Or, The Promise of Antithesis
Scripture: Genesis 3:14-19
Date: June 21, 2015
Speaker: Sean Higgins
Part of the nature of sin is to treat sin lightly. Disobedience does not weigh heavy upon us; within the core of disobedience itself is a barricade against conviction. We are the people of the “expected second chance” (or third, fourth, fifth). Consequences surprise us; we think consequences are unfair, especially when they come immediately, or if they last any significant length of time. In Genesis 3:14-19 we learn about the immediate and long-term consequences of Adam and Eve’s disobedience. One bite, one sin, one time, was enough to lose paradise.
The serpent tempted Eve successfully and she seduced Adam into sin in Scene One (verses 1-7). Last week we saw man rebelling, running, and rationalizing, but not repenting in Scene Two (verses 8-13). Fallen man does not seek God; he hides from Him, though really there is nowhere for him to run. Man fears exposure, and then he misdirects attention shifts blame and equivocates, even to his all-knowing Maker, in order to avoid wearing the weight of his sin.
Scene Three (verses 14-19) reveals the consequences of sin, as God curses the serpent (14-15), multiplies the woman’s pain in both her childbearing and in her marriage (16), and makes man’s life one of striving and toil until he dies (17-19). There is trouble in paradise, and it defines life and struggle and death for every Son of Adam and Daughter of Eve since.
There were three characters involved in the disobedience and each of them are sentenced by God.
God had no questions for the serpent. There was no reason to question because God did not aim to elicit his confession. It wasn’t that the serpent snuck away undetected, it was that God had no intention of offering redemption to the serpent. There was no lesson to teach him, only judgment.
The LORD God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life. (verse 14)
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.” (verse 15)
The key word to the serpent is seen in verse 14, and that word is repeated in verse 17 regarding the soil: cursed . The serpent was more “crafty” (arum) than any beast of the field (3:1), now he is more cursed (arur) than any beast of the field. Up to this point, God blessed creatures as Maker. Now He sentences calamity and destruction upon one of the creatures as Judge. God Himself curses; its fulfillment depends on Him.
Yahweh Elohim cursed the serpent above all livestock and above all beasts of the field . Among the animals, the serpent is the most despised and detested, though all of the animals—and all creation—experience consequences.
The primary way this curse would be realized is by the serpent slithering and eating dust. He is degraded, humiliated. I mentioned it before that perhaps the serpent had legs previous to now. Maybe the serpent had walked upright, making it more approachable to the woman. Now that it had deceived the woman, God banished it to move on its belly.
We aren’t told; that information isn’t provided by Moses, so any conclusion we make would be speculative. It may be that God is simply judging the serpent back to its place. It presumed to elevate itself by deceiving the woman who should have had dominion over it. “You will go on your belly, and you will stay there.”
The second phrase emphasizes the shameful position: dust you shall eat all the days of your life . This isn’t a new diet, it is a description of its position. I imagine being stuck on a one lane road behind a diesel dump truck for 40 miles, eating dirty exhaust. The serpent is stuck slithering in the dirt and dust, never escaping: all the days of your life .
Verse 15 is very important in the story for at least a couple significant questions it raises. Is this enmity the reason women hate snakes, or is this enmity something bigger? What about the fact that women tend not to like rats and spiders, too? Or that most men don’t like snakes? And who is the “seed” of the snake, the “seed” of the woman? Snakes, nor Satan, nor women, provide seed biologically. And why will the seed of the woman bruise the serpent, not the seed of the serpent? Is the seed one person or a whole group of descendants?
Verse 15 is the most difficult verse in Genesis to understand so far.
It is a curious curse, to put enmity between you (the serpent) and the woman . How exactly does that punish the snake? How does that punishment correspond to such a wicked act? That’s part of the contextual reason why I think this must be more than simply a serpent. It heavily hints that something, or someone, else is involved, namely Satan.
So while verse 14 is directed to the serpent, verse 15 appears to be directed to Satan who was embodied in the serpent. A spiritual battle is put into play now, a bitter fight that extends to the offspring of each. There will be enmity between your offspring and her offspring . The word is “seed,” which can have a collective sense (all of one’s descendants), or it can refer to one’s immediate child.
How does that work? Are there children of the devil and children of women? Or is this a description of the spiritual races? I don’t think Adam and Eve would have understood the fulness of this; perhaps the serpent grasped more. There would be perpetual enmity between the two lines—those who follow the way of the serpent and those who follow the way of the woman. These are the two groups that dominate history’s pages. In John 8:44 Jesus said, “you are of your father the devil…he was a murderer from the beginning.” In Ephesians 2:2-3 Paul referred to those who are “following the prince of the power of the air…by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.”
The end of verse 15, however, returns from a plural: offspring, to the singular: he will and you will . Since only the head of the serpent is bruised, we expect an individual to be bruised and to bruise the serpent back. It seems like history will focuses this battle between two primary characters, one of which is the serpent itself.
Some translations use different verbs in the two actions, but bruise is used both times. The only difference is the location, between the head and the heel . It makes sense physically, since a creeping snake would snap at the part of upright man he could reach. But what sort of dramatic climax is that? There must be something more.
