I will put enmity between you and my wife. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; it will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel. God's Conviction of Them

Of all the lines in the first three chapters of Genesis, this is perhaps the most stunning. Firstly, she says that the life of an ordinary person in terms of spirituality, there is an obvious opposition here, a snake will feed on ashes, but what will happen to those who are not ashes, that is, to other children? These children are called the seeds of the woman. Moreover, here the seed of the wife is written in the Hebrew original with a capital letter in the masculine gender. The seed is him. Interesting. This means that the woman’s son will fight against your seed. Any person, first of all, will fight the evil that comes from the seed, that is, being the seed of the devil. That is, in spiritual terms, an ordinary person will have a struggle with anger, a struggle with sin, all his life. This enmity will accompany a person’s entire life. The phrase “and you will sting his heel” means that every person, even the most successful warrior who wins this battle, will have an Achilles heel, these are the same words: Achilles heel and this heel is a weak point. And if we consider that the heel is the place with which a person touches the ground, with which he walks on the ground, then it is clear that the weak point in any case, even for a noble person, will be the place with which he touches earthly life. And there is a lot of space here. That is, everything that in this earthly life forces a person to act and live, associated with work, marriage, travel, knowledge - everything that a person touches while walking on the earth will enable the snake to bite. Seeds, small snakes - children of this big serpent, which bite the weak of a pious person. Even holy people have these heels, and even Christ has this heel, but since Christ Our Lord is sinless, this heel is his very life. It is the only vulnerable place where the serpent could bite Christ. And sinful people from such places may not have a heel, but a whole organism. This means that in the Russian text he, the seed of the woman, will bruise the serpent’s head. For some reason, not the seed of the husband, but the seed of the wife. This place is considered the oldest prophecy about the coming of Christ. And this place is called 3.15 First Gospel.

By the way, here’s how to punish people: first say the most important loving and saving words, and then start punishing, that’s what you need to do. When angry, we often act differently: first we punish, reject, and then we think about how to save. In the Bible, on the contrary, first the Lord clearly speaks about what he is going to save, and then there is a conversation about what punishment you now face, this is very typical. To hit the head of a snake means to destroy the devil in principle, well, the tail regenerates, as we know, but the head is everything. This means that one day there will be one who will be the seed of the woman and will bruise the serpent’s head. And this means that any people descended from Adam, in their historical memory, keeps the promise that one day the Lord will come and save the world, save man, it’s better to say so.

We all remember the words of the Torah, which Christians consider to be the “first prophecy of the Messiah” in Breishit 3:15. Let's take a closer look at them now:
וְאֵיבָה אָשִׁית בֵּינְךָ וּבֵין הָאִשָּׁה וּבֵין זַרְעֲךָ וּבֵין זַרְעָהּ הוּא יְשׁוּפְךָ רֹאשׁ וְאַתָּה תְּשׁוּפֶנּוּ עָקֵב׃ ס
“Veeyva hashit beineha uvein gaisha uvain zar”aha uvain zar”ax u ishufeha rosh veata teshufenu akeiv”
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; it will bruise your head, and you will bruise its heel.”- says the synodal translation in Genesis 3:15.
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your descendants and her descendants: they will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.”- we find in Soncino’s translation.

1 VERSION OF INTERPRETATIONS:

Even without me, you know how many copies were broken in order to understand and convey the meaning of this curse. Starting from the most primitive - fear of reptiles, ending with the most mythological, which is what you most often hear - as if this curse is not a curse at all, but a prophecy. And this prophecy is about the coming of the Messiah, and the serpent is not a serpent at all, but Satan.
This is what the Geneva Bible says: “This is the promise of the coming Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ. It is He who will finally free His chosen ones from the bondage of sin,” “Christ, the promised “seed,” struck the serpent on the head, but the serpent is trying to “bite” those redeemed by Christ.”
“This section is of the greatest importance. It contains a prophecy that runs through the entire history of the world, right up to the very end of the world, and is fulfilled together on every page of the above-mentioned history. The deep enmity mentioned here is that internal opposition that exists between good and evil, light and darkness.”, says The Explanatory Bible.
We find a more “original” opinion there, in the “Explanatory Bible”: “Many Church Fathers (Justin, Irenaeus, Cyprian, John Chrysostom, Jerome, etc.), based on various places of Holy Scripture, attribute this instruction not so much to Eve, but to that great wife who, more than all other wives, personified in herself “hostility” to the kingdom of Satan, serving the mystery of the incarnation”. Those. Having found the word “wife/woman” in different books, Orthodox interpreters combined them together, and now it turned out that here we are not talking about Chava, but about the Christian Church. With a “control shot” they add: “Since the wife of the first Adam was the cause of the fall, the mother of the second Adam was the instrument of salvation.”
As we see, Christian interpreters regarding this verse almost unanimously classify it as “spiritual promises.”

2 MEANING OF THE VERSE:

I propose for comprehension the following meaning of this story, which does not contradict the general outline of the narrative, and does not introduce unnecessary entities, such as “prophecy”, “Satan”, etc.
After the famous story in the Garden of Eden, the Almighty addresses his speech to all guilty parties.
We see that the curses that the incident entailed are expressed in three sentences.
At the same time, before this, in the first chapter of Breishit, we saw blessings that are also threefold:
Breishit 1:28 - And God blessed them, and God said to them:
(a) be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth,
(b) and possess it,
(c) and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
If we compare them with each other, we will find that curses are essentially a limitation of blessings.
So, if blessings relate to power over the animal world, power over the plant world and reproduction, then curses already limit each of them.
Let's take a closer look at them.

