> [!Scripture] > **14 The LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you will go, And dust you will eat All the days of your life; > 15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel."** <img src="https://audio.mhbbible.com/media%3Agenesis%203%2014-15.jpg" alt="Genesis 3:14-15" style="max-width: 100%; height: auto;"> > [!success] Audio Commentary > <audio controls src="https://audio.mhbbible.com/Genesis%203%2014-15.ogg"></audio> ## Brief Observations - **God’s immediate sentencing: no mercy for Satan** — Skipping questions (unlike with Adam/Eve), God pronounces judgment on the serpent (Satan)—his notorious rebellion already sealed, no hope of pardon. Debate lingers if fallen angels had repentance space pre-Fall; I believe Satan’s misery was complete, his deception pure unrestrained evil, dragging humanity into shared damnation. + **The serpent’s curse: proportional to blessing** — Once craftiest beast, now lowest: crawling on belly, eating dust—humiliation fitting pride. God blessed even creeping things pre-Fall; curse mirrors, stripping dignity. Symbolism: serpent’s form as perpetual judgment, a visible reminder of sin’s disgrace. - **Accessory to evil shares punishment** — Instruments of sin condemned: body punished in hell (accessory to spirit’s crimes), ox stoned for killing (Exodus 21). God hates sin and enticers—Jeroboam forever “who made Israel sin.” Tempting others is Satan’s hallmark, drawing divine vengeance. + **Satan’s fall: pride’s ruin** — Once angel of light at God’s throne, pride warped him to apostasy, aspiring “like the Most High” (Isaiah 14). A third of angels likely fell with him (Revelation 12:4), becoming demons—“unclean spirits.” His rage against God fuels cynicism of human faithfulness, as with Job. - **Enmity declared: serpent vs. woman and seed** — God ordains perpetual war: serpent bruises heel (temporary harm), woman’s seed bruises head (fatal blow). Protoevangelium—first gospel glimmer: virgin-born Christ (seed of woman, no earthly father) crushes Satan, reversing Fall. + **Christ fulfills the promise** — Satan’s head-wound: Christ baffles temptations (wilderness), casts out demons, rescues souls. By death, He renders Satan powerless over death (Hebrews 2:14)—fatal strike, dissolving his kingdom. Gospel advances: Satan falls like lightning (Luke 10), bound in abyss (Revelation 20). - **Hope in our bruises** — Saints suffer heel-bruises: persecution, temptation, death—Satan’s strikes. Yet heads safe in heaven; Christ afflicted with us (Isaiah 63:9). Our trials echo His: through death, victory; God of peace crushes Satan under our feet (Romans 16:20). + **Ultimate defeat: lake of fire** — Satan’s deceit ends in torment: cast with beast and false prophet into eternal fire (Revelation 20:10). His efforts to deceive and supplant yield damnation for him, glory for elect saints—turning paradise lost to eternal triumph in Christ. - **God’s sovereignty over evil** — Satan rages, but God ordains enmity for redemptive ends. No coincidence modern God-haters echo his tropes: “If God is good, why evil?”—implying withholding or weakness. Treason against His honor; trust His character—He turns serpent’s venom to salvation’s balm. ## Full Commentary Adam and Eve were found guilty by their own admission. It’s not that their confession was necessary for the infallible Judge to convict them, but their confession was supposed to help encourage a posture of humility. Since no exculpatory evidence was offered, God immediately moved into the sentencing phase concerning all three parties involved. He began where the sin itself began — but addressing the serpent directly. Notice how God doesn’t ask the serpent any kind of clarifying questions. He skips straight to the sentencing. This is because Satan’s wickedness was already openly declared against God. The serpent’s rebellion was already decided and his evil was notorious. God made no effort to humble Satan or convince him to repent. Satan’s condemnation was already sealed and he had been excluded from all hope of pardon. There was no need for God to bind up a wound that would never be cured. Scholars debate whether Satan and the fallen angels had space for repentance prior to the Fall, and whether seducing humanity into rebellion was the last straw with God. I tend to think Satan was already condemned when he deceived our first parents into rebellion. I think his misery was already complete and his desire to pull us into it was motivated by unrestrained evil. God’s sentenced the serpent to a position lower than all cattle, lower than every beast of the field, for his role in the Fall of Man. His curse on the serpent testifies of God’s displeasure of sin and His vengeance for the injury done to Adam and Eve. To be an instrument of evil condemns you to share in the punishment of the agent of evil himself. This is why the condemned suffer bodily in Hell. Even though the spirit animates and controls the body, the body remains culpable as an accessory to sin. This same principle extends further into the Old Testament in God’s law to stone an ox