the pulpit, and very cheerfully and kindly contributed to the pension which the authorities of the chapel allowed him. I knew him five-and-twenty years agoa gentle old man addicted to botany, who talked of anything but spiritual experiences. I have often wondered with what sudden flash of insight he looked into his own soul that day, and saw himself bowing down silent before an empty shrine.2 [Note: W. R. Nicoll, The Garden of Nuts, 224.]
In the great Church of the Capuchins at Rome there is a famous picture, by Guido Reni, of the Archangel Michael triumphing over the Evil One. The picture represents the Archangel clad in bright armour and holding in his hand a drawn sword, with one foot planted upon the head of Satan, who in the form of a dragon or serpent grovels and writhes beneath him. A sense of victory, not unmingled with defiance, shines on the Archangels face; while Satans every feature is distorted with suffering and hatred. And as we look at the picture, we can hardly fail to see in it the image, the representation, so often depicted, so earnestly longed for, of the final victory of good over evil. What, however, to many at any rate, gives to this picture a peculiar interest is the famous criticism passed upon it in a well-known modern work of fiction, Hawthornes Transfiguration. The Archangelso it is there objectedhas come out of the contest far too easily. His appearance and attitude give no idea of the death-struggle which always takes place before vice can be overcome by virtue. His sword should have been streaming with blood; his armour dented and crushed; he should not have been placing his foot delicately upon his frustrate foe, but pressing it down hard as if his very life depended upon the result.1 [Note: G. Milligan.]
O bird that fights the heavens, and is blown beyond the shore,
Would you leave your flight and danger for a cage, to fight no more?
No more the cold of winter, or the hunger of the snow,
Nor the winds that blow you backward from the path you wish to go?
Would you leave your world of passion for a home that knows no riot?
Would I change my vagrant longings for a heart more full of quiet?
No!for all its dangers, there is joy in danger too:
On, bird, and fight your tempests, and this nomad heart with you.2 [Note: Dora Sigerson Shorter.]
II
The History of the Conflict
It is a conflict which every man must enter. If any man refuses to engage in the struggle, he declares himself to be no man. The gospel that is in the words, It shall bruise thy head, does not take away from any man the necessity of entering into this affray and facing this foe. The gospel gives the assurance of victory; it does not prevent the strife. It is impossible, therefore, to write the history of the conflict fully. All that can be done is, under the guidance of the Old Testament, to select outstanding events in it.
1. Eve seemed to think that it was to be a short struggle. When her first-born came she said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. But Cain grew up to manhood, and Abel his brother; and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. The hoped-for victor is mans first murderer.
2. Lamech thought he had found the Deliverer. This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed. And he called his sons name Noah. Now in the conflict Satan has so steadily won that it is needful to sweep man from off the face of the earth, and make, as it were, a new start. But Noah cannot save his brethren. He barely escapes with his own family. And the flood is only past when even Noah himself has suffered from the bite of the Serpent.
3. Men have got a new start, however. Will they cope with Satan now? Not so. Steadily again Satan wins. And the earth grows so corrupt that God chooses one man and takes him out of the surrounding abomination, to keep him apart and train him and his family for Himself and His great purpose. That man is Abraham. Not that God now leaves the rest of the human race to the unresisted will of Satan. In no place, and at no time, has God left Himself without witness. Or, as another apostle more personally puts it, He kept coming amongst men in the Person of the Word, and whenever any one was found willing to follow the Light, power was given to him to become a child of God. This choice of Abraham and his family is a new departure, that through him and his seed all the families of the earth may be blessed. Is this new departure successful? Does the family of Abraham now gain the victory over Satan, and gain it always? No; not even for themselves; still less for the rest of mankind. As the same evangelist has it, He came unto his own and his own received him not. But Gods purpose is not in vain, nor even thwarted for a moment. Man will be redeemed, and the redemption is delayed only that it may be to love and new obedience, the will to choose being still left free.
4. And now we can trace the gradual closing of the promise on a single Person. A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple. Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. Meanwhile, the world is suffering more and more from the low cunning and bite of the serpent. Read that terrible yet true description of the morals of men which St. Paul gives us in his Epistle to the Romans. Read also the scathing exposure in the Gospels of the irreligiousness of the religion of Israel, the hypocrisy and greed of the leaders and rulers of the people. Satan seems to have gained the victory along the whole line.