A)
Blessing: “Be fruitful and multiply”
Curse: It is addressed to Khava, because it is she who is directly “responsible” for the birth of offspring. “I will greatly increase your sorrow during your pregnancy; You will bear children in sorrow, and your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
In other words, man is blessed to reproduce, but it comes with difficulty, illness and pain. And even knowing about pain, about difficulties, a woman has an attraction, a desire to reproduce. If it’s more or less clear with cats/sheep/giraffes - they wander around, then decide “shouldn’t I give birth now”, once - and give birth, then this is not the case with humans. But nevertheless, the genetic memory did not acquire a refusal to reproduce due to discomfort and pain. After all, we all know that you can’t jump from the third floor - it will hurt. But knowing that giving birth is also painful, nevertheless our blessing and curse act.

b)
Blessing: “..and replenish the earth, and subdue it...and the Almighty said: Behold, I give you every seed-bearing herb that is on all the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit, it will be for you to eat.”
Curse: It was pronounced to a man (person), because... the man is the head of the family, he is entrusted with all functions, and the woman is his “help”, to whom he can delegate some powers. “Genesis 3:17 And he said to the man, Because thou hast obeyed the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it; the ground is cursed because of thee; with sorrow you will eat from it all the days of your life. She will bring forth thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the grass of the field. By the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the earth, for out of it you were taken, for you are dust and to dust you will return. “
It seems that we have not been delivered from the mercy of the Almighty, and seed-bearing grass, trees, apples and wheat grow. Still, a person must work hard in order to get food for himself. A person cannot sow wheat and then come back year after year to reap the harvest. Next year his field will be covered with wheatgrass and thistles. But if you don’t prune the apple tree, don’t fertilize it, and don’t graft it, it will stop producing normal fruit. In other words, in order to receive a blessing, a person must work, limited by a curse.

c)
Blessing: “And have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Curse: “Genesis 3:14 And God Almighty said to the serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed above all livestock and every beast of the field! On your belly you will walk and dust you will eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and your wife, and between your descendants and her descendants: they will bruise your head, and you will bruise their heel.”
There are many interesting topics here for the imagination: for example, did the snake have legs before, did he himself eat the fruit of the “knowledge of good and evil”, for which he was then cursed to eat dust instead, what kind of “dust” he will eat . And if the snake was a snake before that, what kind of curse is it to “walk on its belly” if it climbed on it before? What kind of “offspring” does the snake have, and why exactly the heel and not the toe?
We can only theorize and speculate without having the full picture, and I would like to avoid that. We will only talk about what we see and can comprehend in the text, and about assumptions we will try to specifically indicate that these are assumptions.

Since we have already previously determined that the three curses are identical in nature to the three blessings, and have drawn parallels between the first two, we will also try to see what in this curse echoes the earlier blessing.
Firstly, the beginning of the chapter attracts attention - “The serpent was more cunning than ALL BEASTS of the field,” as well as the beginning of the curse “Because you have done this, you are cursed MORE THAN ALL CATTLE AND EVERY BEAST OF THE FIELD!” I have highlighted those words in the text that catch your eye. The snake is not seen in isolation from the rest of the animal world. The snake is not just “the serpent was cunning,” but “cunning than BEASTS.” And also not just “cursed are you,” but “cursed are you above all livestock.”
In other words, the snake in the curse is part of the animal world. He was more cunning than the rest, but also more cursed than the rest. “More than all livestock” makes us understand that the rest of the livestock are ALSO cursed for this incident.
What kind of curse is this? From now on, the animal world is at enmity with man. If earlier, man was the crown of the animal world, living in harmony with it, now both live their own lives, and the lion is now proclaimed the king of animals.

Another meaning of the curse can be seen in the word “teshufenu,” which can also be understood as a form of the verb noshef (to hiss).
In the original we see a play on the words ishufekha/teshufenu of the same verb “to strike”. Although another play on words is also possible here: the hissing (noshef) of a snake at the feet (heels) of a person, which he makes, is a reminder of the curse of the snake that was previously higher than all animals, could speak and seduce with cunning words, but now crawls at the feet (on the belly) and can only make a hissing sound (teshufenu), and cannot make any sound. And just as she seduced a man with her words, killing him, so now a man will be able to kill, but the snake will not be able to utter a sound. Although this is only an assumption, akin to midrash. Personally, I am not inclined to believe that the text speaks about this, but I mentioned it as a version.
We see that man has enmity not only with snakes. Likewise, the rest of the animal world does not live in harmony with humans.
This curse is formulated in the Torah as the curse of the serpent “MORE than any livestock.” From here we see that “all cattle” were also cursed by “the enmity of descendants” and “a blow to the head,” but the snake separately was cursed even more than them - by “climbing on its belly” in the mud and its muzzle in the dust, “dust.”

3 WHO IS “HE” WHO WILL BE SAFE?:

The problem for those reading this verse is the singular masculine pronoun “he.” Who is this “he” who will strike, and who is the second “he” who will be sarcastic? For example, Lopukhin’s comments even indicate “The conclusion of this struggle will be the spiritual duel that is spoken of here, when “He” (autov - masculine pronoun), i.e. the Great Descendant, enters into battle with the serpent himself or his main fiend - the Antichrist and defeats the latter on the head". Really, I don’t understand what the Greek word has to do with the Jewish Torah, but oh well.
The point is that the word (זַרְעֲךָ / זַרְעָהּ”zerah/seed”), i.e. “offspring” in our quotation is represented by the words “ZAR”AXA uwain ZAR”AX”, this is a masculine singular word. For example, “the Jewish PEOPLE” is also not “they”, but “he”. He is the people. Many people, but “he”. In Russian, “seed” is neuter, so if you translate “seed”, then “IT” should strike, and not “he”, as is correctly translated in most translations, although not in all: NASB, NIB, RSV, ASV, BBE(bible in basic english), Darby, and “Good News” say “he”. But when interpreting, commentators over and over again pull out the masculine gender, and from there various interpretations are born in relation to some single “seed”.
So, “seed” in Hebrew is “he”, masculine, but in Russian “it” is neuter.

