I shall put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and
her seed. He will watch for your head, and you will watch for his heel (v.
15). When a naïve person associates with a villain, he suffers no little harm;
the villain makes an approach and suggests what is harmful, and the naïve soul
accepts it as something beneficial. A separation between them is therefore
advisable, and a state of enmity and absence of communication, so that the
naïve person is “wise” in response to the saving exhortation and says of the
devil, “We are not ignorant of his designs.” We frequently witness, for
example, a woman’s friendship with a man arising with naïveté, and from this
deception such people proceed to shameful behavior; so our anxiety is the
result not of a hatred of the peace that is the fruit of the Spirit, but of a
dissipation of that peace against which the Savior said he came to bring a sword,
“I have come to bring not peace but a sword” that divides and
separates those longing for something helpful from those endeavoring to harm
them. So in his goodness
God plants enmity in those with whom
peace and union are at war; when some in ignorance of (232) evil fall foul of
it and learn that it is ruinous and damaging, they reap no little benefit.
(Didymus the Blind, Commentary on
Genesis [trans. Robert C. Hill; The Fathers of the Church 132; Washington,
D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016], 97)
