Bruised

by Terry Wane Benton

"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" (Genesis 3:15).

The very first prophecy of “the seed of the woman” bruising the head of the Serpent and being in turn “bruised” on His heel is interesting. The serpent had used the woman (Eve) to bring sin into play, resulting in death entering the human experience and ruining the paradise relationship with God. In response, God planned to use another woman to bring on a major injury to that entity called the Serpent or Satan. The woman God used as an instrument of blessing, reversing the curse of sin, was Mary, and she had never known a man, keeping her virginity while God implanted a seed that could deliver a major blow to Satan. In the process, the Seed of the woman would be injured. This aligns with the purpose of Jesus. Jesus came to deliver us from the power of the devil, from sin and death, and do something that the Serpent of Old could not overcome, a blessing for us that brought pain to Jesus, but a greater limitation of Satan’s power over us.

It is also interesting that while the normal predictions predicted the seed line came through men like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and David, that Mary came through them, but the Savior came through a woman who never knew a man until after Jesus was born.

Jesus was the seed of a woman and of God. The whole mission of Jesus was to provide a blow to Satan’s power over us, but He would suffer Himself in the process. This nugget is further explained by the same Spirit in the New Testament because the same Spirit guided Moses to give the imagery in a summary in Genesis 3:15 and then reveal its fulfillment in Jesus by the New Testament writers, whom He “guided into all truth” (John 16:13).

The witnesses and disciples of Jesus were not “retrofitting” Jesus onto the Old Testament scriptures. They were bringing to the surface what was already embedded as shadow forms of Jesus. This is the wisdom of God, stereopainting Jesus into the scriptures of old so that we can be awed at God’s wisdom. The Spirit of Christ was in Moses, testifying “beforehand” the suffering of Christ. That is proof of superhuman wisdom and foreknowledge. I am continually amazed at the demonstration of God’s wisdom in embedding the picture of Jesus in the Jewish part of the Bible.