4 DILEMMA OF AN IDEAL CREATION:

A person who believes that the Almighty created the whole world and everything that fills it, involuntarily faces the following dilemma: why the created world is not ideal. After all, if the Ideal Creator created it, then His creation must also be ideal.
The story of three blessings and three curses is intended to clarify this dilemma: why man's blessing to populate the Earth, eat from the plant world, and enjoy the benefits of the animal world has such limitations. Why don’t man, the (self) proclaimed king of the animal world, cows themselves tame and chickens themselves lay eggs in the morning. Why in the fields the barley does not spike by itself, and the forests are not apple-mango by themselves. Why is it necessary to make an effort so that the fertile land bears fruit? Why is reproduction, which seems to be a joy, at the same time painful, and even in those days often fatal, while some rabbits give birth almost on the fly?
But why exactly these questions are raised, and not, for example, why not all people can sing perfectly, why are there so many fools in the world, and why are there ugly people?
These three blessings contain the answer to the main question of life “why do I (man) exist.” The answer to this question is precisely what the Torah describes with these three blessings - to produce offspring and dispose of the Earth, in the form of the animal and plant world.

5 TWO STORIES OF CREATION:

In the Torah narrative we clearly see two parallel stories of Creation. And given what was said above, we can see that the first story is intended to show the creation of an ideal world, and the second describes the emergence of the limitations of the initially ideal world in which we live.

6 TALKING SNAKES:

One of the curses, as we remember, was “enmity.” In this case, the enmity is between the descendants of animals and the descendants of humans. One of the signs of “hostility” is a lack of understanding of each other. Remember what the Torah describes about the builders of the Tower of Babel - when they stopped understanding each other, they began to have enmity, they quarreled.
I believe that people then could UNDERSTAND the language of animals, including snakes. After the curse, a person lost the ability to understand the essence of the animal world and the ability to communicate with them - this is enmity, one of its signs.
The Torah does not mention other talking animals because they are not included in the narrative at all.

“...and I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; it will bruise your head, and you will bruise its heel” (Gen. 3:15)

Let's see what this scripture says when God, angry with the serpent who deceived Eve, curses him: “...because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle and above all the beasts of the field; On your belly you will go, and you will eat dust all the days of your life...” (Genesis 3:14). This curse is directed at the animal how to a vessel through which temptation came. In the next verse, the curse of the serpent continues, but now it is addressed not to the animal through which the temptation came, but to the tempter himself - the ancient serpent, whose name is the devil. These are already prophetic words for the entire existence of the earth about the struggle of Satan, that is, the snake, and wife - the universal church : “...and I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; it will bruise your head, and you will bruise its heel” (Gen. 3:15).

This passage of Scripture cannot be taken literally as a curse on the serpent-animal and an appeal to the woman and the offspring born of her. From this verse we see that from the very beginning of human development, God foreshadows the coming war between the children born of the devil - by the serpent's seed– and children born of God – the church – wife's seed.

The Apostle John also says that there are children of the devil and there are children of God: “Whoever is born of God commits no sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. The children of God and the children of the devil are recognized in this way: everyone who does not practice righteousness is not from God, neither does he who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:9,10).

In one of the parables of Jesus Christ, we also see confirmation that there is a seed of the devil - these are the tares that he sows among the wheat: “...while the people were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went away; When the greenery sprang up and the fruit appeared, then the tares also appeared. Having come, the servants of the householder said to him: Master! did you not sow good seed in your field? where does the tares come from? He said to them, “The enemy of man has done this.” And the slaves said to him: Do you want us to go and choose them? But he said: no, so that when you choose the tares, you do not pull up the wheat along with them, leave both to grow together until the harvest; and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather first the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but put the wheat into my barn” (Matthew 13:25-30).

Humanity is divided into three types of people: children, born by wife(seed of the wife); children, born of the devil(seed of the serpent), and “empties” - people, born flesh of flesh, dry branches that bear no fruit, unable to bear even the simple fruit of repentance. Such branches are cut off. If we consider the field, as in the parables of Jesus Christ, we will see that among the ears of wheat there are some full of grains and drooping from weight, and others that rise above all the other ears and stick out on their long stalks because they are empty, they have no grains. Although they are not tares, they will not be gathered into barns, because they are empty, barren and subject to burning in fire. These are spiritual, not spiritual people, in no way, except perhaps in appearance, not different from animals: “They are like dumb animals, led by nature, born to be caught and destroyed, speaking evil of what they do not understand, and in their corruption they will be destroyed” (2 Pet. 2:12). Jesus Himself said: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). There are also those who are sent from heaven, as God Himself says: “You know this because you were already born then, and the number of your days is very great” (Job 38:21). It is also said about all those who are messengers: “...because He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love...” (Eph. 1:4). So in Jesus Himself we see “...predestined before the foundation of the world, but which was revealed in the last times for you...” (1 Peter 1:20). So this is the seed of God, the seed of the woman. And there are those who are born from the desire of a husband. They are not messengers.

But both those, and others, and others must be born again, of the Spirit. The chance of salvation is offered to everyone without exception. Jesus Christ speaks about this: “...that you may be sons of your Father in heaven, for He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). What do these words mean? That we are not given the right to reject anyone and not bear witness to someone, even if we see that he is not one of those who, like Job, “was already then”, that is, to the seed of the woman. The Lord commanded His Sun to rise over everyone without exception. And we know that the Sun for us is Jesus Christ, Who suffered for everyone without exception. And the rain sent on the righteous and the unrighteous means that the Holy Spirit was poured out on the earth on every creature.

Those who are sent from heaven - the seed of the woman - always have within themselves a calling and aspiration for what their inner nature is predisposed to. But they too must be born of the Spirit. Why does it say "seed of the woman"? Because what was laid down by God, begotten by Him, must be born through a wife. Even Jesus, being begotten of God, sent from heaven, must first be born through a woman (this is a type), and then become Christ: “...though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience through what He suffered, and being perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him...” (Heb. 5:8,9). Not everyone born from the desire of a husband turns to God.