who kills a man. The ox can’t sin, but the killing of a man brings evil into the land and so the ox must be put down in consequence. God hates sin and He is displeased with those who entice others to sin. Jeroboam, who was the first king of the northern kingdom of Israel, was guilty of making Israel sin — and so this reputation would stick to his name forever. Tempting others to sin is perfectly characteristic of Satan himself as this is one of his key attributes. When God created the universe He blessed even the creeping things of the ground. So these would be creatures we find undesirable today like snakes and spiders. Before the curse, the serpent was said to be more subtle than any beast of the field. Notice how the serpent’s curse is proportional to its blessing. First it was blessed to be more crafty than any beast of the field, then it was sentenced to be more cursed than every beast of the field. This proportionality speaks to the danger of abusing God’s gifts. If God has gifted you with unusual intelligence, and then you use this resource to invent new ways to sin, your punishment will be in keeping with this abuse. Unsanctified gifts which are abused become great curses in your life. We see this same kind of principle surface in cognitive behavioral therapy. If a person doesn’t want to get better then no therapist will be able to help them. A person who doesn’t want to get better, who is also intelligent, is especially difficult because they have greater power to rationalize why therapy won’t help them. We spoke before about what’s known as the Luciferian Intellect, and one of the key indicators of a Luciferian Intellect is someone who entices others to sin. The smarter you are, the more creative you can be in tempting others to sin — and consequently the more accursed you are than all others under the sun. Part of God’s curse on the serpent was to subjugate him to the enmity of man. Even today most people dislike snakes. There’s no reason to believe snakes didn’t slither across the ground before this curse, so the expression, “On your belly you will go, and dust you will eat all the days of your life.” likely points to a condition of misery more than a mode of transport. The Psalmist recounts such a condition of misery, persecution, and oppression when he writes, “For our soul has sunk down into the dust; Our body cleaves to the earth.” The serpent is also cursed to eat dust all the days of his life, which I think is a direct indictment concerning his deceiving Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. He conned Eve into eating that which she should not eat, and so part of his punishment was to be condemned to eat that which he would not want to eat. But this punishment is not simply literal. The expression, “They lick the dust like a serpent.” is used in scripture to denote a despicable lack of courage. It describes a demoralized and pitiful spirit. Those who defy God not only end up this way, but scripture says they seek after the dust of the ground with panting. To live in unrepentant sin is to actually be covetous of a spirit which lacks courage, is demoralized, and is the subject of others’ pity. It is to choose delusion and madness over wisdom and truth. And like Satan sealed his own fate by waging war against God, the unrepentant sinner signs the contract of his own doom. The creatures of the world were made for man, and so to turn man against them and them against man represented a curse and a departure from the way things ought to be. The serpent had become an object of man’s hatred. Part of a snake’s nature has been to hurt man ever since the original hurt in the garden. Scripture says the snake bruises the man’s heel. This expression shows us the snake remains inferior to man despite its inter-generational hostility to us. Even if you like snakes you have to respect them and be careful how you handle them. Just as it is the fate of the serpent to bruise the man’s heel, it is the fate of man to bruise the snake’s head. This means man is able to mortally wound the serpent, while the serpent is only able to injure the man. This distinction in injuries is one of the first Biblical foreshadows of Christ’s eternal victory. It’s God’s sovereign pronouncement that the serpent would not prove victorious over man. This pronouncement is echoed in the Psalms where we read, “You will tread upon the lion and cobra, The young lion and the serpent you will trample down.” And again when Christ encourages His disciples that they shall take up serpents without injury. This encouragement was proven by Paul when a poisonous viper fastened itself to his hand on the island of Malta. What should have been a death sentence became evidence of God’s favor on Paul as an Apostle of Jesus Christ. What started as a friendly discourse between Eve and the serpent rapidly became irreconcilable enmity. A war between humanity and Satan which could never end in peace until one is destroyed. This is what happens to relationships which are conceived in sin. Unless there is true repentance, the sinful basis upon which