Genesis 3:15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman [1]
Between whom there had been so much familiarity, not only while they had the preceding discourse together, but before; for it is conjectured by some, that she took a particular liking to that creature, and was delighted with it, and laid it perhaps in her bosom, adorned her neck with its windings, or made it a bracelet for her arms; and being a peculiar favourite, the devil made choice of it as his instrument to deceive her; but now being beguiled hereby, she conceived an antipathy against it, and which is become natural between the serpent and man; man abhors the sight of a serpent, and the serpent the sight of man; and the spittle of a man and the gall of a serpent are poison to each other; and this antipathy is observed to be stronger in the female sex. . . .
And between thy seed and her seed
The posterity of Eve, mankind, and the production of serpents, between whom the antipathy still continues, and mystically the evil angels and also wicked men called serpents; and a generation of vipers on the one hand, and the people of God on the other, the seed of the church; the latter of which are hated and persecuted by the former, and so it has been ever since this affair happened: and especially by the seed of the woman may be meant the Messiah; the word “seed” sometimes signifying a single person, Genesis 4:25 and particularly Christ, Galatians 3:16 and he may with great propriety be so called, because he was made of a woman and not begotten by man; and who assumed not an human person, but an human nature, which is called the “holy thing” and the “seed of Abraham” as here the “seed of the woman” as well as it expresses the truth of his incarnation and the reality of his being man. . . .
It shall bruise thy head
The head of a serpent creeping on the ground is easily crushed and bruised, of which it is sensible, and therefore it is careful to hide and cover it. In [a prophetic] sense . . . the Messiah, the eminent seed of the woman, should bruise the head of the old serpent the devil, that is, destroy him and all his principalities and powers, break and confound all his schemes, and ruin all his works, crush his whole empire, strip him of his authority and sovereignty, and particularly of his power over death, and his tyranny over the bodies and souls of men; all which was done by Christ, when he became incarnate and suffered and died, Hebrews 2:14
And thou shall bruise his heel
The heel of a man being what the serpent can most easily come at, as at the heels of horses which it bites, Genesis 49:17 and which agrees with that insidious creature . . . as it refers to the devil, may relate to the persecutions of the members of Christ on earth, instigated by Satan, or to some slight trouble he should receive from him in the days of his flesh, by his temptations in the wilderness, and agony with him in the garden; or rather by the heel of Christ is meant his human nature, which is his inferior and lowest nature, and who was in it frequently exposed to the insults, temptations, and persecutions of Satan, and was at last brought to a painful and accursed death. . . .
[1] John Gill, “Genesis 3:15,” John Gill’s Exposition of the Old & New Testament, Vol. I (London: Mathews & Leigh, 1809; reprint, Paris, AR.: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1989), 27ff. (page citations are to the reprint edition).
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