As for the words about enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, this enmity is expressed in an eternal war between them. Although the seed of the serpent stings, it is allowed to bruise only on the heel, and the power to bruise the seed of the serpent on the head is given to us - the seed of the woman through Jesus Christ, as the husband of this woman. This war is well revealed in Revelation, which speaks of the war of Michael the Archangel and His Angels with the dragon and his angels: “And the woman fled into the desert, where a place had been prepared for her by God, that she might be fed there for one thousand two hundred and sixty days. And there was a war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought [against them], but they did not stand, and there was no longer a place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that ancient serpent, called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world, he was cast out to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven: Now has come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the power of His Christ, because the slanderer of our brethren is cast out, who slandered them before our God day and night. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and did not love their own lives even to death” (Rev. 12:6-11).

Verse 11 reveals what the war is, who the angels are, who is fighting, and where the war is taking place. Everything done on earth is reflected in heaven. “...and I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19), - this is the connection between heaven and earth.

“They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and did not love their own lives even to death” (Rev. 12:11). Here we are talking about people - children of God, fighting with the children of the devil. Angels cannot help but love "...your soul even to death...", because they are immortal, which means we are talking about people. And the Blood of Jesus was given to us, and not to the Angels, and the testimony of our lips is our work.

So, this is about us as Angels belonging to the army of Michael the Archangel, and this is our war, and every victory and every defeat is reflected in heaven. This is the kind of enmity spoken of in Genesis, when God, cursing the serpent-dragon, spoke of the power to bruise the head given to the seed of the woman:

We all remember the words of the Torah, which Christians consider to be the “first prophecy of the Messiah” in Breishit 3:15. Let's take a closer look at them now:
וְאֵיבָה אָשִׁית בֵּינְךָ וּבֵין הָאִשָּׁה וּבֵין זַרְעֲךָ וּבֵין זַרְעָהּ הוּא יְשׁוּפְךָ רֹאשׁ וְאַתָּה תְּשׁוּפֶנּוּ עָקֵב׃ ס
“Veeyva hashit beineha uvein gaisha uvain zar”aha uvain zar”ax u ishufeha rosh veata teshufenu akeiv”
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; it will bruise your head, and you will bruise its heel.”- says the synodal translation in Genesis 3:15.
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your descendants and her descendants: they will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.”- we find in Soncino’s translation.

1 VERSION OF INTERPRETATIONS:

Even without me, you know how many copies were broken in order to understand and convey the meaning of this curse. Starting from the most primitive - fear of reptiles, ending with the most mythological, which is what you most often hear - as if this curse is not a curse at all, but a prophecy. And this prophecy is about the coming of the Messiah, and the serpent is not a serpent at all, but Satan.
This is what the Geneva Bible says: “This is the promise of the coming Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ. It is He who will finally free His chosen ones from the bondage of sin,” “Christ, the promised “seed,” struck the serpent on the head, but the serpent is trying to “bite” those redeemed by Christ.”
“This section is of the greatest importance. It contains a prophecy that runs through the entire history of the world, right up to the very end of the world, and is fulfilled together on every page of the above-mentioned history. The deep enmity mentioned here is that internal opposition that exists between good and evil, light and darkness.”, says The Explanatory Bible.
We find a more “original” opinion there, in the “Explanatory Bible”: “Many Church Fathers (Justin, Irenaeus, Cyprian, John Chrysostom, Jerome, etc.), based on various places of Holy Scripture, attribute this instruction not so much to Eve, but to that great wife who, more than all other wives, personified in herself “hostility” to the kingdom of Satan, serving the mystery of the incarnation”. Those. Having found the word “wife/woman” in different books, Orthodox interpreters combined them together, and now it turned out that here we are not talking about Chava, but about the Christian Church. With a “control shot” they add: “Since the wife of the first Adam was the cause of the fall, the mother of the second Adam was the instrument of salvation.”
As we see, Christian interpreters regarding this verse almost unanimously classify it as “spiritual promises.”

2 MEANING OF THE VERSE:

I propose for comprehension the following meaning of this story, which does not contradict the general outline of the narrative, and does not introduce unnecessary entities, such as “prophecy”, “Satan”, etc.
After the famous story in the Garden of Eden, the Almighty addresses his speech to all guilty parties.
We see that the curses that the incident entailed are expressed in three sentences.
At the same time, before this, in the first chapter of Breishit, we saw blessings that are also threefold:
Breishit 1:28 - And God blessed them, and God said to them:
(a) be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth,
(b) and possess it,
(c) and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
If we compare them with each other, we will find that curses are essentially a limitation of blessings.
So, if blessings relate to power over the animal world, power over the plant world and reproduction, then curses already limit each of them.
Let's take a closer look at them.

A)
Blessing: “Be fruitful and multiply”
Curse: It is addressed to Khava, because it is she who is directly “responsible” for the birth of offspring. “I will greatly increase your sorrow during your pregnancy; You will bear children in sorrow, and your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
In other words, man is blessed to reproduce, but it comes with difficulty, illness and pain. And even knowing about pain, about difficulties, a woman has an attraction, a desire to reproduce. If it’s more or less clear with cats/sheep/giraffes - they wander around, then decide “shouldn’t I give birth now”, once - and give birth, then this is not the case with humans. But nevertheless, the genetic memory did not acquire a refusal to reproduce due to discomfort and pain. After all, we all know that you can’t jump from the third floor - it will hurt. But knowing that giving birth is also painful, nevertheless our blessing and curse act.

