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[Cretan]

“He will crush your head, and you will bruise his heel” — If this is about Jesus, then shouldn’t it be the other way around?

In Genesis 3:15 when God curses the serpent he says,

“And I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head, and you will bruise his heel.”

If this is a victory story about Jesus conquering Satan, then why isn’t it the other way around? Shouldn’t it say “You will bruise his heel but he (Jesus) will crush your head”?

It seems to me that the curse is not that the serpent would be defeated, but that there would be a constant struggle between mankind and the serpent’s offspring. There doesn’t appear to be a “winner” in this struggle. The struggle itself is the curse. Am I off here?

[jimwalton]

John Walton explains, "Treading on the serpent is used in Pyramid Texts 299 as an expression of overcoming or defeating it. It reflects a potentially mortal blow to this deadly enemy. There is no suggestion that the Israelites are borrowing from the Pyramid Texts, only that these texts help us to determine how someone in the ancient Near East might understand such words and phrases.

" 'Crush' and 'strike' are the same word. The heel strike of a poisonous serpent is just as lethal as the head strike by a human. The verse doesn’t clarify who will win. The point is that there will be ongoing conflict (enmity) in which people will be tempted to do evil (and will often succumb) but will still be able to resist. Evil had not won, but neither was this a onetime occurrence."

There is no warrant to take it as a reference to Jesus. Neither Jesus nor his disciples cite Gen. 3.15. The NT never speaks of Christ trampling the serpent.