Hope through the Curse
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2019 · 13 January 2019
Genesis 1 and 2 describe the creation account. Genesis 1 gives us the six days of creation, and Genesis 2 gives us the details about the creation that God did on the sixth day, creating man and the animals. And when that is all finished, it is good. Everything in God’s created world was good at that point. But in Genesis 3, everything becomes bad, terminally bad and historically bad.
And all human beings who will live on this earth are affected by what happened in Genesis 3. It is the explanation of why things in this world are the way they are, why there is so much evil; why there is so much sin; why there is so much corruption; why there is disease, deformity, and death; why there is conflict, hatred, war; and why there are disasters of all kinds.
The serpent, who was the devil himself, deceived Eve by telling her that God lied to her, that she was not going to die if she did not obey God’s word. The serpent said that by eating the forbidden fruit she was going to become like God knowing what is evil and what is good. Then when Eve saw that the fruit was desirable, she took it and ate it. And she also gave it to Adam who ate it also.
And suddenly their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together to make themselves loin coverings. When they heard the Lord God they hid themselves. Then God wanted them to be both accountable for their actions. And instead of acknowledging their sin, they blamed the serpent and each other and ultimately God Himself. This showed their fallen state.
Now see what the Lord God says in Genesis 3:14-15, “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. 15 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.”
And to the woman He said in Genesis 3:16, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing, in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.’” This is just a portion of the Fall in Genesis 3. Suffice it to say that Adam and Eve became doubters of God. They fell and with them the whole human race fell.
Satan, who led that temptation, had by this time fallen himself out of heaven. He was the cherub; the heavenly choir director; he was one of the holy angels who desired to be equal to God, according to Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. And God cast him out of heaven, along with a third of the angels, according to Revelation 12, and they now are the demon forces that are against God and against men.
When God cast Satan out, he is sent to earth. And in this passage, he is the agent that tempted Eve that caused the Fall of the entire human race. 1 Corinthians 15:22 says, “For as in Adam all die.” Here, having caused this sin, Satan will be cursed a second time. He was cursed first when he was thrown out of heaven, and now he is to be cursed and judged a second time in Genesis 3:14-15.
Pay attention to the second curse that God pronounces on Satan. This is also the first expression of gospel hope, salvation hope, deliverance from sin and Satan. So embedded in this curse is the hope of mankind. It is the record of Moses, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, for the reason our world is so full of evil. Everything from the behavior of man to devastating hurricanes is bad and evil.
We have all been plunged into a spiritual death and also into a physical death, from the moment we are born we begin to die. We have no hope of life if all we have is the Fall. And yet here in Genesis 3, we find in the middle of the curse the promise of the Savior, who will break the curse by crushing Satan. The rest of the Bible is the record of God’s grace and mercy to sinners.
Yet many in the world reject it and only a remnant of people receive it. What we have here is essentially the source of human depravity. It is the condition of the spiritual soul in which there is no fellowship with God. It is the condition of the human soul in which it will not acknowledge the greatness of sin and concerns itself only with the consequences of sin, not the sin itself.
Paradise was lost not only for Adam and Eve, but for everyone else. The loss of blessing defines the world; corruption defines the human race. The whole race, people in the past, the present, and yet to come in the future are born in this condition because of what Adam did. God reacts to this by giving divine justice which results in a perfect sentence. There are consequences to sin; whatever you sow, you reap.
If you lie, there are consequences to your lying. If you are an alcoholic, there are built-in consequences. If you take drugs, that kind of behavior has its own consequences. If you are characterized by hostility and anger, there are consequences. If you engage in homosexuality, sexual sin, if you kill people, whatever it might be, built-in to those sins are cause and effect results.
But there is a far greater divine judgment on top of these natural consequences. There is a natural built-in sequence we could even call wrath. But what we need to understand is there is judgement from God on sin. And here God renders an appropriate and just sentence, on the serpent in Genesis 3: 14-15, on the man in verse 17, and on the woman in verse 16.
Man’s sin does not threaten nor diminish God’s sovereignty. He always rules. And here He demonstrates his sovereignty through these curses. Let us look at the curses that are related to the serpent and to Satan in verses 14 and 15, because in these curses we find the first presentation of the gospel or good news. God provides in the curse itself the gospel, because God is by nature a Savior.
So let’s look at the curse directed at Satan. Genesis 3:14-15, “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. 15 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.”
Snakes don’t talk. Satan, who is a spiritual being, embodied himself in this snake and talked through that snake. And so God here curses the snake who is the physical, earthly agent of the satanic temptation. He says, because you have been the instrument of Satan to bring about temptation and sin, you will eat dust all the days of your life. And God says, from now on, “on your belly you will go.”
Which indicates that if that’s a part of the curse, that wasn’t true prior. So after the curse, whatever was attractive about the snake was changed. The curse comes on the serpent. And I want you to understand why God is doing this. “Cursed are you more than all cattle, more than every beast of the field.” Let me explain the phrase “more than.”