It is the strength of the base element that is so dreadful in the serpent; it is the very omnipotence of the earth. Watch it, when it moves slowly, with calm will and equal wayno contraction, no extension; one soundless, causeless march of sequent rings, and spectral procession of spotted dust. Startle it;the winding stream will become a twisted arrow, the wave of poisoned life will lash through the grass like a cast lance. It scarcely breathes with its one lung; it is passive to the sun and shade, and is cold or hot like a stone; yet it can outclimb the monkey, outswim the fish, outleap the zebra, outwrestle the athlete, and crush the tiger. It is a divine hieroglyph of the demoniac power of the earthof the entire earthly nature. As the bird is the clothed power of the air, so this is the clothed power of the dust; as the bird the symbol of the spirit of life, so this of the grasp and sting of death.1 [Note: Ruskin, Queen of the Air, 68.]
When in my shadowy hours I pierce the hidden heart of hopes and fears,
They change into immortal joys or end in immemorial tears.
Moyturas battle still endures and in this human heart of mine
The golden sun powers with the might of demon darkness intertwine.
I think that every teardrop shed still flows from Balors eye of doom,
And gazing on his ageless grief my heart is filled with ageless gloom:
I close my ever-weary eyes and in my bitter spirit brood
And am at one in vast despair with all the demon multitude.
But in the lightning flash of hope I feel the sun-gods fiery sling
Has smote the horror in the heart where clouds of demon glooms take wing,
I shake my heavy fears aside and seize the flaming sword of will
I am of Danas race divine and know I am immortal still.2 [Note: A. E., The Divine Vision, 76.]
III
The End of the Conflict
The victor comes in Jesus of Nazareth. On the morrow John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. Jesus of Nazareth has come as mans representative and redeemer to atone for the sins of the world. But first, He is Jesus of Nazareth. He is a man. Before He begins His work of atonement, before He takes upon Him the redemption of the world, He must fight His own mans battle. To every man upon this earth that battle comes. It comes to Jesus also. Therefore before the public ministry begins, before He begins to heal the sick or raise the dead or preach the gospel to the poor, the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil
i. His Temptation as a Man
This is the place of the Temptation in the Wilderness. Jesus is a man, and He must face the foe whom every man has to face. He must fight the battle which every man has to fight. And He must win. If He does not win, how can He atone for the sins of the world? If as a man He does not win His own mans battle, why, then, He has His own sins to reckon with, and how can He even come forward as the Redeemer of the race? Jesus must fight and Jesus must win, just as we all have to fight, but not one of us has won. That is the place of the Temptation. And that is why the Temptation in the Wilderness is recorded. It is every mans Temptation. It may be spread over our life; it could not have been spread over the life of Jesus, otherwise He could not have begun His atonement till His life was at an end; but it is the same temptation that comes to every man. It is the temptation that came to Eve. Point for point the temptations of Eve and the temptations of Jesus correspond. Eves temptations were three; so were the temptations of Jesus. Eves temptations assailed the body, the mind, and the spirit; so did the temptations of Jesus.
1. The First Temptation.The first temptation was a bodily temptation. She saw that the tree was good for food. If thou art the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread. There is the difference, certainly, that Eve was not hungry, while Jesus was. The sin of Eve was the greater that she sinned not through the cravings of hunger, but merely through the longing for forbidden, or it might be daintier, food. But though the temptation was more intense for Jesus, it did not differ from Eves essentially. It was the desire for food. It was the longing to satisfy a bodily appetite. And it does not matter how imperious that appetite may be, it is not to be satisfied unlawfully. Eve saw that she had the opportunity of satisfying it, Jesus saw that He had the power. Eve was tempted to satisfy it by using an opportunity which God had not given her, Jesus by using a power which had been given Him for another purpose. It does not matter essentially whether it is to avoid starvation or merely for greater luxury, we sin with Eve if we seize an opportunity or take advantage of our position to do that for our body or outward estate which God has commanded us not to do.
