The seed of the woman or offspring of the woman is a concept, drawn from Genesis 3:15, which is viewed differently in Judaism and Christianity. In Christianity it is often given a Messianic interpretation.
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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. 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.” 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.”(Genesis 3:14-16, ESV)
In rabbinical Judaism the contrasting groups of "seed of the woman" and "seed of the serpent" are generally taken as plural, and the promise "he will bruise your head" applied to Adam / mankind bruising the serpent's head.[1]
Although a possible Jewish messianic interpretation of Genesis 3:15 in some schools of Judaism during the Second Temple Period has been suggested by some Christian scholars,[2] no evidence of such an interpretation has yet come to light.[3] Maimonides commented that the passage was "obscure".
Identification of the "seed of the woman" with Christ goes as back at least as far as Irenaeus [4] and the phrase "Seed of the woman" is sometimes counted as one of the titles of Jesus in the Bible.[5] A tradition found in some old eastern Christian sources (including the Kitab al-Magall and the Cave of Treasures) holds that the serpent's head was crushed at Golgotha, described as a skull-shaped hill at the centre of the Earth, where Shem and Melchizedek had placed the body of Adam.[6] More commonly, as in Victorian homilies, "It was on Golgotha that the old serpent gave the Saviour the deadly bite in his heel, which went quite through his foot, fastening it to the cross with iron nails."[7]
Luther in his Lectures on Romans identifies the seed of the woman with the word of God in the church.[8]
Some Catholics may understand the promise of a "seed" to Eve as primarily relating to Mary herself not Christ. The English Douay–Rheims Bible 1609 onwards has "she (Mary) shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel." The reading was supported in the Bull Ineffabilis Deus of December 1854, and is defended in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1912), where Anthony Maas acknowledges that the Douay–Rheims does not follow the Hebrew.[9] The New Jerusalem Bible retains "she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel".
Maas also writes: "One may be tempted to understand the seed of the woman in a similar collective sense, embracing all who are born of God. But seed not only may denote a particular person, but has such a meaning usually, if the context allows it. St. Paul (Galatians 3:16) gives this explanation of the word "seed" as it occurs in the patriarchal promises: "To Abraham were the promises made and to his seed. He saith not, and to his seeds, as of many; but as of one, and to his seed, which is Christ".[10]
The more recent New American Bible reads, "...They will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel."[11]