to place (in a very wide application) · verb, qal imperfect, 1st person common singular
enmity
וְאֵיבָ֣הve.'ei.Vah
H342
hostility · conjunction + noun, common feminine singular absolute
woman
הָֽאִשָּׁ֔הha.'i.Shah
H802
a woman · definite article + noun, common feminine singular absolute
seed
זַרְעֲךָ֖zar.'a.Kha
H2233
seed · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
seed
זַרְעָ֑הּzar.'Ah
H2233
seed · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person feminine singular
bruise
יְשׁוּפְךָ֣ye.shu.fe.Kha
H7779
properly · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
head
רֹ֔אשׁRosh
H7218
the head (as most easily shaken) · noun, common masculine singular absolute
bruise
תְּשׁוּפֶ֥נּוּte.shu.Fe.nu
H7779
properly · verb, qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine singular + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
heel
עָקֵֽב'a.Kev
H6119
a heel (as protuberant) · noun, common masculine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Romans 16:20 And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.
1 John 3:8 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 mi…
Revelation 12:17 And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the…
Isaiah 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
Hebrews 2:14-15 Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might…
Galatians 4:4 But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,
John 8:44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth,…
Matthew 1:23 Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God wi…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Genesis 3:14-15
The prisoners being found guilty by their own confession, besides the personal and infallible knowledge of the Judge, and nothing material being offered in arrest of judgment, God immediately proceeds to pass sentence; and, in these verses, he begins (where the sin began) with the serpent. God did not examine the serpent, nor ask him what he had done nor why he did it; but immediately sentenced him, 1. Because he was already convicted of rebellion against God, and his malice and wickedness were notorious, not found by secret search, but openly avowed and declared as Sodom's. 2. Because he was to be for ever excluded from all hope of pardon; and why should any thing be said to convince and hu…
thy seed--not only evil spirits, but wicked men.
seed of the woman--the Messiah, or His Church [CALVIN, HENGSTENBERG].
I will put enmity between thee and the woman--God can only be said to do so by leaving "the serpent and his seed to the influence of their own corruption; and by those measures which, pursued for the salvation of men, fill Satan and his angels with envy and rage."
thou shalt bruise his heel--The serpent wounds the heel that crushes him; and so Satan would be permitted to afflict the humanity of Christ and bring suffering and persecution on His people.
it shall bruise thy head--The serpent's poison is lodged in its head; and a bruise on that part is fatal. Thus, f…
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, etc., 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 ap…
The Church Fathers
(Verse 15) He himself will keep your head, and you will keep his heel. It is better in Hebrew: He will crush your head, and you will crush his heel; for our steps are hindered by the serpent, and the Lord will quickly crush Satan under our feet.
Enmities are not set between the serpent and the man but between the serpent and the woman. This is surely not because he fails to deceive and tempt men, is it? On the contrary, it is clear that he does deceive them. Or is it because he did not deceive Adam but his woman? But is the serpent then not the enemy of the man to whom that deception came through his woman, especially since "I will place enmity between you and the woman" is stated in the future? If the reason is that he did not thereafter deceive Adam, it is also true that he did not thereafter deceive Eve. Hence, why does Scripture put it this way? To show clearly that we cannot be tempted by the devil except through that animal part, which reveals, so to speak, the image or exemplification of the woman in the one whole man.