2. The Second Temptation.The second temptation was to the mind. And that it was a delight to the eyesthus the temptation came to Eve. He showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of timethus it came to Jesus. Now the temptation to the mind does not come to every one. It does not come to those who are absorbed in the things of the body. The three temptations came to Eve because Eve is typical of the whole human race. And the three temptations came to Jesus, because He is typical also, and because He resisted them all. The temptation to the mind is higher; it is a nobler temptation than the temptation to the body. There are those to whom the fragrance or beauty of the apple makes irresistible appeal, who would never be driven to do wrong merely in order to have it to eat. It is a subtler temptation also. We are willing to starve that we may hear good music or give ourselves a scientific education. And we cannot perceive that we are falling before a temptation. But music or science may be pursued for purely selfish ends. In their pursuit, too, some nearer duty may be neglected. And the fall is often obvious enough: a doubtful companionship, such as music sometimes introduces us to; or a denial of God such as science sometimes leads us to.
But the temptation to Jesus was nobler, we do not doubt, and more subtle than the temptation to the mind has ever been to any other man. He saw the kingdoms of the world at a glance, and the glory of them. He was offered them as His own. Now, He desired to have the kingdoms of the world as His own. All the difference seemed to be that the Devil offered them at once without the agony of winning themthe agony to Him or to us. He was offered them without the agony to Himself. Some think that He did not know yet what that agony was. He did not know that He was to be despised and rejected of men. He did not know that He was to lose the sense of the Fathers well-pleasing. He did not know what the Garden was to be or what the Cross. They say so. But how can they tell? One thing is sure. He knew enough to make this a keen temptation.
But He was also offered the kingdoms of the world without the agony to us. That temptation was yet more terrible. For when the Cross was past, the agony to us was but beginning. And He felt our agony more keenly than He felt His own. What a long-drawn agony it has been. Two thousand years of woe! and still the redemption is not complete. To be offered the homage of the human heart, to be offered its lovesuch love as it would have been where there was no choice leftto end the poverty and the sickness and the blindness and the leprosy and the death, not by an occasional laying on of the hands in a Galilean village, but in one world-embracing word of healing; to end the sin without waiting for the slow movements of conscience and the slow dawnings of faithit was a sore temptation. But it must not be. To deliver from the consequence of sin without the sorrow for it, to accept the homage of the heart of man without its free choice of love, is to leave the Serpent master still. The world is very fair to look upon as He sees it in a moment of time from that mountain-top; but it cannot be His until He has suffered for it, and until it has suffered with Him.
3. The Third Temptation.The third temptation was a temptation to the spirit. Eve saw that the tree was to be desired to make one wise. Jesus was invited to cast Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple, trusting in God and in the promise that no harm should befall Him. The wisdom which Eve was promised was spiritual wisdom. It was the wisdom of God. Ye shall be as gods, said the Serpent, knowing good and evil. And this wisdom became hers when she had eaten. Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil. It was such wisdom as God has. And God is a Spirit. It was spiritual wisdom. Man is both spiritual and material As a spiritual being he has certain spiritual experiences. But as long as the spirit is in touch with the body its experiences are limited in their range. God is a Spirit, and His experience knows no bounds. When man attempts to pass the bounds of human experience and enter the experience of God, he sins.
Eve was so tempted and fell. Jesus also was so tempted, but He resisted the temptation. As God He can throw Himself from the pinnacle of the temple with impunity, just as He can walk upon the water. And the Devil reminds Him that He is God. But this is His temptation as a man. As a man He cannot, as a man He has no right, to tempt God by casting Himself down. To Eve and to Jesus it was the temptation to an enlargement of experience beyond that which is given to man. And it lay, as it always does, in the direction of the knowledge of evil. There are those who, like Eve, still enter into evil not from the mere love of evil or the mere spirit of rebellion, but in order to taste that which they have not tasted yet. They wish to know what it is like. There are men and women who can trace their drunkards lifelong misery to this very source.
To Eve the sharpness of the temptation lay in the promise of larger spiritual experiences. Let us not say it was a vulgar curiosity. The promise was that she would be as God, that she would know what God knows. Perhaps she even felt that it would bring her into closer sympathy with God, the sympathy of a larger common experience. To Jesus this also was the sharpness of the temptation. He was God, but He was being tempted as a man. It was not merely, as in the first temptation, that He was invited to use His power as Redeemer for His own human advantage. It was that He was invited to enter into the experience of God, to enter into the fulness of knowledge which belongs to God, to prove Himself, and to feel in perfect sympathy with the whole range of experience of the Father. It seemed like trust: it would have been presumption. We sometimes enter into temptation saying that we will trust God to deliver us. No one ever yet entered into temptation, unsent by God, and came forth scathless.