b)
Blessing: “..and replenish the earth, and subdue it...and the Almighty said: Behold, I give you every seed-bearing herb that is on all the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit, it will be for you to eat.”
Curse: It was pronounced to a man (person), because... the man is the head of the family, he is entrusted with all functions, and the woman is his “help”, to whom he can delegate some powers. “Genesis 3:17 And he said to the man, Because thou hast obeyed the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it; the ground is cursed because of thee; with sorrow you will eat from it all the days of your life. She will bring forth thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the grass of the field. By the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the earth, for out of it you were taken, for you are dust and to dust you will return. “
It seems that we have not been delivered from the mercy of the Almighty, and seed-bearing grass, trees, apples and wheat grow. Still, a person must work hard in order to get food for himself. A person cannot sow wheat and then come back year after year to reap the harvest. Next year his field will be covered with wheatgrass and thistles. But if you don’t prune the apple tree, don’t fertilize it, and don’t graft it, it will stop producing normal fruit. In other words, in order to receive a blessing, a person must work, limited by a curse.

c)
Blessing: “And have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Curse: “Genesis 3:14 And God Almighty said to the serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed above all livestock and every beast of the field! On your belly you will walk and dust you will eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and your wife, and between your descendants and her descendants: they will bruise your head, and you will bruise their heel.”
There are many interesting topics here for the imagination: for example, did the snake have legs before, did he himself eat the fruit of the “knowledge of good and evil”, for which he was then cursed to eat dust instead, what kind of “dust” he will eat . And if the snake was a snake before that, what kind of curse is it to “walk on its belly” if it climbed on it before? What kind of “offspring” does the snake have, and why exactly the heel and not the toe?
We can only theorize and speculate without having the full picture, and I would like to avoid that. We will only talk about what we see and can comprehend in the text, and about assumptions we will try to specifically indicate that these are assumptions.

Since we have already previously determined that the three curses are identical in nature to the three blessings, and have drawn parallels between the first two, we will also try to see what in this curse echoes the earlier blessing.
Firstly, the beginning of the chapter attracts attention - “The serpent was more cunning than ALL BEASTS of the field,” as well as the beginning of the curse “Because you have done this, you are cursed MORE THAN ALL CATTLE AND EVERY BEAST OF THE FIELD!” I have highlighted those words in the text that catch your eye. The snake is not seen in isolation from the rest of the animal world. The snake is not just “the serpent was cunning,” but “cunning than BEASTS.” And also not just “cursed are you,” but “cursed are you above all livestock.”
In other words, the snake in the curse is part of the animal world. He was more cunning than the rest, but also more cursed than the rest. “More than all livestock” makes us understand that the rest of the livestock are ALSO cursed for this incident.
What kind of curse is this? From now on, the animal world is at enmity with man. If earlier, man was the crown of the animal world, living in harmony with it, now both live their own lives, and the lion is now proclaimed the king of animals.

Another meaning of the curse can be seen in the word “teshufenu,” which can also be understood as a form of the verb noshef (to hiss).
In the original we see a play on the words ishufekha/teshufenu of the same verb “to strike”. Although another play on words is also possible here: the hissing (noshef) of a snake at the feet (heels) of a person, which he makes, is a reminder of the curse of the snake that was previously higher than all animals, could speak and seduce with cunning words, but now crawls at the feet (on the belly) and can only make a hissing sound (teshufenu), and cannot make any sound. And just as she seduced a man with her words, killing him, so now a man will be able to kill, but the snake will not be able to utter a sound. Although this is only an assumption, akin to midrash. Personally, I am not inclined to believe that the text speaks about this, but I mentioned it as a version.
We see that man has enmity not only with snakes. Likewise, the rest of the animal world does not live in harmony with humans.
This curse is formulated in the Torah as the curse of the serpent “MORE than any livestock.” From here we see that “all cattle” were also cursed by “the enmity of descendants” and “a blow to the head,” but the snake separately was cursed even more than them - by “climbing on its belly” in the mud and its muzzle in the dust, “dust.”

3 WHO IS “HE” WHO WILL BE SAFE?:

The problem for those reading this verse is the singular masculine pronoun “he.” Who is this “he” who will strike, and who is the second “he” who will be sarcastic? For example, Lopukhin’s comments even indicate “The conclusion of this struggle will be the spiritual duel that is spoken of here, when “He” (autov - masculine pronoun), i.e. the Great Descendant, enters into battle with the serpent himself or his main fiend - the Antichrist and defeats the latter on the head". Really, I don’t understand what the Greek word has to do with the Jewish Torah, but oh well.
The point is that the word (זַרְעֲךָ / זַרְעָהּ”zerah/seed”), i.e. “offspring” in our quotation is represented by the words “ZAR”AXA uwain ZAR”AX”, this is a masculine singular word. For example, “the Jewish PEOPLE” is also not “they”, but “he”. He is the people. Many people, but “he”. In Russian, “seed” is neuter, so if you translate “seed”, then “IT” should strike, and not “he”, as is correctly translated in most translations, although not in all: NASB, NIB, RSV, ASV, BBE(bible in basic english), Darby, and “Good News” say “he”. But when interpreting, commentators over and over again pull out the masculine gender, and from there various interpretations are born in relation to some single “seed”.
So, “seed” in Hebrew is “he”, masculine, but in Russian “it” is neuter.

4 DILEMMA OF AN IDEAL CREATION:

A person who believes that the Almighty created the whole world and everything that fills it, involuntarily faces the following dilemma: why the created world is not ideal. After all, if the Ideal Creator created it, then His creation must also be ideal.
The story of three blessings and three curses is intended to clarify this dilemma: why man's blessing to populate the Earth, eat from the plant world, and enjoy the benefits of the animal world has such limitations. Why don’t man, the (self) proclaimed king of the animal world, cows themselves tame and chickens themselves lay eggs in the morning. Why in the fields the barley does not spike by itself, and the forests are not apple-mango by themselves. Why is it necessary to make an effort so that the fertile land bears fruit? Why is reproduction, which seems to be a joy, at the same time painful, and even in those days often fatal, while some rabbits give birth almost on the fly?
But why exactly these questions are raised, and not, for example, why not all people can sing perfectly, why are there so many fools in the world, and why are there ugly people?
These three blessings contain the answer to the main question of life “why do I (man) exist.” The answer to this question is precisely what the Torah describes with these three blessings - to produce offspring and dispose of the Earth, in the form of the animal and plant world.

