What does Genesis 3:15 mean that "he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel"?

In dealing with Adam and Eve concerning their disobedience and transgression, God traced their sin up to its root and source in the temptation of Satan. Conscious of their nakedness through their fall, and the consequent knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons; and, moreover, when they heard the voice of the Lord God, walking in the garden in the cool of the day, they hid themselves from His presence amongst the trees of the garden. These two effects of sin are reproduced in every sinner; he ever seeks to conceal his true condition, and he is afraid of God. But, remark, that though Adam had covered up his nakedness from his own eyes, he stands consciously bare and exposed before the eye of God: "I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself." It is then that, in reply to God's searching questions, he seeks to throw the blame upon Eve, and even upon God Himself - it was "the woman whom Thou gavest to be with me" who gave me of the tree. Thereupon the woman, in answer to her question, cast the blame upon the serpent; and it was, indeed, the serpent who beguiled Eve to distrust the goodness of her bountiful Creator. This will explain why God first passed judgment upon the tempter. But if God pronounces unsparing judgment upon His enemy and man's, He takes occasion to proclaim the counsels of His grace, which should be effectuated in the advent of the woman's seed, and His victory over Satan and Satan's power. As often pointed out, this is no promise to the first man; how, indeed, could there be a promise to Adam, who was already under judgment? No; "it is neither a promise to Adam and Eve from God, nor a hope of improvement in their children; but God pronounces judgment upon the enemy, and in the midst of it the revelation is made of the Saviour, the seed of the woman who had ensnared the man to be ruined of the devil. The woman's seed shall bruise the serpent's head; but He is bruised Himself first. What grace; yet righteousness! What humiliation; yet victory!" The Seed of the woman is thus Christ (Rome has falsified the word of God by translating - "she shall bruise thy head," and interpreting this of Mary!), and the seed of the serpent will mean all who are his servants, and who bear his moral likeness, as, for example, in John 8:44. Bruising his head is a figure of Christ's complete victory over Satan (see Colossians 2:15; Hebrews 2:14-15), through His death upon the cross - a victory so assured that the apostle could write to the saints at Rome, "And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly." Bruising the heel of Christ will refer to the cross, where He was crucified through weakness, and where, to the outward eye, He suffered defeat, for it was there that He was by wicked hands, under the leadership of Satan, crucified and slain. But risen from the dead He has the keys of hell and death, and He will finally cast Satan into the lake of fire and brimstone. (Rev. 20:10.)

In His sentence on the serpent God said, "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." A double reference seems to run throughout this verse, a literal and a mystical one. The enmity between the serpent and the human race it is well known surpasses that existing between any of the lower creation and mankind, and the sentence is thus perfectly literal. In the mystical sense, the seed of the woman is Christ, and the clause, "between thy seed and her seed" would thus include all that are Christ's on the one hand, and the children of the devil on the other, whether wicked spirits or wicked men. The enmity would not be on the part of the children of God towards their fellow creatures, but it would be on the part of the wicked towards the righteous, as quickly illustrated by Cain's murder of Abel. "It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." The pronoun It, if taken by itself, might no doubt be so pointed in the Hebrew as to be feminine, but the verb being masculine shows that the pronoun is so too, and not, as the Roman Catholics try to make out, feminine in allusion to the Virgin Mary. It is masculine in allusion to Christ, whose sacrifice on the cross accomplished this prediction finally as regards the latter clause, and potentially as regards the former.

The Lord God allowed no delay (as men's courts do today) in His sentencing the serpent, Adam and his wife to the serious judgment they deserved. They are to learn that God means what He says. The serpent is condemned to a curse that reduces it to a level lower than creeping things, slithering on its belly (v. 14). We do not know what it was like before, but now its very diet was to be dust. This verse has strictly to do with the literal serpent, while what follows applies to Satan who used the serpent as his mouthpiece. God would put enmity between him and the woman and between his seed and her seed. In what precise way the enmity is seen between Satan and the woman may be difficult to decide, but it is most clear that Satan's seed are those who are given up to following Satan's ways, while the woman's seed is the Lord Jesus Christ. Naturally the seed comes from the man, but the one great exception is the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus. There is decided enmity between Satan's followers and the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus would inflict a mortal wound upon Satan: He would bruise his head; while Satan would bruise the heel of the Lord, which speaks of Satan's enmity inflicting a wound of pain and suffering when the Lord crushed Satan under His feet at Calvary.

Thirdly, the conflict between the two seeds is to end in the complete victory of the woman's Seed. He is to "bruise," or "crush" the serpent's head, the head being the seat of its life and intelligence. The bright gleam of hope, given at the very moment of the entrance of sin, contained then not only the announcement of the coming of a Deliverer — a Man of another order — but also of His full victory over the author of the disaster, reducing him to eternal impotence. How much our first parents understood of this is another matter. But there the announcement stood right from the outset.

Fourthly, it was intimated that this overwhelming victory should cost some suffering to the Victor. The serpent in the process of the conflict should bruise His heel. In walking, the heel is the first part of the foot to come into contact with the earth. The figure of speech is a telling one, for it was when He first touched the earth in His holy Manhood that the Victor suffered. He was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death — that death that was instigated by the craft of Satan.