Let us not undervalue the blessing which would come to us if Jesus Christ were simply one of us, setting forth with marvellous vividness the universal conflict of the world, the perpetual strife of man with evil. Surely that strife becomes a different thing for each of us, when out of our own little skirmish in some corner of the field, we look up and see the Man of men doing just the same work on the hilltop where the battle rages thickest. The schoolboy tempted to tell a lie, the man fighting with his lusts, the soldier struggling with cowardice, the statesman with corruption, the poor creature fettered by the thousand little pin-pricks of a hostile worldthey all find the dignity of their several battles asserted, find that they are not unnatural, but natural, find that they are not in themselves wicked but glorious, when they see that the Highest, entering into their lot, manifested the eternal enmity between the seed of the serpent and our common humanity at its fiercest and bitterest.1 [Note: Phillips Brooks.]
When gathering clouds around I view,
And days are dark and friends are few,
On Him I lean, who not in vain
Experienced every human pain;
He sees my wants, allays my fears,
And counts and treasures up my tears.
If aught should tempt my soul to stray
From heavenly wisdoms narrow way;
To fly the good I would pursue,
Or do the sin I would not do;
Still He, who felt temptations power,
Shall guard me in that dangerous hour.
If wounded love my bosom swell,
Deceived by those I prized too well;
He shall His pitying aid bestow,
Who felt on earth severer woe;
At once betrayed, denied, or fled,
By those who shared His daily bread.
If vexing thoughts within me rise,
And, sore dismayed, my spirit dies;
Still He, who once vouchsafed to bear
The sickening anguish of despair,
Shall sweetly soothe, shall gently dry,
The throbbing heart, the streaming eye.
When sorrowing oer some stone I bend,
Which covers what was once a friend,
And from his voice, his hand, his smile,
Divides me for a little while;
Thou, Saviour, markst the tears I shed,
For Thou didst weep oer Lazarus dead!
And O! when I have safely past
Through every conflict but the last;
Still, still unchanging, watch beside
My painful bed, for Thou hast died!
Then point to realms of cloudless day,
And wipe the latest tear away.1 [Note: Robert Grant.]
ii. His Work of Redemption
Jesus was tempted of the Devil and resisted all the temptations. What it cost Him we cannot tell. We know it cost Him much. Angels came and ministered unto Him. He needed their ministrations. But He won His battle. No one could convict Him of sin. He is ready now to be the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.
1. His Works.When He begins His work of Redemption He can use His powers as the Son of God. The Devils temptation, If thou art the Son of God, is a temptation no longer. He begins His works of wonder. He heals the sick; He preaches the gospel to the poor; He accepts the cup and drinks it; He cries, It is finished.
2. Son of Man.While the Temptation in the Wilderness was the temptation of a man, the atonement for sin was the atonement of the Son of Man, mans representative; the atonement of the race in Him. This is the essential thing in the Cross. He took hold of our nature; in our nature He suffered and died. Our nature suffered and died in Him. This is the essential thing, that He made the atonement as Man, that man made the atonement when He made it. After the Temptation in the Wilderness the Devil left Him for a season. When he came back he did not come back to a man. He came back to the race of man, represented and gathered into one in Christ. He came back not to seek to throw one human being as he had thrown so many human beings before. He came to fight for his kingdom and his power.
3. Victory.It did seem as if the Devil had won this time. As the fight closed in, Jesus Himself said, This is your hour, and the power of darkness. The Devil had the whole world on his side in the struggle. The religious leaders were especially active. And the end camedeath and darkness. It did seem as if the Devil had won this time, and this was the greater battle to win. But except a corn of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth alone. Without death Jesus was sinless. In death He gathered many to His sinlessness. Death and the Devil got hold of Him but lost their hold of us. It was the Devils greatest triumph. It was his greatest defeat.
4. Faith in the Victor.One thing remains. We must accept Him. The kingdom of heaven is open, but it is open to all believers. He could not have this fair world without the agony; we cannot have Him without it. For it is love that is wanted. Nothing is wanted but love. It is the love of the heart that makes Paradise. And love must be free. There is no compulsion. Sin must be felt and repented of; a Saviour must be seen and made welcome. By faith we must become one with Him as He has become one with us.
