Who is "the seed of the woman" in Genesis 3:15?

What discoveries were made to the early Christians of the depths, the immeasurable, unfathomable, depths of evil within! What can give any heart simple rest, in such an experience? Nothing but the thought of God's taking up the evil in conflict with Satan, declaring that He would provide One to bruise his head. If I have got firm hold of that, whatever be the discovery of evil I make in myself, I shall not be daunted. I find such depths of evil, all sorts of evil, in my heart, that I cannot fathom it. It requires the power of Jehovah Himself to sound and measure it. I must have been daunted, had He not put forth that word. I can have rest from all that the power of darkness can do, because the Seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head. Who is the Seed of the woman? Only One, born of a virgin — only One, the Son in the bosom of the Father before He was the seed of the woman.

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.

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.

Firstly, all through the realms of creation, from man downwards, seed appertains to the male and not the female. Hence the seed of the woman is not according to nature as we know it. It is something outside that which had just been constituted and points forward to a new creation. The Lord Jesus was born of a virgin and here we have the first intimation of that fact, which is a vital one. No taint of the fall attached to Him. He was not merely innocent, as was Adam at the start, He was holy.

Secondly, this announcement of the Seed of the woman was given before any "seed," or race of Adam had appeared or even been mentioned. That seed only appears at the start of Genesis 4, and a sorry start it is. Adam is recognized in Scripture as the first man and the head of the race that sprang from him through the woman. Christ is the Second Man and the Leader of God's chosen race. But the Second Man was always first in the thought of God, and evidence of this we find here.

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.

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.

But when He came it was not only this; He had also in His person the promises for Israel; recollect this. And it is well we should recollect, that there is no promise to the flesh. It was said, in passing sentence on the serpent, that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head; it was not said to Adam. Was Adam the seed of the woman? He was the only man who was not. The promise was to the seed of the woman - to Christ. God had had purposes of grace before the world existed, but He began His dealings with Adam - the responsible man - and tried him. And, having proved what he was, then I get God's work; God wrought. If I get what man wrought it was sin and condemnation. But God has raised His Son from the dead, and my place with God being in Christ after His death - after the power of Satan being broken - after my sins being put away, judged in Him - I am a new creation, I am in the second Man, I am not in the flesh. You will never know what salvation is until you know that you are in Christ; then "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." Sin in the flesh is condemned, not forgiven, but condemned where Christ was a sacrifice for sin, and, where the condemnation was, death was; so that there is no condemnation for me now, but I am dead to sin.

It is among the striking points of the scene that the enmity is said to be put between the serpent and the woman, rather than the man. Grace so spoke; for the man might have reflected bitterly on her who had first listened to the enemy, disobeyed the divine command, and enticed himself to follow in the path of transgression, poor and unworthy though such an excuse be. Jehovah Elohim graciously lays stress on the woman, and still more on her Seed. It might have seemed natural to have dwelt on the man, head of woman, image and glory of God; as in the preceding chapter we read that into his nostrils was breathed the breath of life, and Adam was set in his place of privilege and of responsibility, where he forthwith acted on the dominion given by assigning names to the subordinate creation before Eve was formed. Notwithstanding all this God-given position of primacy in natural relationships, grace after the fall no less clearly speaks of the woman expressly as at enmity with the serpent. Of her in a peculiar sense was He to come Who should vanquish Satan. Isaiah 7 predicted it in due time, though here it is sounded out from the beginning for all that have ears to hear; whilst Matthew 1 gives certainty, when the prophecy was accomplished to the letter, that we have not followed cunningly devised fables in believing the inspired words of the law and the prophets any more than the apostle.

The woman's Seed is unmistakable. The first Adam was not that, nor could any of his progeny as such be said so to be. Only the Second man could properly prefer the claim in both spirit and letter. This He was beyond all controversy for every believer, though infinitely more: otherwise why should this have been in His case only? Scripture couples it with His Godhead: see Rom. 8:3, Gal. 4:4.

But what does God, in the face of this failure? He sets aside the first Adam, and brings in the Second Adam. In Genesis 3:15, "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." And mark here, the Seed of the woman is the SECOND Adam; there was no promise to the FIRST Adam, for he was in no sense the Seed of the woman (though we may trust he was a partaker of the blessing). There was grace, but not in connection with the first Adam. Sin had come in by the woman; and therefore Christ, the putter away of sin, came in by the woman also. All God's ways and purposes tend to the Second Adam, "who shall appear the second time without sin unto salvation." The turning-point is the rejection or acceptance of Christ. Whenever the least reality of Christ is apprehended by a soul and used, the Holy Ghost can come in, and give power to the testimony, although in the midst of many mistakes; but where Christ is not, and the dependence is on the first Adam and his resources, there may be the appearance of fruit for a season, but perishing must be the final result.

In these few verses in Genesis 3 we have Him first as the Seed and, remarkably enough, as the Seed of the woman, and not of the man. We read on through Genesis and we don't get many definite predictions until we come to chapter 49. True we find Him in "the seed" of Abram. The apostle Paul in the epistle to the Galatians is at pains to point out that he does not say "seeds" as of many but "Seed" as of one, and that One is Christ. This, of course, springs out of the fact that He was the seed of the woman, for the woman — Mary — was descended from Abram. This first great prediction of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ did not fall from mortal lips. Afterwards God did speak to men by prophets, but this most fundamental of all the great predictions came from the lips of the Lord God Himself, and was uttered not to man primarily, though we are permitted to hear it, but to the great adversary, Satan, under the form of the serpent. He said, "I will put enmity … between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." This word concerning the Seed of the woman is the great fundamental prediction of the coming of Christ.

The fact that men need a Saviour, a Deliverer, is evident everywhere, and has been all through their history since the fall. And the first promise that one should appear followed swiftly upon Satan's triumph over man in Eden, and it came forth from the mouth of God. "The Seed of the woman," said He to the victorious serpent, "shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise His heel." If Adam had been able to recover himself and bruise his tempter and conqueror beneath his feet, God would have stood aside and let him do it, but there could be no hope from him or from any that he could beget. If he had fallen a prey to Satan's subtlety when he stood erect in the plenitude of his powers, how could he by any means recover what he had lost now that he was defeated and fettered by Satan, and lying under the sentence of death by God's just decree? All his progeny were powerless like himself. "By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin, and death passed upon all men for that all have sinned." (Rom. 5:12). The hope was not in Adam but in the woman's Seed. It was He, whoever He might be, who was to destroy the great destroyer of our frail and fallen race, and deliver us from his power. The New Testament tells us plainly who He is. "For this purpose," says 1 John 3:8, "was THE SON OF GOD manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil." And Hebrews 2:15 tells us that THE SON — in whom God has spoken in these last days — because "the children were partakers of flesh and blood, also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death, He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." It is plain from these Scriptures that the Seed of the woman is the Son of God, and we are told that "all the promises of God in Him are yea and in Him Amen."