GNITN - Special Edition

Israel In Prophecy

Part 2

The Ultimate Blessing

A Special Promise

“And I will put enmity (open hostility)Between you and the woman, And between your seed (offspring) and her Seed; He shall [fatally] bruise your head, And you shall [only] bruise His heel.” (Gen 3:15, AMP)

God is the consummate multi-tasker and before He made Abraham a promise that his people will become a great nation, this prophecy was uttered way back in the Garden of Eden. It’s pretty simple on its face, but grand in its fulfillment. You see the offspring mentioned here would eventually be the Jews greatest gift to the world apart from their writing and preservation of the Bible. This man born of a woman would crush the plans of Satan by crushing his head, but we know now that the devil’s blow is worse than his bruising of coming savior. I like how an article in gotquestions.org breaks this down:

The first messianic prophecy in Genesis 3:15 is that “he will crush your head.” That is, the seed of the woman will crush the serpent’s head. The Amplified Bible makes it clear that “the woman’s seed” is more than mankind in general; it is an individual representing all mankind…

The second messianic prophecy in Genesis 3:15 is that “you will strike his heel.” That is, the serpent will bite the heel of “the woman’s seed.” The heel-bite is set in contrast to the head-crush, as the Amplified Bible brings out: “And you shall [only] bruise His heel.”

But Adam and Eve weren’t Jews. That designation wouldn’t be around until much later. And that’s why it pays to read what some consider to be the most boring parts of the Bible.

Genealogies Are Cool

If you’re like a lot of people, you get to the lists of people called genealogies and kind of skip over them. Why do I need to know who begat whom? While I could make a case for their importance, the main reason they are helpful is that they connect the prophecy in Genesis 3:15 from Eve to the eventual seed spoken of by God. That specific seed is Jesus. Using the listing in the gospel of Luke we go all the way back to Adam and we trace the lineage all the way to Jesus Himself. And that my friends is another reason that Abraham’s children are blessing the world as promised. Yes, there are literary, medicinal, and scientific advances (ever hear of a guy named Einstein?) that were directly connected to Jews that could be illustrations of what we read in Genesis 12:3, however it is hard to top being the nation and people where Jesus came from. Talk about the gift that keeps giving, this one is at the very head of any list. Jesus was a Jew. Going back to that gotquestions.org article we read this:

This passage points to the promise of Jesus’ birth, His redemption, and His victory over Satan. The woman’s offspring is Jesus. Being virgin-born, He is literally the offspring of a woman (Matthew 1:25; Galatians 4:4; cf. Isaiah 7:14). Being the Son of Man, He is the perfect representative of humankind. The devil’s offspring were the evil men and demonic forces who, like a snake, lay in wait for the Savior and struck at Him. Their venomous conspiracy condemned Jesus to be crucified.

Satan, although still active in this world, is a defeated foe. His doom is sure: “And the devil . . . was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur” (Revelation 20:10). Until that time, there remains enmity between Satan and God’s children.

The protoevangelium shows us that God always had the plan of salvation in mind and informed us of His plan as soon as sin entered the world. Satan formulated a plan involving the serpent in Eden, but God was way ahead of him, having already ordained the Serpent-crusher. Jesus Christ perfectly fulfilled God’s mission: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8).

But the serpent’s strike did not spell the end of the Offspring of the woman. Jesus rose the third day, breaking the power of death and winning the ultimate victory. With the cross, Jesus “crushed” the devil’s head, defeating him forever. So, in Genesis 3:15, the crushing of the serpent’s head was a picture of Jesus’ triumph over sin and Satan at the cross (cf. John 12:31). The striking of the Messiah’s heel was a picture of the wounding and death of Jesus on the cross. Satan bruised Jesus’ “heel,” but Jesus showed complete dominance over Satan by bruising his “head.”

The greatest fulfillment of Genesis 12:3 is a very Jewish messiah and His name is Jesus.