Genesis 3:15 (WEB)
I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.”
As quoted in the map (KJV)
Genesis 3:15 (KJV)
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.
Key words
- אֵיבָהeybah · Hebrew
- 'enmity' — lethal hostility, the language of blood-feud and war (Numbers 35:21; Ezekiel 25:15).
- זֶרַעzera · Hebrew
- 'seed' — offspring. Greek sperma (σπέρμα); the same word Revelation 12:17 uses for 'the rest of her seed.'
- שׁוּףshuph · Hebrew
- 'bruise' or 'crush' — used of both blows, but a crushed head is fatal while a bruised heel is not.
- αὐτόςautos · Greek (LXX)
- 'he' — the Greek translators used a masculine pronoun for the seed, reading the verse as pointing to an individual son of the woman (the Latin Vulgate's ipsa, 'she,' produced the familiar image of Mary crushing the serpent).
Why it matters
This is the protoevangelium, the 'first gospel,' and the founding text of the New Eve typology. God sets a war between the serpent and the woman, and between their two lines of offspring, and promises that the woman's seed will crush the serpent's head. Pitre shows that the New Testament reads Mary as this 'Woman' (John 2:4; 19:26; Revelation 12) and Jesus as the seed who defeats Satan at the cross (John 12:31), and that the Fathers built the Immaculate Conception on the idea that the New Eve, like the first, begins without sin.