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The Serpent's Seed: Difference between revisions
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:''There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.'' (Galatians 3: 28) | :''There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.'' (Galatians 3: 28) | ||
=What about Eve being the mother of all living?= | |||
Message followers often point to Genesis 3:20 in support of the Serpent's Seed doctrine: | |||
:''And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.<ref>The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Ge 3:20.</ref> | |||
They state that Eve is called the mother of all living but Adam is not called the father of all living, thereby allowing for the existence of the seed of the serpent in humanity. '''Is this what the passage is really saying?''' | |||
The place to begin in attempting to understand this verse is with the fact that “Eve” was Adam’s name for his wife and not God’s name for Adam’s wife. We are so used to speaking of Adam and Eve that we generally fail to notice that not once in the story of the creation and the fall, up to this point, has Adam’s wife been called Eve. She has been called a “female” (Gen. 1:27), a “helper suitable” for Adam (Gen. 2:18), a “woman” (Gen. 2:22, 23), a “wife” (Gen. 2:24, 25; 3:8). But those are all descriptive or generic terms, not names. We do not find the name “Eve.” | |||
This does not mean that God did not name the woman, however. He did. | |||
But the name God gave her is not found in these chapters. It is found in Genesis chapter 5. There, in verses 1 and 2, we read, “When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them ‘man’ [or ‘Adam,’ because ‘Adam’ means man].” In other words, the name that God gave the woman was “man” or “Adam,” which was the name of her husband. | |||
God called the woman “Adam.” But that immediately raises the question, “Why, if God called Eve ‘Adam,’ did Adam call Eve ‘Eve’?” The answer is not that Adam was contradicting God or changing the name of his wife on his own authority. Her name remained “Adam.” What Adam was actually doing was giving Eve a title. For “Eve” is a title; it means “life” in the sense of being a “life-giver.” We would say “mother.” The text says, “Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.” | |||
It is sometimes the case in studying the Bible that the solution to one problem introduces another—that is what makes the study of the Bible so fascinating—and that is precisely what happens here. Yet it is at this point that we really come to the heart of the text. The problem is that, although Adam called his wife’s name Eve, meaning “life-giver” or “mother,” Eve was not a mother. In fact, if we read this and the next chapter closely, we have reason to believe that she had not even conceived. Her first child was Cain, and we are told not only of the birth but also the conception of Cain in Genesis chapter 4: “Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain” (v. 1). So we ask: Why did Adam name his wife “mother” when she was not yet a mother and, in fact, had not even become pregnant? | |||
There is only one answer to that question, and it comes from the context. Five verses before this Adam and Eve had heard the judgment of God against Satan in which God said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (Gen. 3:15). This verse mentioned the woman’s offspring and said flatly that her seed would crush the head of Satan. | |||
God had said that the punishment for eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was death. Adam and Eve had seen the judgment of God against Satan. Satan had appeared to them in the guise of the serpent, which was most assuredly not the slithering, lowly creature we know as a snake today. The Hebrew word translated “serpent” in Genesis 3:1 is nachash, which in its early and primary use probably meant “a shining one” (Gesenius). The serpent stood upright and was perhaps the most glorious of all God’s creatures. Suddenly, however, Adam and Eve heard God’s judgment on Satan and saw this beautiful animal turn into a snake and slide away into the bushes. They must have been paralyzed with fear. They had seen the serpent’s judgment, and they were next. What would God do to them? Would they become snakes also? Would they die? | |||
As they thought about this and heard the greatly reduced words of the judgment of God on themselves, the deliberately hopeful words contained in God’s reference to the woman’s offspring must have gotten through. The fact that Eve would have offspring was itself significant. Since she had not yet given birth it meant that she would not die physically, at least not then. Since she had not yet conceived it meant that Adam would not die either (the conception of Cain comes in Genesis 4:1). Moreover, there was the nature of the one to come. He would be a deliverer. He would crush the head of Satan. This was their hope. God had said that Eve would give birth to one who in some manner would be the deliverer. So when Adam named his wife Eve, mother, she not even being pregnant, it was an act of faith, by which he testified to his belief that God would keep his promise and that the deliverer would come. | |||
Genesis 3:20 is not the only place in Genesis that would lead us to think this way. When Eve finally conceived (Gen. 4:1) and brought forth Cain, both she and Adam thought that he was the deliverer. They thought Cain was Jesus, which is why they named him “Cain,” meaning “brought forth” or “acquired.” In colloquial language we would say, “I’ve got him” or “Here he is.” Indeed, when we get to chapter 4, I am going to show that Eve’s words were even stronger than this. For she did not merely say, “I have brought forth [there is the meaning of ‘Cain’] a man,” that is, the man who was promised. She said (so I believe), “I have brought forth a man, even Jehovah [the ‘Redeemer’].” | |||
We know, of course, that Eve and Adam were mistaken. They thought they had brought forth the deliverer when actually they had brought forth a murderer, for Cain killed his brother Abel. But up to this point their perceptions were right. God had promised a deliverer, and they believed him, showing their belief by the naming of Eve by Adam and Cain by Eve. By this they showed that they were staking their hope on the word of God.<ref>James Montgomery Boice, Genesis: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1998), 228–233.</ref> | |||
So the rationale of message followers, that Genesis 3:20 supports the argument that Adam was not the father of all living, is false. They miss the context of the passage and they read it with a presupposed meaning in view, not the actual words of the passage. | |||
=Who was the seed of the woman?= | =Who was the seed of the woman?= | ||