15“I will put enmity between you
and the woman,
and between your seed and her
seed.”
The seed of the woman is the seed
of the whole human race; the seed of the devil is the rebellious angels, who
are corrupted by the example of his pride and wicked rebellion. This seed
signifies perverse suggestion, and “the seed of the woman the fruit of the good
word by which one resists such perverse suggestion.” How much the human race
has borne the enmity in their memory of this serpent and his seed, and how
great the enmity against him all the elect can exercise by living rightly is
understood more profoundly than the sun by all the faithful. The sign of this
enmity of the irrational serpent appears even in its nature, in that it is the
common enemy of all the animals and beasts of the earth by virtue of the curse
of the poison within it; surely it must be believed that venom was set
permanently in it from the time of the curse, and not before. (Bede,
Book 1 of In Genesim, in Commentaries on Genesis 1-3 [trans. Carmen
S. Hardin; Ancient Christian Texts; Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2010], 155)
