Genesis 3:15 and the Bible’s Big Story

JIM HAMILTON

“I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:15)

I well remember the questions. They reflected the very perspective I had been taught: If Genesis 3:15 is so important, why isn’t it quoted in the rest of the Bible? That’s what those bright students, who had heard the line from other teachers, fired at me.

It took me back to my second year of a master’s program at an evangelical seminary, when in a first-semester Hebrew class I made the mistake of asking the professor whether Genesis 3:15 really was the protoevangelium—the first announcement of the gospel. “We’ve got to start getting rid of the myths somewhere,” the professor retorted with his customary disdain, “it’s just a snake in a garden!”

My faith survived that professor, but I came out of that school having learned the warped view that seemed the standard line: “The only thing that justifies the way that New Testament writers interpret the Old Testament is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. You’re not inspired by the Holy Spirit, so don’t you dare read the Old Testament that way

Fast forward to my early days of teaching: I had recently completed a PhD, and while studying at Southern Seminary under Tom Schreiner, he and others (Beale, Dempster, Gentry, Alexander, Sailhamer, Ellis, House, etc.) had convinced me that the New Testament authors had rightly understood the Old Testament. Genesis 3:15 was not only the protoevangelium, but its division of humanity into the seed of the woman and seed of the serpent was determinative for the rest of the Bible.

My thinking had undergone revolutions. I had become convinced that the New Testament authors had rightly discerned what the Old Testament authors intended to communicate, and that everything they themselves intended to communicate was in keeping with the intentions of those Old Testament authors. And Genesis 3:15 was foundational for all this.

The Folly of Historical Critical Reading

There are terrible reading strategies that lead to the conclusions I was taught, the conclusions my students spat back at me in my first years of teaching. These reading strategies characterize the so-called historical-critical method, which I reject not only because it is not historically plausible, but also because it fails to engage in sufficiently critical thought. Those who read the Bible this way chop it up into bits. They refuse to read the earlier part with the latter. They assume that there is no coherence, no story, and in the end, no God. It’s a hopeless perspective. It’s also godless. Rightly did Adolf Schlatter say it was the atheistic method of biblical scholarship.

But the Bible is literature, and Moses was a literary genius. There is a story that begins in Genesis. It’s a story that tells the truth about God, the world, and man. It’s a story that gives hope—hope that stems from the seed of the woman promised in Genesis 3:15.

All those adherents of “historical criticism” have either closed their eyes or had them blinded (2 Cor. 4:4), and as a result, they don’t see the inner coherence and drama of the episode in which we find Genesis 3:15.

Genesis 3:15 in Context

Consider the logic of the passage: Moses presents God’s warning in Genesis 2:17 that man will die if he eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God presents the man with his helpmeet, who is seduced by the serpent to take from the tree and eat. She gives the fruit to the man, who was with her. He eats. Then they hear the sound of the Lord coming (Gen. 3:8), and they hide. Why? Because they feared death, of course. They were warned that eating would result in death; they ate, and then they heard him coming. What should anyone with any literary sensibility conclude?

God calls them out, induces reluctant confessions, and then pronounces judgment. Moses describes the scene such that those who will reflect cannot fail to discern his intention. That first man and woman clearly think they are going to die. That’s why they hid. Then the Lord started talking to the snake.

When the Lord says to the snake, “I will put enmity between you and the woman,” in Genesis 3:15, the audience should discern that this enmity implies at least two things: first, the woman is not going over to the dark side. She won’t be with the serpent but against him. Second, because enmity sounds like ongoing conflict, there must be some way in which everything that God has said to this point in the narrative can be given internal coherence.

On the one hand, in the day that they eat of the tree, there is some sense in which they die. Their spiritual death is reflected in their hiding from one another and from God, and their physical death will be spoken of just a few lines later (Gen. 3:19). On the other hand, if the woman is not going to side with the serpent, and if she is going to have ongoing enmity with him, her physical life must continue. If she won’t be the serpent’s, won’t there have to be some spiritual life as well?

And then the Lord continues: having said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman,” he next says the words, “and between your seed and her seed.” At this point the reader discerns that not only will the woman’s life continue, the man’s will as well, for he is necessary if the woman is to have seed.

In these words of Genesis 3:15, then, the reader learns that the man and woman will not join the serpent but will side with God against him as their lives continue. They will have seed. Then the verse concludes promising a head wound to the serpent and a heel wound to the seed of the woman. This bodes well, for heel wounds can be survived, while head wounds can be mortal.

In response, the man gives the woman a name that sounds like the word “life/living” because she will be the “mother of all living” (Gen. 3:20). Faith has come by hearing, and hearing by the word of the seed of the woman (see Rom. 10:17).

What about the question my students asked me: if Genesis 3:15 is so important, where are the quotations? I grant that direct quotations are lacking, but the imagery is everywhere and the assumptions created by this verse pervade the rest of the Bible. You can read the Bible in such a way that you deny it any internal coherence and refuse to allow it to tell its own story. That’s the wrong way to do it. Find a way of understanding the earlier parts of the Bible that fits with and makes sense of the later parts. That’s the way to read, and that’s the way to see how Genesis 3:15 is the protoevangelium in the big story of the whole Bible.

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Editor’s Note: For further reading on Genesis 3:15, see Dr. Hamilton’s book called Typology—Understanding the Bible’s Promise-Shaped Patterns: How Old Testament Expectations Are Fulfilled in Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2022), or check out his article entitled, “The Skull Crushing Seed of the Woman: Inner-Biblical Interpretation of Genesis 3:15,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 10, no. 2 (Summer 2006): 30–54.