5 TWO STORIES OF CREATION:

In the Torah narrative we clearly see two parallel stories of Creation. And given what was said above, we can see that the first story is intended to show the creation of an ideal world, and the second describes the emergence of the limitations of the initially ideal world in which we live.

6 TALKING SNAKES:

One of the curses, as we remember, was “enmity.” In this case, the enmity is between the descendants of animals and the descendants of humans. One of the signs of “hostility” is a lack of understanding of each other. Remember what the Torah describes about the builders of the Tower of Babel - when they stopped understanding each other, they began to have enmity, they quarreled.
I believe that people then could UNDERSTAND the language of animals, including snakes. After the curse, a person lost the ability to understand the essence of the animal world and the ability to communicate with them - this is enmity, one of its signs.
The Torah does not mention other talking animals because they are not included in the narrative at all.

The nature of this serpent is quite mysterious: according to some of its characteristics, for example, by its very name, by belonging to an animal species, by the cunning that distinguishes it () and by the punishment imposed on it - crawling on the ground () - it undoubtedly appears to be the Bible as an ordinary, natural serpent, but a whole series of other signs, such as: the gift of speech, awareness of the existence of the commandment, extraordinary cunning and deceit, as well as the affirmation of the extraordinary duration of its existence for a natural serpent - all this tells us about some higher conscious intelligent being. Therefore, the correct understanding of this serpent will be the one that unites all these above-mentioned features, as, for example, St. John Chrysostom does, saying: “following Scripture, one must reason in such a way that the words belonged to the devil, who was excited by envy for this deception (), and used this animal (i.e. an ordinary serpent) as a convenient tool” (John Chrysostom).

The presence of the devil-tempter in this serpent is also confirmed by many other places of Holy Scripture, in which the devil is called "murderer from the beginning"(), the primary culprit of evil on earth (;) and even directly the “ancient serpent” ().

And the serpent said to the woman: Has God truly said:

The insidious serpent turns to his wife as the weakest vessel (;), in a fair calculation it is easier to achieve his goal through her; Moreover, the wife probably did not personally hear the commandment from God, but received it from her husband and therefore knew it less steadily and firmly.

do not eat from any tree in paradise?

The seducer deliberately exaggerates the severity of the commandment in order to thereby confuse his wife and instill in her dislike both for the commandment itself and for its Founder.

. And the woman said to the serpent: We can eat fruit from the trees,

Only from the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God said, do not eat it or touch it,

In Eve’s answer, attention is drawn to her insufficiently precise formulation of the divine commandment (cf.), namely, the addition of the words to it: "and don't touch them". Many commentators see this as a reproach to God from Eve for the excessive severity and difficulty of His commandments and dull dissatisfaction with this.

so that you don't die.

Eve makes the random and external motive for keeping the commandment () here the main and even the only one. “From this we can guess,” Filaret rightly notes, “that the thought of the severity of the commandment and the fear of death was already beginning to overshadow in her the pure feeling of love and reverence for God the Lawgiver.”

. And the serpent said to the woman: No, you will not die,

Rightly discerning from Eve’s answer that in obedience to God she is restrained not so much by internal and moral motives as by a purely external feeling of fear of, the devil now tells a pure lie: “no, you will not die,” i.e. your fears of losing your life, based on divine threat, are completely unfounded and in vain.

. but God knows that on the day that you eat of them,

and you will be like gods

In the Hebrew text the last word is expressed by the term - Elohim(Elohim), which is one of the common names for God. But since, according to its philological composition, this is a plural form and actually means “forces”, “powers”, “authorities”, then LXX translated it literally, i.e. in the plural “gods”. However, it would be more correct to retain the usual biblical usage, that is, to translate the word “God”; for, firstly, the first people did not yet know other gods except the one true God, and secondly, only with such a translation is the opposition between God and people that is given in the text maintained (“God knew” that you would like gods). A hint of this daring desire to equal God in knowledge is also given to us by some other passages of Holy Scripture ().

knowing good and evil:

– here, just as before (), are taken in the sense of universal knowledge, as if its extreme pole.

The Fall of the Forefathers.

. And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes and desirable because it gave knowledge;

When the devil managed not only to destroy the fear of death in Eve, but also to awaken in her ambitious thoughts of broad knowledge and high power (like the gods), then in her soul, strictly speaking, the process of mental fall had already taken place; All that remained was for this sinful mood to be revealed outside, to be expressed in a criminal act. Here the immediate impression from the forbidden tree itself came to the aid of the tempter, which had an irritating effect on all her senses. In this last act of Eve’s fall, so picturesquely and deeply psychologically depicted in the Bible, all those three main types of sin are thoroughly found, which the Apostle John () distinguishes as the lust of the flesh (good for food), the lust of hair (pleasant to the eyes) and worldly pride (coveted because it gives knowledge).

and she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave it to her husband,

Seduced by the seductive speech of the devil and completely clouded by sensual irritation from the tree, Eve picks the forbidden fruit and eats from it (). Having fallen herself, she hastens to involve her husband in her act, doing this, according to most interpreters, without any particular malicious intent, since the poison of sin has not yet had time to penetrate her soul and poison the peace of conscience.

and he ate.

