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Even for Bible-loving Christians, sometimes it feels as though Satan is going to win. The world’s influence seems so powerful. The news is filled with horrific sin. Cultural trends show our society coming unraveled. Many governments use their vast resources to repress the church. There just seem to be so many people who oppose Christ and so few who love Him.
We are in a great conflict, yes. But the Bible tells a story about the conflict between God’s people and Satan’s allies that is different from how things appear. In this article, we’ll examine how Genesis begins a hope-filled story of “the war between the seeds”—between the seed (i.e., offspring) of the woman and the seed of the serpent. Then we’ll see how Jesus Christ culminates this hope in the book of Revelation. Finally, we’ll reflect on what this story means for Christians today.
the offspring in genesis
God created the world to be filled with those who love Him (Gen. 1:28). When the serpent lured Adam and Eve to side with him against God, this good purpose was imperiled. Will the earth now be filled with those who hate God? In response, God declares His curse on the serpent (3:14–15), the climax of which states that God will renew a holy hostility between the serpent’s offspring and the woman’s offspring. No longer will the woman and her race ally with the serpent against God. God also promises that one day the offspring of the woman will bruise the serpent’s head—a decisive blow. But the serpent’s offspring will also wound this deliverer on His heel.
The problem of the serpent—people’s allegiance to him, and his very existence—will be solved not by Adam and Eve but by their offspring. In some future generation, the battle that began in the garden will reach its climax, and God will achieve a decisive victory through the woman’s offspring. As in Genesis 1:26, when God stated His intent to rule His world through people, so now God intends to defeat the rebellious serpent through human offspring.
Therefore, from its inception, history revolves around procreation: God’s good purpose to bring the promised offspring, and the serpent’s evil attempt to prevent this offspring. We will examine three dimensions of the “offspring” theme in Genesis: (1) the question of which line will bring the promised deliverer, (2) the conflict between the offspring of the woman and the offspring of the serpent in Genesis, and (3) the ways that God expands on the core promise of 3:15.
After their banishment from the garden, Adam and Eve had two children: Cain (the eldest) and Abel (4:1–2). Abel, the second-born, emerged as God’s favored line (v. 4). But Cain slew him, and the favored line proceeded through a third son, Seth (5:3). The story of Genesis continues to trace the line of God’s choosing: from Seth to Noah (ch. 5), from Noah to Abraham (11:10–30), and then to Isaac and Jacob. These genealogies are critical because of the promise in 3:15. The blessing of the world depends on the offspring of the woman coming to crush the serpent, and Genesis isolates this special line. Sometimes God speaks of blessing the world through this line (12:3; 22:18), sometimes God speaks of one line reigning over others (9:26–27; 49:10), and sometimes Genesis speaks of the inheritance or blessing resting on one line in particular (15:4; 28:4).
The many twists of the story highlight God’s special superintendence of this line. Very often, the line followed the younger of two sons. Moreover, the wife of the chosen man was often barren. Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel all struggled with barrenness (11:30; 25:21; 29:31) and bore children only with God’s help (21:1; 25:21; 30:22). The promised line also had to survive multiple famines (e.g., 12:10), the threat of outside attack (32:8; 34:30), and premature death (38:7, 10).
Genesis 3:15 spoke of enmity between the offspring of the woman and the offspring of the serpent, and Genesis chronicles this fight. The offspring of the serpent is sometimes violent: Cain killed Abel, and Esau wanted to murder Jacob (see also Pharaoh in Ex. 1:16). In several instances, the threat is sexual: Sarah was twice taken into the harem of a foreign king, and Rebekah was similarly threatened (Gen. 12:15; 20:2; 26:10). The sexual threat happened to males as well: Abraham failed to trust that God would provide the promised offspring and lay with Hagar (16:4), and Potiphar’s wife tempted Joseph (39:7).
Once, God Himself appeared to threaten the promised line, when He tested Abraham. He commanded Abraham to slay the heir of the promise (22:2), an apparent reversal of His declared purpose in 17:19. Yet Abraham discerned that God would still be faithful to the offspring promise despite His command to sacrifice Isaac (Heb. 11:19).
As the promised offspring endured these trials, God expanded on the promise of victory in the conflict with the serpent first announced in Genesis 3:15. As God engaged with the holy line, He unveiled new dimensions of this victory. The serpent caused humanity to lose the garden, but the promised offspring will inherit a new land (12:7). The serpent brought an end to humanity’s holy rule on God’s behalf (see 1:26), but God promised to bring kings through the holy line (17:6). The serpent threatened to fill the world with his followers, but God promised that the true offspring will be as abundant as the sand or the stars (15:5; 22:17). The serpent introduced a rift between God and humanity, but God will restore covenant relations with the holy line (17:7). In short, God’s victory over the serpent will be total: crushing the serpent’s head means the defeat all of the serpent’s evil purposes.
As Genesis closes, the promised offspring has expanded from a narrow line (Abraham to Isaac to Jacob) to a broad line (the twelve sons of Jacob). The book leaves unanswered this question: When exactly will the promised offspring finally come to defeat the serpent and inaugurate the promised kingdom?
the offspring in revelation
The war between the seeds takes many dramatic turns in the rest of the Old Testament. The offspring of the serpent could not extinguish the offspring of the woman, even when Israel as a whole sided with the serpent in apostasy. God always preserved a faithful remnant, and He identified the line of David as the source of the serpent-slaying deliverer (see 1 Sam. 17).
The book of Revelation returns to the imagery of Genesis 3:15 and shows its climax. In Revelation 12, we see two visions of the defeat of the serpent (the “dragon”). The two visions (12:1–6 and 12:7–17) refer to the same cosmic events from two different perspectives. The first vision portrays a woman giving birth. The woman is God’s people (as seen from her crown of twelve stars; v. 1). She gives birth to a male child, Christ (v. 5; see Ps. 2:9; Rev. 19:15). Satan, the dragon, who had sought to destroy the woman’s offspring all through Israel’s history, now tries to devour the child (Rev. 12:4). This refers not just to Herod’s attempt to kill Jesus (Matt. 2:16) but to the repeated attempts to destroy Jesus, climaxing in His crucifixion. But God was victorious: the child was taken up to the throne of God (Rev. 12:5), a reference to Jesus’ ascension (see 5:7).
The second vision (12:7–17) dramatizes the same events, but this time from the perspective of a plural offspring of the woman, which is us. Now we hear how the angels’ victory is tied to the victory of the martyrs, who “loved not their lives even unto death” (v. 11). This plural offspring of the woman conquered through the singular offspring, Jesus Christ: “They have conquered [the dragon] by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony” (v. 11). As with Jesus, whom the dragon sought to kill but could not (vv. 4–5), so the dragon seeks to destroy the church, yet he cannot (vv. 13–17).
conclusion
A furious, defeated dragon and an invincible, victorious church: Scripture gives us that picture as we navigate this time between Christ’s first and second comings. It may seem that Satan is winning, but the reality is that the offspring of the woman—the Lamb—has already won, and His victory guarantees the victory of everyone who belongs to Him. Amazingly, the idea of the seed of the woman in Genesis 3:15 is not just about Christ but about His church (see Rom. 16:20). That means that we will triumph in the same way that Christ triumphed: not by force of arms but by our willingness to suffer for Christ’s sake. As Christ was wounded in the heel (His crucifixion), so we must be willing to give up everything in our fight to uphold the gospel and reject sin. The war between the offspring of the serpent and the offspring of the woman continues to this day. But we must never doubt that the victory lies with Christ.