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. The seed of the woman is the entire human race, the seed of the devil are the betrayers, who are depraved with his example of pride and rebellion. His seed is a perverse suggestion; the seed of the woman is the fruit of good work, by which the perverse suggestion is resisted. The enmity mentioned between this serpent and his seed, and how much the human race endures this enmity, and how much enmity all the elect exercise against him by living rightly, is clearer than the sun to all the faithful. A sign of this enmity appears even in the nature of the irrational serpent, which, because of the innate pestilence of its venom, exists always as an enemy to all living creatures and beasts of the earth: it is to be believed that from the time of this curse, and not before, this was implanted in it.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Abraham — Father of a multitude, son of Terah, named (Gen. 11:27) before his older brothers Nahor and Haran, because he was the heir of the promises. Till the age of seventy, Abram sojourned among his kindred…
Adam — Red, a Babylonian word, the generic name for man, having the same meaning in the Hebrew and the Assyrian languages. It was the name given to the first man, whose creation, fall, and subsequent…
Christ — Anointed, the Greek translation of the Hebrew word rendered “Messiah” (q.v.), the official title of our Lord, occurring five hundred and fourteen times in the New Testament. It denotes that he was…
Devil — (Gr. diabolos), a slanderer, the arch-enemy of man’s spiritual interest (Job 1:6; Rev. 2:10; Zech. 3:1). He is called also “the accuser of the brethen” (Rev. 12:10). In Lev. 17:7 the word “devil” is…
Enmity — Deep-rooted hatred. “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, between thy seed and her seed” (Gen. 3:15). The friendship of the world is “enmity with God” (James 4:4; 1 John 2:15, 16). The…
Gilead — Hill of testimony, (Gen. 31:21), a mountainous region east of Jordan. From its mountainous character it is called “the mount of Gilead” (Gen. 31:25). It is called also “the land of Gilead” (Num.…
How The Prophetic Gift Was Received — —We learn from Holy Scripture that it was by the agency of the Spirit of God that the prophets received the divine communication; but the means by which the divine Spirit communicated with the human…
Messiah — (Heb. mashiah), in all the thirty-nine instances of its occurring in the Old Testament, is rendered by the LXX. “Christos.” It means anointed. Thus priests (Ex. 28:41; 40:15; Num. 3:3), prophets (1…
Prophecy — Or prediction, was one of the functions of the prophet. It has been defined as a “miracle of knowledge, a declaration or description or representation of something future, beyond the power of human…
Serpent — (Heb. nahash; Gr. ophis), frequently noticed in Scripture. More than forty species are found in Syria and Arabia. The poisonous character of the serpent is alluded to in Jacob’s blessing on Dan (Gen.…
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 o…
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 dest…
The sentence follows the examination, and is pronounced first of all upon the serpent as the tempter: "Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed before all cattle, and before every beast of the field." מן, literally out of the beasts, separate from them (Deu 14:2; Jdg 5:24), is not a comparative signifying more than, nor does it mean by; for the curse did not proceed from the beasts, but from God, and was not pronounced upon all the beasts, but upon the serpent alone. The κτίσις, it is true, including the whole animal creation, has been "made subject to vanity" and "the bondage of corruption," in consequence of the sin of man (Rom 8:20-21); yet this subjection is not to be regarded as th…
hostility: The prophet Isaiah envisions the day when the Messiah’s kingdom will restore all of creation to a harmonious state like the Garden of Eden before humans sinned (see Isa 11:8). • her offspring (literally her seed): This collective noun can refer to a single descendant or many. The ancient Near Eastern concept of corporate solidarity (e.g., “you and your descendants,” Gen 28:14) is also behind this description of the ongoing hostility that would exist between humans and snakes. The pattern is set using singular terms (He . . . you). Christian interpreters have traditionally understood this verse as a prophecy of Christ, the seed of Abraham and the culmination of the woman’s seed (Ga…
Tree of the knowledge of good and evil — Stood in the midst of the garden of Eden, beside the tree of life (Gen. 2, 3). Adam and Eve were forbidden to take of the fruit which grew upon it. But they disobeyed the divine injunction, and so…
Version — A translation of the holy Scriptures. This word is not found in the Bible, nevertheless, as frequent references are made in this work to various ancient as well as modern versions, it is fitting that…
Agency · IN EXECUTING — IN EXECUTING
Anthropomorphisms · General references — General references
Curse · .Against the serpent — .Against the serpent
Devil, The · Triumph over, by Christ: Predicted — Triumph over, by Christ: Predicted
Eve · Messiah promised to — Messiah promised to
Fall Of Man · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Fall Of Man, The · Remedy for, provided by God — Remedy for, provided by God
God · .To Adam — .To Adam
Human Nature Of Christ, The · Was of the seed of: The woman — Was of the seed of: The woman
Judgments · On the serpent — On the serpent
Malice · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Marriage · The expectation of the promised seed of the woman an incentive to, in the early age — The expectation of the promised seed of the woman an incentive to, in the early age
Persecution · OF JESUS — OF JESUS
Prophecies Respecting Christ · As the seed of the woman — As the seed of the woman
Salvation · Announced after the fall — Announced after the fall
Serpent · Satan appears to Eve in the form of — Satan appears to Eve in the form of
Serpents · Man’s aversion and hatred to — Man’s aversion and hatred to
Strife · General references — General references
Warfare Of Saints · Is against: The devil — Is against: The devil
Woman · Salvation promised through the seed of — Salvation promised through the seed of
Women · Fall of, and curse upon — Fall of, and curse upon
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