If Eve in the fall was, to some extent, excused by her comparative natural weakness, an exaggerated-formal and purely external idea of ​​the commandment, and finally, a direct sensory impression from the tree, then Adam, who received from God himself a formidable commandment and experienced so many manifestations divine love, did not have any circumstances mitigating his guilt, so his is a purely spiritual crime and more serious than Eve’s sin (; ; ).

Conviction of them by God.

. And the eyes of both of them were opened,

Thus, the tempter’s prediction came true, but instead of a feeling of contentment and joy, the fall produced only tangible sorrow and anxiety.

and they realized that they were naked,

Since previously nakedness served as a synonym for childish innocence and the purity of the first people (), now the painful sensation of it has become a victorious sign of gross sensuality and sin (; ). “The external eye,” in the thoughtful expression of Origen, “opened after the spiritual one closed.”

and they sewed together fig leaves and made aprons for themselves.

This, according to the Bible, was the first clothing of mankind; and this is in complete agreement both with the universal tradition of antiquity and with the history of human culture.

Obviously, here we are talking about one of those epiphanies that characterize the primitive era - a time of special closeness and direct relations between God and man. As for the very nature of this theophany, then, judging by the description, it had an accessible to external senses, therefore, a concrete character, which is also confirmed by the entire subsequent context. Finally, other expressions of the Bible similar to this confirm us (; ; ; ; ; etc.).

during the cool of the day;

or, according to a translation closer to the Hebrew text, “in the wind, in the evening of the day.” Some see here an indication of the time of theophany - namely, the evening coolness of the day, others - of its image (), i.e., of the Lord’s loving readiness to forgive the fallen ancestors in the event of their sincere repentance.

. The woman said: The serpent deceived me, and I ate.

The wife’s answer, although it does not deny the very fact of breaking the commandment, also places responsibility for it and transfers it to someone else. This self-justification of fallen ancestors is a very characteristic feature of all stubborn sinners, indicating their moral coarsening. The very fact of the seduction of a wife by the serpent is verified very easily in the Holy Scriptures (;).

Curse of the serpent.

. And the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the cattle and above all the beasts of the field;

Since in the person of the serpent-tempter two separate beings were united, as we saw - the evil spirit and the natural serpent, then all this simultaneously applies to both of them: to the serpent, as a visible instrument - directly, to the devil, as his invisible agent , – indirectly and by analogy. In particular, the curse of the natural serpent, preferential in comparison with the rest of creation, which also underwent the work of decay (), is, as it were, fair retribution for its former superiority over it ().

on your belly you will go, and you will eat dust all the days of your life;

According to the majority of authoritative interpreters, the crawling of the serpent on its belly was not some new miracle, but was a natural property; but before this property did not have any special meaning, now it becomes a symbol of humiliation and contempt (;) due to a feeling of disgust towards its bearer. The subsequent words of the text - about eating the dust of the earth - contain essentially the same idea: they give a figurative expression of the same idea about the reptile of the serpent, since it inevitably leads to the inhalation of earthly dust and contact with its various impurities. When applied to the devil, this last metaphor indicates the humiliation of Satan, who has already been cast down from heaven and thereby, as it were, doomed to grovel on the earth, feeding here on human vices and atrocities, direct consequences of his own insidious suggestions.

The First Promise of the Messiah.

. and I will put enmity between you and your wife,

This section is of the greatest importance. It contains a prophecy that runs through the entire history of the world, right up to the very end of the world, and is fulfilled together on every page of the above-mentioned history. The deep enmity mentioned here is that internal opposition that exists between good and evil, light and darkness (;), - this enmity is reflected even in the sphere of higher spirits (). “The first wife in the world was the first to fall into the devil’s snare, but she was the first to shake his power over herself with her repentance (meaning repentance for her entire subsequent life outside of paradise)” (Vissarion).

Many Church Fathers (Justin, Irenaeus, Cyprian, John Chrysostom, Jerome, etc.), based on various places of Holy Scripture, attribute this instruction not so much to Eve, but to that great wife who, more than all other wives, personified in herself “ enmity" to the kingdom of Satan, serving the mystery of the incarnation (; ; ; ; ). Instead of the disastrous friendship between the wife and the serpent, there is a saving enmity between them. Since the wife of the first Adam was the cause of the fall, the mother of the second Adam was the instrument of salvation.

and between your seed and her seed;

By the seed of the serpent, in the immediate, literal sense, we mean the offspring of the natural serpent, i.e., all future individuals of this kind, with which the offspring of the woman, i.e., all of humanity in general, wages a primordial and fierce war; but in a further, certain sense, by means of this analogy, the offspring of the serpent-tempter is symbolized, i.e., the children of the devil in spirit, who in the language of the Holy Scriptures are called either “brood of vipers” (), sometimes “tares in God’s field” (), or directly “sons of destruction, disobedience, the devil” (; ).

Among these children of the devil, the Holy Scripture especially singles out one “great adversary,” “the man of lawlessness and the son of perdition,” i.e., the Antichrist (). In complete parallel with this, the interpretation of the wife’s seed is established: by it, in the same way, first of all, we mean all her offspring - the entire human race; in the further sense determined by the context of speech, it means pious representatives of humanity who energetically fought the evil that reigned on earth; finally, from among this latter, the Holy Scripture gives grounds to single out one Great Descendant, born of a wife (;), as the victorious opponent of the Antichrist, the main culprit of the victory over the serpent.

it will bruise your head, and you will bruise its heel.

The very process and nature of the above enmity is clearly depicted in the artistic picture of the great struggle between the two warring parties, with a fatal outcome for one of them (a blow to the head) and relatively insignificant damage to the other (a sting in the heel). Quite close analogies to this image are found in other places of Holy Scripture (etc.). The mention here of a wife, a serpent and their offspring, a blow to the head and a sting to the heel - all these are nothing more than artistic images, but images full of deep meaning: they contain the idea of ​​​​the struggle between the kingdom of light, truth and goodness and the region of darkness, lies and all evil; this highly dramatic struggle, beginning from the moment of the fall of our ancestors, goes through the entire world history and will end only in the kingdom of glory with the complete triumph of good, when, according to the word of Scripture, God will be “all in all” (cf.). The conclusion of this struggle will be the spiritual duel that is spoken of here, when “He” (αὺτὸς - masculine pronoun), i.e. the Great Descendant, enters into battle with the serpent himself or his main fiend - the Antichrist and defeats the latter on head (; ).