Every earnest man grows to two strong convictions: one, of the victory to which a life may come; the other of the obstacles and wounds which it must surely encounter in coming there. Alas for him who gains only one of these convictions! Alas for him who learns only confidence in the result, and never catches sight of all that must come in betweenthe pains and blows and disappointments! How many times he will sink down and lose his hope! How many times some wayside cross will seem to be the end of everything to him! Alas also for him who only feels the wounds and sees no victory ahead! How often life will seem to him not worth the living! There are multitudes of men of this last sort; men with too much seriousness and perception to say that the world is easy, too clear-sighted not to see its obstacles, too pure not to be wounded and offended by its wickedness, but with no faith large enough to look beyond and see the end; men with the wounded heel that hinders and disables them, but with no strength to set the wounded foot upon the head of the serpent and to claim their triumph.1 [Note: Phillips Brooks.]
I do not doubt that many of you noted, as I did, the description given in the newspaper dispatches of the visit of Theodore Roosevelt to the tomb of Napoleon, and you perhaps noted how he took up the sword which the great warrior carried in the battle of Austerlitz, and waved it about his head and examined its edge, and held it aloft, seeming in the meantime to be profoundly impressed. And we may well imagine and believe that the hero of San Juan Hill was stirred in every drop of his soldierly blood as he stood on that historic spot with that famous sword gripped in his right hand. But if we could gather together all the famous swords kept in all the capitals of the world, in memory of princes and warriors and heroes who have carried them on historic battlefields, they would be insignificant in comparison to that sword of the Spirit, of which Paul speaks in his letter to the Ephesiansa sword by which millions of humble men and women, and even boys and girls, have put to flight the alien armies of hell and maintained their integrity against odds as the faithful children of God.2 [Note: L. A. Banks, The Worlds Childhood, 344.]
The far winds brought me tidings of himone
Who fought alone, a champion unafraid,
Hurt in the desperate warring, faint, fordone;
I loved him, and I prayed.
The far winds told the turning of the strife;
Into his deeds there crept a strange new fire.
Unconquerable, the glory of his life
Fulfilled my souls desire.
God knows what mighty bond invisible
Gave my dream power, wrought answer to my prayer;
God knows in what far world our souls shall tell
Of triumph that we share.
I war alone; I shall not see his face,
But I shall strive more gladly in the sun,
More bravely in the shadow, for this grace:
He fought his fight, and won.
Literature
Arnold (T.), Sermons, vi. 9.
Arnot (W.), The Anchor of the Soul, 68.
Banks (L. A.), The Kings Stewards, 274.
Banks (L. A.), The Worlds Childhood, 337, 350.
Barron (D.), Rays of Messiahs Glory, 255.
Brooks (P.), Seeking Life, 277.
Brooks (P.), Twenty Sermons, 93.
Campbell (R. J.), Thursday Mornings at the City Temple, 30.
Gibson (J. M.), The Ages before Moses, 98.
Glover (R.), By the Waters of Babylon, 218.
Hall (C. R.), Advent to Whitsun-Day, 90.
How (W. W.), Plain Words, ii. 64.
Kuegele (F.), Country Sermons, i. 9.
Leathes (S.), Truth and Life, 14.
Macgregor (W. M.), Some of Gods Ministries, 11.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Genesis.
Milligan (G.), in Great Texts of the Old Testament, 267.
Nicoll (W. R.), The Garden of Nuts, 221.
Parker (J.), Studies in Texts, vi. 156.
Pressens (E. de), The Redeemer, 1.
Robinson (S.), Discourses of Redemption, 57.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxii. No. 1326.
Steere (E.), Notes of Sermons, No. 24.
Vaughan (C. J.), Christ the Light of the World, 112.
Vaughan (C. J.), Family Prayer and Sermon Book, i. 148.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), xi. No. 873.
Winterbotham (R.), Sermons and Expositions, 8.
Young (D. T.), The Enthusiasm of God, 79.
Christian World Pulpit, xxix. 154 (Leathes).