In the Hebrew language it is not a comparative, it’s a selective curse. Of all the beasts--only you are cursed. Cattle refers to domestic animals. The beasts refer to wild animals. So of all the animals, only you are cursed. Of course--all animals: fish, birds and animals on the ground suffered the effects of the Fall. Only the snake was selected to be cursed, and only on the snake was the curse pronounced.
Why would God make the serpent slither and eat dust? Because the serpent then becomes a permanent symbol of the degradation of Satan. Remember that the one who was once the anointed cherub, the one who was Lucifer of the morning has been so debased and so degraded that he is slithering on the ground and eating dirt, symbolically. The serpent has become a constant picture of the curse of Satan.
Leviticus 11:42 says, “Whatever goes on its belly, you shall not eat for they are detestable.” Snakes were unclean animals. Snakes of all animals are the most reviled, the most hated and the most scorned. And again, in rabbinic teaching, the rabbis make much of the idea that this animal must have once been upright and a beautiful part of God’s creation, as was Satan before he was sent to the world.
To show how unwavering God is, let us look at this illustration. In Isaiah we have a glimpse of the millennial kingdom. Isaiah 65:25 says, “The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent's food.” Snakes will never get out of the dirt, not even in the millennial kingdom. Permanent symbols of the degradation of Satan.
Then God moves from the animal to Satan, verse 15, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” This has been called for centuries the proto-evangelium. Proto means the prototype--the first evangelium, the first gospel. That is the only gospel that the ancient world had.
God says to Satan, “If you think you have won the entire human race, you are wrong. There will come enmity from humanity toward you. You will not exercise complete control.” God denies Satan at the very moment when he assumed he had triumphed. God will enable man in his sinful fallen condition, to be so totally transformed that he will hate the serpent and love God.
I know the world loves Satan and hates God. They might not say it that way, but that’s the truth. But God has redeemed out of the human race, starting from that very incident in the garden until the end of the age, a humanity that has been so transformed such that they actually hate Satan and love God. That’s the enmity that has been placed between you, Satan, and the woman and her seed.
For this to happen, there has to be a radical transformation of the human heart. It is so significant that the New Testament speaks of it as the new birth. It is so profound that the prophets, Ezekiel and Jeremiah, speak of it as having a new heart. To put it another way, the old Adam has to die and a new Adam has to be born. God will create new men and new women who hate Satan and love God.
Here is the first suggestion of regeneration, of transformation, of salvation. So here the gospel, good news, makes its initial entrance into human history, inside a curse on Satan. The gospel is first given then not in a promise, but in a curse. Not in an act of kindness, but in an act of judgment. This was the only promise of Satan’s defeat--of sinners being transformed to love God and hate Satan.
This is the promise of a Savior. This is promised salvation for Eve. But it will go beyond her. In verse 20, she is named Eve because she was the mother of all mankind. Out of Eve will come a race of redeemed humanity that will also be hating Satan. Unbelievers are your seed, Satan. Believers are her seed. Your seed, Satan, are all the haters of God; her seed are all the transformed who love God.
Verse 15, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” But verse 15 mentions ‘her seed.’ And then the pronoun “he’ shall bruise your head,” This refers to an individual, singular pronoun--“he.” Her seed is a special man. Here you have this most interesting identification as her seed being “he.”
God is speaking here of the seed of a woman who will be a Man. This is the only place in the Bible where it talks about a seed of a woman. It talks about the seed of men, because seed is in the man, not in the woman. But here was Jesus born without a human father, and the seed was in the woman. And that is the virgin-born Christ, the Son of God. The only human who was not the result of the seed of a man.
Clearly that is the testimony of Matthew. Clearly that is the testimony of Galatians 4:4, “born of a woman,” And Isaiah 7:14, born of a virgin. There will come one Man who comes from the seed of a woman who will be your destroyer. This points to the Lord Jesus Christ. Satan understood this prophecy; and that is why Satan has been trying to destroy the line of the Messiah.
So it says in verse 15, “He shall crush you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.” He will literally crush the head of Satan. The heel of the seed of the woman will be bruised, that’s an attack from the rear, with less than permanent damage. Satan was engaged in bruising the Son of God. Isaiah says He was bruised for our iniquities, and in Luke 22: 53 Jesus said that “this is the hour of the power of darkness.”
The cross was a blow on His heel, allowed for the redemption of all these sinners who love God and hate Satan. But the One whose heel was being bruised would, at the same time, crush the head of Satan. That’s an attack from the front, dealing a deadly, crushing blow to the head of Satan by providing the atonement that paid in full for the sins of all the people whom God would regenerate.
Before God pronounces judgment on them, hope, mercy, grace, salvation and good news was given. Before God sends them out of the garden and forbids them to ever come back, before punishment is placed on their backs, hope is placed in their hearts. God is by nature a gracious, merciful, compassionate, forgiving God, and so He plants hope in the midst of the curse.
What an incredible place to begin to see the glory of Christ in the Old Testament. He is the seed of the woman, the Man who crushed Satan’s head. And because of that, at the end of the book of Romans, Paul says, “Satan has also been placed under your feet.” Because He conquered Him, we in Christ will conquer as well. What an incredible God we have, praise Him always! Let’s pray.