And Jehovah Elohim said to the serpent, Because thou hast done this, be thou cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field. On thy belly shalt thou go, and eat dust all the days of thy life.
God speaks to the serpent first, before a word to the woman or the man — and He asks it nothing. Does the sentence fall on a real animal or on the enemy behind it, and why is dust its food?
God questioned Adam and Eve. He asked the serpent nothing. One writer finds the reason in the questions themselves:
To this confession do these questions of God call these first sinners of the human race. Because there is mercy for them, they are invited to cast themselves upon it. Because there is none for the serpent, there is in his case no question.
Another puts the same contrast in terms of who started the trouble and who was caught in it:
The serpent is recognized as the originator of the mischief; hence for him it is all judgment without a ray of light. The woman and the man were his victims; hence the only gleam is reserved for them.
The form the enemy took was itself part of God's dealing:
We have no reason to believe that Adam yet knew the mystery of who the tempter was. To him, "that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan" was surely nothing more than the craftiest of the wild animals the Lord God had made. In this, God's wisdom and mercy were shown. He did not let the tempter come as an angel, as one above man. He came in animal form, as one below him — one of the creatures man had named as their lord, and among which he had found no helper. How great was his shame when he listened to the deceiver! In that moment he gave up the rule God had given him.
The serpent had just succeeded. The sentence turns that success into ruin:
So the victory of evil is really the degrading of the victor. His own success drags him down. How plainly this lasting principle shows in every career of villainy under the sun! Because of it, Satan will not be the highest in hell and its prince, as people have imagined. He will be the lowest and most miserable of all the miserable there.
The word is not picked at random. Scripture uses it in one settled sense:
"Dust" means total and complete humiliation, as in "lick the dust" and "you who dwell in the dust." Scripture uses it this way again and again. Daniel 12 is the same: "many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth." Here it expresses the judgment that will fall on the power of Satan.
Commentators differ over how far verse 14 reaches. Some hold that God sentences the animal itself here:
The curse brings the serpent lower than the creeping things: it must slither on its belly (v. 14). We do not know what it was like before, but now its food was to be dust. This verse deals only with the literal serpent. What follows applies to Satan, who used the serpent as his mouthpiece.
Others see something deeper pictured in the outward sentence. Even so, they hold that verse 14 is not the final doom:
The actual judgment is in this world. So the serpent is not cast into the lake of fire here. God says, "Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field …"
When creation is finally at peace, one creature keeps its sentence:
Satan used the serpent to deceive Eve, and the curse on it ran, "on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat …" This sentence will never be revoked. It seems that among the lower creatures the serpent will stay as a sign and reminder of the tragic effects of sin. The serpent will not be able to hurt nor destroy, but its degraded and miserable state will remain.
God's first word of grace does not go to Adam or Eve:
What can be more striking or instructive? God reveals grace in judging the enemy, not in what He said afterwards to the woman (v. 16) or to Adam (vv. 17-19). This was not only just but for the divine glory in Christ. What could justify a promise to fallen man or woman? Their sin, just committed, called for judgment, and the LORD God did not fail to declare it.
- Cause. God asks the serpent nothing. His questions call for confession, and He asks them only where there is mercy.
- Form. God would not let the tempter appear above man. He came as an animal man had already named, so the fall gave away man's own place of rule.
- Sentence. Belly and dust mean total humiliation. The winner is the one brought lowest: Satan ends as hell's most wretched, not its prince.
- Reach. Writers differ. Some see only the literal serpent here; others see a deeper picture. All agree the lake of fire is not yet in view.
- Result. The curse is never lifted. The serpent stays as a lasting reminder of sin — and inside this very sentence on the enemy, God speaks His first word of grace.
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; he shall crush thy head, and thou shalt crush his heel.
After the fall, God speaks first to the serpent, not to the guilty pair. Inside that sentence of judgment lies the first announcement of a Deliverer. Who is this "seed of the woman," why is He the woman's and not the man's, and when is the serpent's head crushed?