Clergymans Magazine, 3rd Ser., i. 110 (Leathes).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
enmity: Num 21:6, Num 21:7, Amo 9:3, Mar 16:18, Luk 10:19, Act 28:3-6, Rom 3:13
thy seed: Mat 3:7, Mat 12:34, Mat 13:38, Mat 23:33, Joh 8:44, Act 13:10, 1Jo 3:8, 1Jo 3:10
her seed: Psa 132:11, Isa 7:14, Jer 31:22, Mic 5:3, Mat 1:23, Mat 1:25, Luk 1:31-35, Luk 1:76, Gal 4:4
it shall: Rom 16:20, Eph 4:8, Col 2:15, Heb 2:14, Heb 2:15, 1Jo 3:8, 1Jo 5:5, Rev 12:7, Rev 12:8, Rev 12:17, Rev 20:1-3, Rev 20:10
thou: Gen 49:17, Isa 53:3, Isa 53:4, Isa 53:12, Dan 9:26, Mat 4:1-10, Luk 22:39-44, Luk 22:53, Joh 12:31-33, Joh 14:30, Joh 14:31, Heb 2:18, Heb 5:7, Rev 2:10, Rev 12:9-13, Rev 13:7, Rev 15:1-6, Rev 20:7, Rev 20:8
Reciprocal: Gen 4:1 – I have Lev 4:28 – a kid Lev 11:42 – goeth upon the belly Num 23:23 – no enchantment Jdg 14:14 – Out of the eater Jdg 16:30 – So the dead 2Sa 3:1 – between Neh 4:7 – then Job 19:25 – he shall Psa 40:7 – in the Psa 98:1 – his right Psa 110:6 – wound Isa 46:10 – the end Isa 53:5 – bruised Isa 57:3 – sons Isa 65:25 – dust Mic 7:17 – lick Hag 2:7 – and the Zec 3:1 – resist him Mal 4:3 – tread down Mat 1:18 – of the Mat 10:36 – General Mat 11:3 – Art Mat 22:44 – till Mat 26:24 – Son of man goeth Mat 26:56 – that Mar 3:27 – General Mar 5:7 – that Mar 12:7 – This Mar 14:21 – goeth Luk 1:27 – General Luk 1:70 – which Luk 2:11 – which Luk 3:7 – O generation Luk 4:2 – tempted Luk 4:18 – bruised Luk 4:34 – art Luk 7:19 – Art Luk 9:22 – General Luk 11:22 – General Luk 22:22 – truly Luk 24:27 – beginning Luk 24:44 – in the law Joh 1:17 – grace Joh 1:45 – of whom Joh 5:46 – for Joh 16:11 – the Joh 17:14 – the world Joh 19:30 – It is Act 2:35 – thy foes Act 3:18 – all Act 13:32 – how Act 26:6 – the promise Act 26:23 – Christ Rom 1:3 – according 1Co 15:3 – according 2Co 1:20 – all Eph 1:22 – put Phi 2:9 – God 1Ti 2:15 – she Heb 1:1 – at Heb 2:9 – Jesus Heb 10:5 – but Heb 10:7 – in Jam 4:4 – enmity 1Pe 1:11 – the glory 1Pe 1:20 – verily Rev 12:13 – General Rev 20:2 – he laid
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
THE EARLIEST GOSPEL
I will put enmity between thee and the woman, etc.
Gen 3:15
I. The first time Prophecy opened her lips, it was to pronounce these words. To our first parents they were full of hope and consolation. In some mysterious way their loss was to be repaired; a Deliverer was to be provided. This promise was all their Bible. What, in truth, is all the rest of Scripture but the development of this great primeval promise of a Redeemer?
II. Never for an instant was this tremendous announcement absent from the recollection of the enemy of our race. Thoroughly versed in Scripture (as the history of the Temptation proves), he watched with intense anxiety the progress of prophetic announcement to mankind concerning One that was to come.
III. It is not to be supposed for an instant that Satan understood the mystery of our Lords Incarnation. Caught in the depths of that unimaginable mystery, he did not know until it was too late that it was Very and Eternal God with whom he had entered into personal encounter. Repulsed in the wilderness, he was made fully aware of the personal advent of his great Enemy. At the death of Christ the kingdom which he had been consolidating for four thousand years was in a single moment shattered to its base.
