Genesis 3:14-15
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring[a] and hers;
he will crush[b] your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
Adam and Eve’s rebellion shakes the world and nothing will be the same again. Having found his creation naked and hiding, God first confronts the serpent.
“Cursed are you… you will crawl on your belly… you will eat dust… I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers… and he will crush your head and you will strike his heel.”
The first judgment that God passes in scripture is a thinly veiled promise of hope: your lowest moment will not be your defining one. The serpent almost certainly represents the devil and the evil forces of the world, to whom God says that the woman will have an offspring, or more precisely a ‘seed.’ This idea of a seed is an important theme that runs through the whole Old Testament and we will be coming back to it later. It is also notable that at this point the story Eve has not been named yet and is called Isha, which simply means woman. So God says that woman will have a seed and that he will crush the head of the snake. A child of woman will bring us victory.
In the wake of their shame and self-pity, God sets their punishment into a context of hope. He does not pretend that their sin was not significant. The result will be catastrophic. However, he does not delight in their pain and instead, with grace and mercy, he points them towards a promise. The snake will be defeated, the devil will not destroy God’s creation, sin does not have the final word, there is hope! Our story does not begin with defeat but with hope. A seed of Eve will lead us back to a place of victory and restoration.
Even in the greatest of defeat, when we least deserve it, God points us to hope.
