Page 43 - The Divine Unfolding of God's Plan of Redemption

VI. THE WAR BETWEEN THE SEEDS

GENESIS 3:15

We have previously given expression to the opinion that the third chapter of
Genesis is the most important chapter in the whole of the Scriptures since it is the
seed-plot of God‟s purposes in redemption and restoration. The most important verse
in this remarkable chapter is the fifteenth. It is the key to all Biblical and church

history. Failure to recognize the relationship of this verse to the events recorded in the
Old and New Testaments will have the effect of shrouding the underlying causes in a
haze of mystery.

It is perfectly possible for one to know in detail the happenings surrounding the
various characters of the Old Testament and to grasp many valuable moral and
spiritual truths connected with them and yet to miss the underlying philosophy upon
which the whole rests.

The Old Testament stories may be likened to a handful of beads cut from precious
stones, each scintillating with its own radiance as it is turned over to allow the rays of
the sun to illuminate its sides and yet they must all be strung together to assume a

corporately ornamental value. Gen. 3:15, then, is the thread on which the beads are
strung: “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed
and her seed; He shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise His heel.”

Jehovah God here declared an age-long warfare between the “seed of the serpent”
and the “seed of the woman.” It is a matter of common knowledge that by the
expression “Her seed,” Jehovah God has reference to the Redeemer-Christ, who
would suffer temporarily—wounded in the heel—in order to destroy permanently the

serpent-Satan—wounded in the head. The individual warfare between Christ and
Satan is indicated in the first phrase, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman,”
“the woman” from whose womb the special Seed would proceed. (It is significant that
though elsewhere in Scripture it is common to find a descendant directly addressed

through his ancestor, the male always being referred to as the progenitor, in this case
the man is nowhere mentioned, compelling the conclusion that Jehovah here had
specific reference to the virgin mother of Christ.)

The individual aspect of the warfare is included, then, in the first clause of the
verse; the collective aspect in the second clause: “And between thy seed and her
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