IV. The history of the Fall plainly intimates that on the side of the flesh man is most successfully assaulted by temptation. Four thousand years of warfare have convinced the enemy of our peace that on this side the citadel is weakest, is most easily surprised, is most probably captured.
Dean Burgon.
Illustration
(1) Let us make it war to the knife! Let us hate evil with a perfect hatred. I will suggest a little creed for the day: I hate meanness! I hate impurity! I hate falsehood! I hate injustice! I like a good hater, but it is sin he must hate. This is the one pardonable enmity of the soul.
(2) We have here the beginning of Redemption. God said to the serpent, 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. As sometimes in nature we find the bane and the antidote almost side by sidein Corsica, e.g. the mineral springs of Orezza are said to be a specific for the malarial fever produced in the plains belowso in this chapter with its story of defeat, captivity, and ruin, there is the promise of victory, deliverance, and recovery. The words I have quoted are sometimes called the Protevangelium, or the Gospel before the Gospel. They could not, of course, mean for those who first heard or read them all that they mean to us who find their complete fulfilment in Christ; yet even from them their deeper meaning could not have been wholly hidden. When men who felt the misery of sin and lifted up their hearts to God for deliverance, read the words addressed to the serpent, is it reasonable to suppose that such men would take these words in their literal sense, and satisfy themselves with the assurance that serpents, though dangerous, should be kept under, and would find in the words no assurance of that very thing they themselves were all their lifetime striving after, deliverance from the evil thing which lay at the root of all sin?
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Gen 3:15. I will put enmity, &c. The whole race of serpents are, of all creatures, the most disagreeable and terrible to mankind, and especially to women: but the devil, who seduced the woman, and his angels, are here meant, who are hated and dreaded by all men, even by those that serve them, but more especially by good men. And between thy seed All carnal and wicked men, who, in reference to this text, are called the children and seed of Satan; and her seed That is, her offspring, first and principally CHRIST, who, with respect to this promise, is termed, by way of eminence, her seed, (see Gal 3:16; Gal 3:19,) whose alone work it is to bruise the serpents head, to destroy the policy and power of the devil. But also, secondly, all the members of Christ, all believers and holy men, are here intended, who are the seed of Christ and the implacable enemies of the devil and his works, and who overcome him by Christs merit and power.
It shall bruise thy head The principal instrument of the serpents fury and mischief, and of his defence; and also the chief seat of his life, which, therefore, men chiefly strike at, and which, being upon the ground, a man may conveniently tread upon and crush to pieces. Applied to Satan, this denotes his subtlety and power, producing death, which Christ, the Seed of the woman, destroys by taking away its sting, which is sin.
Thou shalt bruise his heel The part which is most within the serpents reach, and on which, being bruised by it, the serpent is provoked to fix its venomous teeth, but a part remote from the head and heart, and therefore wounds there, though painful, are yet not deadly nor dangerous, if they be observed in time. Understood of Christ, the seed of the woman, his heel means, first, his humanity, whereby he trod upon the earth, and which the devil, through the instrumentality of wicked men, bruised and killed; and, secondly, his people, his members, whom Satan, in divers ways, bruises, vexes, and afflicts while they are on earth, but cannot reach either Christ their head in heaven, or themselves when they shall be advanced thither. In this verse, therefore, notice is given of a perpetual quarrel commenced between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the devil among men: war is proclaimed between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, Rev 12:7. It is the fruit of this enmity, 1st, That there is a continual conflict between Gods people and him. Heaven and hell can never be reconciled, no more can Satan and a sanctified soul. 2d, That there is likewise a continual struggle between the wicked and the good. And all the malice of persecutors against the people of God is the fruit of this enmity, which will continue while there is a godly man on this side heaven, and a wicked man on this side hell. But, 3d, A gracious promise also is here made of Christ, as the deliverer of fallen man from the power of Satan. By faith in this promise, our first parents, and the patriarchs before the flood, were justified and saved; and to this promise, and the benefit of it, instantly serving God day and night, they hoped to come.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
3:15 And I will put enmity between {o} thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy {p} head, and thou shalt {q} bruise his heel.
(o) He chiefly means Satan, by whose action and deceit the serpent deceived the woman.
(p) That is, the power of sin and death.
(q) Satan shall sting Christ and his members, but not overcome them.