Readers often call this verse the first promise. One commentator points out that the Bible never uses that word here:
Believers have long called it a "promise," but Scripture never does. God did reveal endless blessing for man here, but that is not quite a promise. He spoke the words to the serpent. If they promised anything to anyone, it was to the woman's Seed, the last Adam — not to the first Adam, whom God had just sentenced along with Eve.
Adam had just blamed his wife and, through her, God Himself. So the hope that reaches him rests on Someone else:
The question here is really between the serpent and the second Man, not the first. This is not a promise to Adam and Eve from God, nor a hope that their children will improve. God passes judgment on the enemy. In the same breath He reveals the Saviour — the child of the very woman who had drawn the man into ruin at the devil's hand. The woman's Seed will bruise the serpent's head, but He Himself is bruised first. What grace, yet what righteousness! What humiliation, yet what victory!
The phrase breaks the pattern of every genealogy that follows in the Bible.
Everywhere in creation, from man downward, the seed belongs to the male and not the female. So the seed of the woman is not according to nature as we know it. It stands outside what God had just made, and it points forward to a new creation. The Lord Jesus was born of a virgin, and here we have the first hint of that fact, which is a vital one. No taint of the fall attached to Him. He was not just innocent, as Adam was at the start — He was holy.
That wording also rules out any patching up of the old order:
This is not a repair of the place Adam lost. It is a new and mysterious beginning. In it God's power takes up the weakness and instability of the creature — seen most clearly in the woman — to display His grace. The victory over the enemy costs something. The Conqueror bruises the serpent's head, but His own heel is bruised.
The verse speaks of the serpent's seed as well as the woman's, and one writer reads the sentence on two levels at once:
A double meaning runs through this verse, one literal and one deeper. Everyone knows that people hate snakes more than any other creature. So the sentence is literal. In the deeper sense, the seed of the woman is Christ. The words "between your seed and her seed" then cover two sides. On one side are all who belong to Christ. On the other are the children of the devil, whether wicked spirits or wicked men. The hostility would not come from the children of God toward others. It would come from the wicked toward the righteous. Cain murdering Abel showed this at once.
The same writer notes that the pronoun "it" is masculine in Hebrew, because the verb is masculine — pointing to Christ, not to Mary, as some have argued.
The two wounds are not equal, and the choice of body part is deliberate.
This overwhelming victory would also cost the Victor some suffering. During the conflict the serpent would bruise His heel. In walking, the heel is the first part of the foot to touch the ground. The picture is striking. The Victor suffered when He first touched the earth in His holy Manhood. God made Him a little lower than the angels so that He could suffer death — the death that Satan's cunning brought about.
Commentators differ over how much of the head-crushing has already happened. Some place it at the cross. Others point out that Satan still goes about, so the word is not yet fully carried out. One writer sets the two stages side by side:
Christ suffered at the cross, and this Scripture came true there. It had announced what would happen to Christ, the woman's Seed. It was also a partial fulfilment of what He would do to Satan. "Through death" He destroyed "the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil." The crushing of the serpent's head will be complete when the Lord casts the devil into the lake of fire.
Believers are not spectators in this. One writer comments on a later verse that says God will soon crush Satan under the feet of believers:
The church is joined to Christ. It will then be with Him who, as the woman's seed, will bruise the serpent's head. But the power is in Christ, not in the church.
- Spoken — the words are addressed to the serpent, not to Adam. Grace reaches the guilty man through Another, and rests on Him alone.
- Second Man — the contest is between the serpent and the second Man, never the first. Adam is sentenced; Christ is the object of promise.
- Woman's — seed always belongs to the male, so this phrase stands outside nature. It is the first hint of the virgin birth, and a new beginning instead of a repaired old one.
- Seeds — from Cain onward, two families run through history. The hostility flows from the wicked toward the righteous.
- Heel, then head — the wound to the Victor was real but limited. The wound to the serpent is fatal. It began at the cross and ends in the lake of fire.