the relationship formed becomes corrosive across time. It’s like building a house on shifting sands — eventually the house will fall and sometimes a strong relationship will become a mortal feud. God’s sentence against the serpent may be considered as a sentence directed at Satan himself. The serpent was the entity whom Satan controlled to deliver these temptations, but God knew Satan was the principal agent behind all of it. As we unpack God’s curse on Satan, let’s observe how punishments against the evil one reveal God’s love for humanity and His compassion for our first parents. What we’re seeing in these rulings from God are His justice. He is a just God. Here’s something really important to remember about justice: undue compassion towards the guilty is the same thing as cruelty towards the victim. In our own cultural context, left-wing DAs and judges continue to release violent criminals with 40 or more arrests and eventually these criminals murder someone who is innocent. Those are examples of inappropriate compassion supplanting justice and causing cruelty to future victims. In those instances the judges and DAs who release the criminals should be held responsible for the deaths of their victims. There is nothing noble or godly in neutering the rule of law under the pretense of Christian forgiveness. If there is no repentance, then mercy isn’t an act of love, it’s an act of cowardice. God curses Satan with realities which are undoubtedly bad. They are true punishments. But the darkness of these punishments bring with them light for the future of humanity. That’s why we need justice — we need justice for the victims and for what it does to promote goodness. Satan is sentenced to be perpetually degraded and accursed of God. He is the enemy of God and man. Lucifer’s original sin of aspiring to ascend above God Most High was rooted in pride. It’s logical to assume pride carried the other angels who joined Satan in his rebellion and consequently his fall from grace. Satan’s pride resulted in the mortifications God built into His curse. The serpent crawling on his belly and licking the dust was a curse of humiliation on Satan. If you’re ever tempted to embrace pride, just understand that no one does pride better than Satan did it, and even Satan was humbled by God. There is no human who is skilled enough, proficient enough, to valuable enough to justify pride in the face of God. God will humble everyone, humans or angels, who exalt themselves in His presence. Part of Satan’s doom is to be detested and abhorred by all mankind forever. This includes those who succumb to his temptations. I know many people who have allowed sin to destroy their lives, and these people very frequently hate their own sin. They’ve surrendered to it, yes, but they hate it for what it has done to them. They hate that it has cost them their families and their standing in the community. No one really loves Satan once they get to know him — and this is because of how Satan has postured himself against God who is Himself the embodiment of love. The best protection against being touched by Satan is to keep yourself close to God. Maintaining a humble, obedient faith in Jesus Christ protects you from even the strongest of spiritual evils. Right there in the garden God condemns Satan to be embroiled in a futile spiritual war with heaven. God told him he would be crushed and defeated by the Great Redeemer. No matter how clever his politics of evil, all of Satan’s strategies would be baffled. Whatever power he called his own in rebellion against God would be made void. He would be forever marked as the one who sought to usurp divine sovereignty and failed — and being told of this future ahead of time was God’s curse and condemnation on him for his antics in the garden. These verses mark the official commencement of the war between heaven and the devil. This is the war between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. This is also the same war in heaven between the archangel Michael and his legions of angels against the dragon and his fallen angels. This is the same spiritual war whose influence runs right down the middle of your own heart. It’s why you have a love that loves to good and a love that loves to do evil. The internal tension between grace and corruption in the hearts of God’s people is the impact of this war. Many times you’ll face seasons in your life where trials, temptations, and suffering are exceptionally pronounced. These are seasons where you’re facing a salvo of attacks from the evil one. These are instances where you’re under attack in this age-old spiritual conflict. You resist these attacks by depending on God’s grace, remaining obedient to God’s word as it is written, and trusting in Jesus that He will see you through to the other side. That’s how to wrestle with the evil one and force him to flee from you — which he will do. Satan’s rebellion put him in anti-position to God. There can never be reconciliation between Heaven and Hell anymore than there can be reconciliation between light and darkness. Satan is opposed