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The Serpent's Seed: Difference between revisions
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What it’s talking about is the human race will have only two kinds of people in it. There will be people who follow Satan’s advice in the garden and there will be people who follow the Lord. When it says here, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and hers,” that can’t mean it’s putting hatred in the snake. The snake already hates the woman. It can’t mean it’s putting hatred and enmity in the children of the snake, the followers of the snake, because they already hate God. | What it’s talking about is the human race will have only two kinds of people in it. There will be people who follow Satan’s advice in the garden and there will be people who follow the Lord. When it says here, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and hers,” that can’t mean it’s putting hatred in the snake. The snake already hates the woman. It can’t mean it’s putting hatred and enmity in the children of the snake, the followers of the snake, because they already hate God. | ||
What is it saying? The first step of salvation is when God puts in you a hatred for Satan and all his ways. You only begin to move out of moralism and legalism, where you just hate the consequences of bad behavior but you’re afraid and proud, and you move into the position where you actually begin to hate sin. | What is it saying? The first step of salvation is when God puts in you a hatred for Satan and all his ways. You only begin to move out of moralism and legalism, where you just hate the consequences of bad behavior but you’re afraid and proud, and you move into the position where you actually begin to hate sin.<ref>Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).</ref> | ||
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: | The divinely ordained hostility that takes place between the serpent’s seed and the seed of the woman. In the vast majority of cases where the Hebrew word "zeraʿ" (lit., “seed”) is used, it refers to an immediate offspring rather than a distant descendant. For example, Seth is Eve’s “other seed” (Genesis 4:25); Abram laments that he is still without seed (Genesis 15:3); Lot’s daughters want to bear their father’s seed (Genesis 19:32, 34); Ishmael is Abraham’s seed (Genesis 21:13); Samuel is Hannah’s seed (1 Sam. 1:11; 2:20); Solomon is David’s seed (2 Sam. 7:12). This observation alone should caution us about seeing too quickly a clear-cut reference here to some remote individual. | ||
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Similarly, one should not force an interpretation on her offspring that the expression cannot bear. The Septuagint translates the Hebrew word "zarʿāh" (lit., “her seed”) as spérmatos autḗs (lit., “her seed”). Bbt to read the Septuagint as “her sperm” in order to see a hint here of the virgin birth of this seed (the absence of a sperm-supplying father) is farfetched indeed. If for no other reason, Gen. 4:25 would invalidate that proposal, for here Eve says that God has given her “another seed,” and certainly Seth was not born of a virgin! | |||
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: | The question is: How should we translate the anticipatory hûʾ in “it will strike at your head”—“he” or “they” or “it”? The ancient versions offer various alternatives. Few are inclined to follow Vulg. ipsa, “she” (!). LXX has autós, “he,” even though the antecedent is spérmatos, which is neuter in Greek. One might have expected autó instead of autós. The LXX seems to have had a messianic understanding of the verse, for, as has been pointed out, the independent personal pronoun hûʾ occurs more than one hundred times, but this is the only one that the LXX translates literally with autós, although the Greek idiom would require the neuter. Nevertheless, one must decide whether the LXX should be allowed to carry so much weight here and whether it offers the correct understanding of the original intention of Gen. 3:15. | ||
We may want to be cautious about calling this verse a messianic prophecy. At the same time we should be hesitant to surrender the time-honored expression for this verse—the protevangelium, “the first good news.” The verse is good news whether we understand zeraʿ singularly or collectively. The following words of God to the woman and the man include expressions both of divine grace and of divine judgment. Yes, there will be pain for Eve, but she is promised children. Sterility will not be one of her problems. Yes, there will be frustration for Adam because of intractable soil, but he will eat and not starve to death. | |||
One may surmise, therefore, that God’s speech to the serpent contains both judgment and promise. Indeed, the serpent is banned and he becomes a crawler. He is under judgment. The promise is that some unspecified member(s) of the human race will one day lash out against this serpent’s seed. More than a change in the serpent’s position is involved here—it is now a question of his existence. | |||
Would this individual, or these individuals, be among the kings of Israel and Judah who are the “offspring” of their father (2 Sam. 7:12; Ps. 89:5 [Eng. 4]), who “crush” their enemies (Ps. 89:24 [Eng. 23]) “under their feet” (2 Sam. 22:39), so that these enemies “lick the dust” (Ps. 72:9)? Later revelations will state that it is Jesus who reigns until he puts all his enemies under his feet (1 Cor. 15:25).<ref>Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1–17, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1990), 198–200.</ref> | |||
=Where did William Branham get this doctrine?= | =Where did William Branham get this doctrine?= | ||