It is curious that the tradition of paganism has preserved a fairly strong memory of this important fact and has even captured the very picture of this struggle on various artistic monuments. If this divine promise of victory over the devil serves as a living source of consolation and joy for us, then what ray of life-giving hope was it for the fallen ancestors, who first heard this most joyful news from the lips of God himself? Therefore, this promise is quite deservedly called the “first gospel,” that is, the first good news about the coming Deliverer from slavery to the devil.

Punishment for the ancestors.

. He said to his wife: I will multiply your sorrow in your pregnancy; in illness you will give birth to children;

These words pronounce the punishment for the wife, consisting in the fact that childbearing, the greatest act of a person’s earthly life, which was the subject of a special divine blessing (), now turns into a source of sorrow and suffering. However, these birth pangs are not something deliberately sent by God now as punishment to the wife, but constitute only a natural, legitimate consequence of the general flabbiness of the physical nature of fallen man, which, as a result of the fall, lost the normal balance of spiritual and physical forces and fell into illness and death.

and your desire for your husband,

These words express even more clearly the tragedy of the wife’s position: despite the fact that the wife will experience the greatest torment at birth, coupled with danger to her very life, she will not only not turn away from conjugal communication with her husband - this involuntary source of her suffering , but will look for it even more and even stronger than before.

and he will rule over you.

A new feature of marital relations between husband and wife, which established the fact of complete dominance of the former over the latter. If before the wife, as only her husband’s assistant, was placed in some dependence on him, now, after the first wife has proven her inability to use freedom, God, by a certain law, places her action under the supreme control of her husband. The best illustration of this is the entire history of the pre-Christian world, especially the ancient East with its humiliatingly slavish position of women. And only in Christianity - redemption religions- returned to wife again her lost in the fall rights (; etc.).

. And he said unto Adam, Because thou hast listened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it;

The verdict on the last culprit of the Fall is preceded by an explanation of his deep guilt, precisely by an indication of how, instead of having a sobering effect on his wife, he himself fell under her seductive influence.

cursed is the earth for your sake; you will eat from it in sorrow all the days of your life;

We find the best explanation of this fact in the Holy Scripture itself, namely in the prophet Isaiah, where we read: “The earth is defiled by those who live on it, for they have transgressed the laws, changed the statute, broken the everlasting covenant. Because of this, a curse devours the earth, and those who live on it are punished.” (

. She will bring forth thorns and thistles for you; and you will eat the grass of the field;

by the sweat of your face you will eat bread,

These two verses provide a more detailed explanation of the previous thought about the impoverishment of earthly fertility and the burden and unproductivity of human labor. With this divine verdict, a person’s entire earthly existence turns into a continuous feat of labor and is doomed to sorrow and suffering, as the Slavic text expresses this much more clearly: “bear it in sorrow all the days of your life”() (cf. ; ; etc.).

until you return to the ground from which you were taken, for dust you are, and to dust you will return.

The series of divine punishments ends with the determination of the fulfillment of the threat that was announced in case of violation of the commandment, i.e., with the proclamation of death. This law of destruction and death, as can be seen from this text, as well as from a number of biblical parallels (

Until now, as can be seen from Scripture, she did not have her own name, and she was designated only in terms of her relationship to her husband by the word “wife.” The name given to her now is Hebrew: Havva, means “life”, or, in fact, “producer of life” (ζωογόνος - Symmachus). In the fact that even at the very moment of the divine sentence of death Adam did not doubt the immutability of the divine promise of the wife (and her Seed) as the restorer of life (“Eve”), the Church Fathers rightly see evidence of the conscious, living and ardent faith of the fallen first parents into the promised Redeemer (Messiah).

First clothes.

. And the Lord God made skins for his wife and clothed them.

In this short biblical note, according to the best exegetes, a tacit indication is given of the divine establishment of the institution of sacrifice, which perfectly explains the connection of the context, through the assumption of which the very connection of the text is restored: as in the previous verse, naming the first wife her own name was closely related to the messianic idea, so the slaughter of sacrificial animals symbolized the same idea; The Lord instructed man to use the skins of these sacrificial animals as clothing. This, according to the Bible, as well as the cultural history of mankind, is the second stage of development in the gradation of human clothing.

Expulsion of the fallen ancestors from paradise

. And the Lord God said: Behold, Adam has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he stretch out his hand, and also take from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.

It would be too rude and unworthy of God to see in these His words only one simple irony over the unfortunate fallen ancestors. Therefore, those who see in them a strong antithesis to one of the earlier verses of this narrative, which spoke of the tempter’s flattering promise to give people equality with God (), are more right. “Because,” notes blessed Theodoret, “the devil says: "You will be like gods, knowing good and evil" If the one who transgresses the commandment is sentenced to death, then the God of all spoke this as a reproach, showing the falsity of the devil’s promise.” Thus, if there is any irony here, it is in the facts themselves, not in the words.

. And the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he had been taken.

The conclusion of the entire history of paradise is the fact of the expulsion of the fallen ancestors from paradise, with the main purpose of depriving them of the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of the tree of life.

And he drove out Adam, and placed Cherubim and a flaming sword reversing in the east of the Garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life.

In order to completely block people's access to paradise, God places one of the celestials - the "cherubim" - as a guard at the entrance to paradise, and in addition, sends a special heavenly fire that came out of the bowels of the earth and sparkled like a shiny blade on a rotating sword.