to God the way he is opposed to a sanctified follower of God. The more you become like Jesus the more you become the opposite of Satan. Your very existence becomes contrary to him. I want to preface the next part of what I’m going to say by drawing a distinction between lost souls and enemies of God. It’s true that all enemies of God are lost souls, but it’s not true that all lost souls are enemies of God. We are called by God in His Great Commission to reach the lost and make disciples. God has great compassion for the lost. But when a person becomes an enemy of God — they’ve invested their future with Satan and put themselves in the same anti-position he occupies against God. These people are possessed by evil and do the most wicked things. These people are the cause of great struggle in this world. These are the people who, according to scripture, you will come to hate the more you love God. King David expresses this kind of righteous hatred in Psalm 139:19-22 when he says, “O that You would slay the wicked, O God; Depart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed. For they speak against You wickedly, And Your enemies take Your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate You, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You? I hate them with the utmost hatred; They have become my enemies.” Although you may feel hatred in the presence of God’s enemies, you are not permitted to take vengeance into your own hands. You are not permitted to condemn them against the possibility of repentance. You are obliged to forgive them with godly compassion should they turn from their sins and seek after Jesus. But you will feel hatred, just as King David felt hatred, and this isn’t something which needs to be expunged from your heart. You should feel this kind of revulsion in the presence of unrepentant sin. Especially so the more heinous and offensive the sin is against God. A good example in scripture is the child-sacrifices God so fiercely condemns in Leviticus. If you watched sinners burn a child alive in sacrifice to their idols, you would be righteous to hate them for it and to hate the act of it. You would be deluded and corrupted if you sought compassion on such people while they continued in unrepentant sin. Because of the spiritual war which commenced in these verses, the saints’ righteous hatred against the enemies of God is met with rage and persecution from them. The wicked pursue the people of God with malice and merciless oppression. Jesus said we should not be afraid if the world hates us because it hated Him first. So long as there is a follower of Christ on this side of heaven and a follower of Satan on this side of Hell — there will continue to be a spiritual war. It’s not going away. We shouldn’t be asking the question of how we can end it. Only Jesus can end it and He will end it. Instead we should be asking how we might navigate these battlefields in such a way that promotes spiritual well-being and brings glory to God. Even while dealing out curses and sentences here in the garden, God is careful to extend an open door of hope to Adam and Eve. He makes a gracious promise concerning Christ as the deliverer of fallen man from the power of Satan. It’s true God was speaking to the serpent at this moment but He was also speaking in the hearing of Adam and Eve. This was the very first revelation of the gospel and without it the shame of our first parents’ punishment would have been too great for them to bear. No sooner had humanity fallen from grace that our loving God compassionately began to uncover His plan for redemption. Many times people wonder about all those generations who lived and died before the gospel of Christ was formally preached. How could the atonement of Christ cover their sins if they are already dead? There are various answers to this — some including a kind of waiting period called Sheol or Abraham’s Bosom. This would be a place of comfort for their souls until the day of Christ’s Resurrection permitting them to enter heaven in righteousness. I actually think the true answer is more clever than that. I think the earliest presentation of the gospel happened right here the moment humanity fell. Adam and Eve heard it, and all those to succeeded them could have heard it as well. I also think the saving faith any of these Old Testament progenitors had in their hearing of the gospel is what empowered them to serve God despite a cursed creation. How do we see the gospel in God’s words spoken to the serpent? First we see Christ’s incarnation as the seed of the woman. The genealogy of Christ is well-documented and traces back to Adam himself. So why doesn’t God refer to Him as the seed of the man? The seed of Adam? I think it’s to magnify the revelation of His grace in this moment. Eve is the one who was deceived by the serpent. Eve is the one who took the blame from Adam for the fall of man. God bestowing honor on her in this moment is a magnification of His grace for her. She was the first to sin, but she shall be saved by child-bearing because her Savior will