Again, there is no way Adam and Eve fully understood what this meant, though certainly it is said so they could hear it. According to Calvin, it reminded the first couple to beware of Satan as an enemy, and encourages them to fight with confidence. Eve seems to think that Cain is the fulfillment of the promise based on her enthusiasm at the start of chapter 4. Of course, she realizes after Cain kills Abel that he wasn’t “the seed,” but then she explicitly references the “seed” motif with the birth of Seth in 4:25. We know more than the first couple did, however, because we have more chapters of the story.
This is sometimes called the protoevangelium, the first gospel. Though it is interesting that “not a direct promise to man, for redemption is about God’s rule as much as about man’s need” (Kidner).
Maybe the man and the woman thought that they were off the hook since God didn’t respond to their answers and began handing out punishment with the serpent. But now consequences were pronounced against both of them. It is not necessarily a curse, but it is the context of divine sentencing, judgment, and punishment.
To the woman he said,
I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.
(verse 16)
Though most translations say, “I will surely/greatly multiply your pain in childbearing/childbirth,” the Hebrew could be better translated “I will greatly multiply your pain and your conception.” So while most see this as emphasizing where the pain comes from, it could also mean an increase in the rate of a woman’s cycle, wearing out her body even more quickly as well as causing significant pain.
Your desire shall be for your husband could be a reference to dependence, as if she would always be sad when he left. “Do you have to go to work? Why can’t you just stay here with me all day?” Others have suggested that it refers to a physical or sexual desire. Neither of these are much of a punishment since she was already created in dependence on the man anyway and the physical intimacy was part of God’s procreating gift and mandate. We get help from seeing almost the exact phrasing in 4:7 regarding sin and Cain.
sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.
This means that her desire is to dominate, to control. She will manipulate and try to change him, steer him, wear his pants. There will be fighting and disputing, with each party trying to rule the other. In this, of course, the man was also punished for following his wife’s lead.
The woman’s image-bearing is changed. Her primary responsibility—childbearing, and her primary relationship—to her husband, are altered. The woman’s home, the place where her work and attention are directed, is now frustrated because of sin. On a daily basis she is reminded of the disastrous consequences of sin.
If my thoughts are correct above, that Satan is addressed in verse 15, then each character thus far was addressed in one verse (the serpent, Satan, Eve). Three verses go to the man. The proportion of space devoted to his punishment emphasizes that he was primarily responsible. On Adam humanity hinged. By one man came sin and death and vanity.
The punishment fits the crime. Five times in three verses “eating” is the issue, and that’s exactly how Adam disobeyed. The work behind every meal is a reminder of the fall, though still a provision of God.
And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,‘
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.” (verses 17-19)
Work itself is not a curse, as the cultural mandate made clear (Genesis 1:28; 9:1-3). But frustration and vanity and difficulty and pain is punishment.
When God tells Adam in pain you shall eat of it , it’s the same word describe the woman’s pain. Both of them have labor pains, she in birthing babies and he in bringing home bread.
It is brutal that thorns and thistles it shall bring for for you , as if it were because of him, on his behalf. Out of place moss must also be an application of this.
Work will be by the sweat of your face , or actually, by the sweat of your “nose,” as the wearisome, hot labor stings the eyes and drips off one’s nose. The picture is bending over in uncomfortable, stiff, exhausting work.
Just because we don’t live in an agricultural society where most of our men plow the field, don’t think we’ve elevated ourselves beyond the touch of God’s curse. Computer viruses and flat tires and traffic and inflation, app crashes and blue screens of death, etc. are part of the vain world. If we think we’ll have a job without problems, we are as deceived as Eve.
These labor pains will continue all the days of your life , repeated from verse 14. Relief comes when you die. Man is helpless; there is nothing he can do to escape. Man’s work is unrelenting.
Again, on a daily basis, man is reminded of the consequences of his sin. This is, however, a teaching. The miserable sufferings of life are necessary to teach us about God’s holy and determined standard. Pain humbles us. Pain reminds us to avoid sin. Pain ought to turn us to God. We are left here for a reason, to learn something about God.
After sin, and after these judgments on sin, image-bearing is never the same in terms of our relationships or our responsibilities. Sin makes them miserable.
There is now an ongoing antithesis. Antithesis is a contrast or an opposition between things. God established enmity , hostility, a fight. Just in this paragraph we see the beginning of antithesis that lasts through history.
Where there was fellowship and enjoyment, now there is frustration and difficulty.
Antithesis is everywhere. Either we educate according to the worldview of the woman’s seed or the serpent’s seed. Our politicians belong on one side or the other. Even our worship is driven by the antithesis.
This is one of the reasons that we do sometimes talk about our corporate worship as war, as battle. It’s because we’re in a fight. We declare allegiance to our Father every time we worship. We profess that we are with the seed of the woman not the seed of the serpent. Instead of listening to the lies of the serpent we listen to truth from God. We hear His Word. We acknowledge our sins and repent. We will praise our Maker and Redeemer, giving Him thanks for all the great and gracious gifts He bestows.
Worship is warfare that we make a statement whose side we’re on. We don’t fight with guns, we fight with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. We don’t fight with knives but with the sword of the Spirit. We can, and should, have joy in the fight. But we recognize the spiritual enmity that God established. That makes the serpent and his seed mad. He/they would prefer for us to be quiet, or be on his team. Our worship combats his operations.
We worship knowing that the final victory in the fight belongs to the seed of the woman.