Genesis 3:15—The
Posterity of the Woman, Enemy of the Serpent
After the original
fall, God cursed the serpent in these terms: “I will make you enemies of each
other: you and the woman, your offspring and her offspring. It will attack your
head and you will attack its heel.” This text is full of meaning. It signifies
on the whole, without referring to the outcome, the struggle which will go on
until the end of time between mankind and the devil. The Vulgate interprets the
text in the light of further revelation, and in a twofold way goes beyond the
inspired text in translating. “She (the woman) will crush your
head.” In the Hebrew, it is the offspring of the woman that will be
struggling with the offspring of the serpent. Moreover, the same Hebrew
verb (shuph) is used to indicate the attack made by each of the parties
on the other. The precise meaning of this rare verb (used only in Ps. 139:11
and Job 9:17) remains hard to establish. At any rate, it is not said explicitly
that either one of the two will crush the other. This outcome cannot strictly
be deduced either from the respective positions of the “head” and “heel,” even
though the position of head under heel is inferior and humiliating. Genesis
49:17 forbids drawing any argument based on relative position. In fact, this
later verse of Genesis, which belongs to the same “J” (Yahwist) document,
exalts the insidious position on the serpent as a title of glory and triumph.
Jacob eulogizes the serpent in speaking of the seventh tribe of Israel: “Dan is
a serpent . . . this bites the horse’s heels, so that his rider
falls backward.” (The Oxford Bible translates “heels,” the Jerusalem Bible
“hock,” the New American Bible “heel.”)
Thus the serpent’s
bite is a dangerous thing, and the Father’s rightly understood it in this sense
(R. Laurentin, L’interprétation de Gen. 3:15 dans la tradition, EM 12,
(1954), pp. 79-156).
But
Genesis 3:15 has also a positive sense. In the entire passage God is giving
mankind the advantage. He leaves man standing, but puts the serpent on the
ground (3:14); he punishes man but does not curse him; he even remains in
dialogue with him (3:8-18) and shows him a fatherly solicitude, giving the two
guilty persons skin tunics with which he clothes them himself (3:21). On the
contrary, he curses the serpent without giving him a hearing (3:14), and it is
within this whole context that the curse of Genesis 3:15 is pronounced against
the tempter.
And
there is something more. In the perspective of the inspired author, in the very
perspective of the “J” (Yahwist) document that he uses, Genesis 3:15 seems to
imply a first sketch of the messianic hints given in Genesis 49:10 ) “To him
the peoples shall render obedience”) and Numbers 24:17 (“A star from Jacob
takes the leadership”). The messianic interpretation was perceptible before the
coming of Christ, since the Septuagint translation understood the offspring of
the woman in the sense of one single mysterious descendant: “He shall
watch your head.” Later the Pauline interpretation will also understand
“offspring” in the sense of “one descendant” who is the Messiah (Gal. 3:16).
The
following conclusions, then, seem warranted: Exegetical probity demands that we
renounce making interpretations that theologically are very appealing. The
inspired text does not contain any explicit affirmation of a complete victory
without combat, a victory whose description would be realized only in the
Immaculate Conception. There is only an opening out onto a hope of victory, and
an obscure hint of this distant victory. Nor would it be correct to deduce from
the expression semen mulieris (“seed of the woman”) that there is formal
question of a virginal motherhood, since this expression is also used with
regard to women who are not virgins (Gen. 16:10; 24:60).
In
what sense does Genesis 3:15 concern Mary? First she is objectively included in
the offspring of Eve, among the participants in this struggle with the serpent.
Then, the emphasis placed on the woman and her motherhood and the messianic
hints in the text give reason to think that the author was more especially
envisaging in this universal struggle the messianic descendant and the woman
who was to be his mother. Finally, it is in Mary that in the full sense this
“enmity” between the woman and the serpent is realized. These different
observations receive additional strength from being implied also in the
Eve-Mary typology. (René Laurentin, A Short Treatise on the
Virgin Mary [6th ed.; trans. Charles Neumann; Washington, D. C.:
The Catholic University of America Press, 2022], 272-74)
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