come from her lineage. Emphasizing the seed of the woman also foreshadows how Christ would be born of a virgin. Christ being made of a woman means that our Savior is bone of our bones — just as Eve was made of a man and bone of his bone. This is a theological point of great comfort once you understand it. We are created in the image of God so that we may be like Him, and Jesus Christ is God incarnate so that He may be like us. That’s why Jesus is the doorway to eternal life for humanity. He is incarnate to our nature without being corrupted by it. Thus He is the second Adam given to redeem all who trust in Him. Hebrews describes Christ’s human-nature in this way: >**Hebrews 2:11-18** >11 For both He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one Father; for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren, >12 saying, "I WILL PROCLAIM YOUR NAME TO MY BRETHREN, IN THE MIDST OF THE CONGREGATION I WILL SING YOUR PRAISE." >13 And again, "I WILL PUT MY TRUST IN HIM." And again, "BEHOLD, I AND THE CHILDREN WHOM GOD HAS GIVEN ME." >14 Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, >15 and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. >16 For assuredly He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the descendant of Abraham. >17 Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. >18 For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted. Being born of a woman was how Christ humbled Himself and took the sins of humanity upon Himself. Scripture says man, who is born of a woman, is short-lived and full of turmoil. How then can a man be just with God? Or how can he be clean who is born of woman? This is why Christ’s incarnation is of a virgin woman, so that by His life we may make clean that which could not be made clean. The sufferings of Christ is Satan bruising the heel of the seed of the woman. Satan tempted Christ in the wilderness, aiming to draw Him into sin. Some readers have surmised it was satanic oppression which drove Christ to sweat blood in the garden of Gethsemane. The text is clear it was Satan who put it into the heart of Judas to betray Jesus. He also likely influenced Peter to deny Christ three times. The chief priests who prosecuted Him, the false accusers who jeered at Him, and even Pilate who condemned Him — all of these may have been under the influence of the devil. Even the crucifixion itself can be understood as lobbied by Satan, even though we know the Father had a sovereign aim in all of it. Satan’s work in “bruising the heel of the seed of the woman” by causing Christ to suffer were his efforts to destroy the Savior and ruin the salvation. But as we just read in Hebrews 2, “through death Jesus might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.” The fact that the suffering of Christ became integral to the salvation of man should give us hope for our own suffering today. Jesus is afflicted in our afflictions so that we are not alone in them. Today the saints are persecuted, imprisoned, tempted to sin, and even murdered. All of these actions are Satan bruising the heel of the seed of the woman. While our heels will be bruised by malevolence and sin in this life, our heads remain safe in heaven. Eve was the first of all women and Satan trampled her by deceiving her to sin in the garden of Eden. It is godly vengeance that the seed of the woman should prove victorious to trample the seed of the serpent. The woman would be raised up in the fullness of time to triumph over Satan. When God declares the seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent He’s pointing to a dissolution of all Satan’s politics, powers, kingdom, and interests. We saw a beginning to this when Christ baffled all of Satan’s temptations in the wilderness. We saw Jesus rescue souls from the grip of the devil. He cast out demons who are representative of the devil from the bodies of the people. And finally by His own death Jesus dealt the fatal blow to Satan’s kingdom. A strike to the head of the serpent which could never be healed. As the kingdom of God advances through the preaching of the gospel, Satan continues to fall into eternal damnation. We’re even given a picture of this in Revelation 20 where we see Satan bound and locked in the abyss. Revelation 20:1-3 reads through the eyes of John the revelator: >**Revelation 20:1-3** >1 Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. >2 And he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; >3 and he threw him into the abyss, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he would not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were completed; after these things he must be released for a short time. Romans says the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. And finally we know that in the end God will cast Satan and the false prophet into the lake of fire. Revelation 20:10 reads, “And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” The result of all his efforts to deceive humanity and supplant God will be damnation for him and glory for those who are elected saints of Jesus Christ.