God knows that you are sinners; He knows that it is the subtle iniquity of Satan, which would make man his prey. But there is to that an answer, of which Satan knew not, any more than poor, guilty, fallen man: the revelation of the Seed of the woman (v. 15). The question is really between the serpent and the second Man - not the first. It is neither a promise to Adam and Eve from God, nor a hope of improvement in their children; but God pronounces judgment on the enemy, and in the midst of it the revelation is made of the Saviour, child of the woman who had ensnared the man to be ruined of the devil. The woman's Seed shall bruise the serpent's head, but He is bruised Himself first. What grace, yet righteousness! What humiliation, yet victory! If Adam exalted himself as a robbery to be as God, He who was God emptied Himself to be a man, and became obedient unto death, as the other was disobedient unto it. To lost Adam, the first man, there was, and could be, no promise. All the promises of God are yea and amen in the second Man; but they become the portion of every believer. Faith finds and enjoys the promise, not sin and unbelief. To Eve and Adam God only speaks of the actual consequences of sin (v. 16-19). It is in judging the serpent (v. 15) that He reveals the coming Seed of the woman, and the way of His victory. Thenceforward the only hope of lost man is in this revealed Saviour; and before he is driven out he hears of what Jesus was to suffer in destroying the power of the devil; yet not a single sign of repentance appears in Adam after his sin. He had shewn terror of God, cowardly selfishness as to his wife, as much dishonesty in his own case as dishonour done to God. But God occupies Himself only with His counsels of grace in the woman's Seed, whose person and work and glory are developed in all the Scriptures.

Believers have constantly called it a "promise;" but it is not uninstructive to see that scripture never does. There was a revelation of an infinite blessing for man unquestionably, but hardly what is called a promise. It was addressed to the serpent. If a promise to any, it was to the woman's Seed, the last Adam, not to the first, who was just sentenced with Eve. Abraham, not Adam, is the depository of promise: so speaks scripture, as far as I know, invariably. We see why that ought to be. Was it a time for a promise? Was it a state for a promise? Was it a person for a promise? — one that had ruined the glory of God, as far as it rested upon him. No, but in judging the serpent there comes out the revealed purpose of God, not a promise to Adam in sin, but the revelation of One who would crush the serpent's head the first sinner and too successful tempter to sin. The Second man, not the first, is the object of promise. This indeed is the invariable truth of scripture, and runs through it to the last.

Christ's coming was also announced when God said to the serpent, "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" (Gen. 3:15). At the cross, where Christ suffered, there was the fulfilment of this Scripture, the announcement of what would happen to Christ, the woman's Seed. There also was there the partial fulfilment of what He would do to Satan, for "through death" He annulled "him that had the power of death, that is, the devil". When the Lord casts the devil into the lake of fire, there will be the complete fulfilment of the crushing of the serpent's head.

Leaving, however, for the moment the man, who has been compelled to own the act, though making no confession of its evil, God next addresses the woman. "What is this that thou hast done?" She, as ready to excuse herself as her husband had been to cast on her the blame, replies, "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat." Both put the pretended cause of their misdoing in the front, and only afterwards, at the last, acknowledge the act they had committed. No notice is taken of the excuse alleged by either of the culprits: but, convicted out of their own mouth of the deed, they stand by, and await their sentence, while God speaks to the seducer by whose wiles they had been undone. To him no question is put. There is nothing to call his conscience into exercise in a way tending towards moral restoration or renewal. A curse is absolutely pronounced upon him — a sentence even as to the animal employed, of shame, and degradation, and perpetual enmity between it and the woman, and the woman's Seed. As to the latter in the highest sense of the expression, victory over the serpent — a victory complete and glorious — is foretold; "It shall bruise thy head." "Her seed" — what grace! "The woman, being deceived, was in the transgression;" and yet it is the woman's Seed by whom the head of the serpent is to be bruised. "Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead." "God sent forth his Son, made of a woman." His heel, moreover, was to be bruised. It was not to be a conquest by mere force. The Victor was to be Himself a sufferer. Precious intimation, however obscure, of the mystery of redemption! Compare Hebrews 2:14, "That through death," etc. All this was in the hearing of the first human pair, but was not addressed to them. The promise was to the Seed of the woman. But though uttered in the curse on the enemy, it was within hearing of our first parents, and this before sentence is at all pronounced on them.

Jehovah before the flood and after the law was looking onward to His Christ, and in an evil day spoke by His prophet of His salvation to come, and of His righteousness to be revealed (Isa. 56:1). Nowhere on earth could it be seen; but faith ever waited for it. There was no ground anywhere in man, not even in a true saint of God, not in Enoch nor in Elijah, to say nothing of others. They too looked forward to it in hope. But it was not yet an accomplished fact. The reliance of every saint was entirely on the One that was coming; for, as you know, He was proclaimed to man directly after he became a sinner. This was what Jehovah Elohim presented to the guilty pair, and in a most impressive way; for it was not in direct address to the fallen but in the judgment of the serpent. Who but God would ever have thought, in a sentence pronounced upon the enemy, of also embodying the revelation of a Saviour? Thus did He in all holiness intimate the revelation of a Saviour to crush the power of evil for the deliverance of its victims, but also in love to endure anguish in the accomplishment of that deliverance. For who but an unbeliever fails to see that this is clearly the meaning of the heel being bruised? But the woman's Seed, though thus suffering, should crush the serpent's head; thence is fatal destruction from which the evil one shall never recover.

Here the great way of God opens upon us. This promised Seed of the woman, here revealed, is God's provision for dead and ruined man, in the face of all the malice and wrath of the enemy. And He is this at all personal cost; for the serpent was to bruise His heel. But though bruised, He was to achieve a glorious victory; for He was to bruise the serpent's head.