3:15
“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.”
The chapter at a glance
- 1–5The serpent’s questionsDoubt about God’s Word, then denial of it
- 6–7The fallThey take, eat, and know their nakedness
- 8–13“Where are you?”God seeks; the guilty hide and blame
- 14–15The serpent cursedThe first promise of the gospel
- 16–19Pain, toil, and dustThe woman and the man under the curse
- 20–21Eve and the garmentsFaith in the promise; God covers them
- 22–24Driven from the gardenThe way to the tree of life is guarded
The chapter in brief
The serpent, more crafty than any other beast, asks the woman, “Did God actually say, ’You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” She answers that only the tree in the midst of the garden is forbidden, on pain of death. The serpent contradicts God outright, “You will not surely die,” and says God is keeping something back: their eyes will be opened and they will be like God. The woman sees that the tree is good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise; she eats, and gives to her husband who is with her, and he eats. Their eyes are opened, they know they are naked, and they sew fig leaves. When they hear the LORD God walking in the garden, they hide, and He calls, “Where are you?” The man blames the woman and God who gave her; the woman blames the serpent. God curses the serpent and promises enmity between its offspring and the woman’s, until her offspring bruises its head. He announces to the woman pain in childbearing and a marriage marked by sin, and to the man a cursed ground, sweat and toil, and a return to dust. The man names his wife Eve, the mother of all living. God clothes them with garments of skins, sends them out of the garden, and sets cherubim with a flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life.
This is the chapter that explains the world we live in. Sin did not come from God’s good creation but from a creature’s distrust of God’s Word and a reach for what God had forbidden, and with sin came shame, fear, blame, pain, and death. Yet the first words of judgment carry the first word of the gospel. Before God speaks a sentence to the man or the woman, He tells the serpent that a son of the woman will crush its head. The New Testament names the serpent as “the devil and Satan” (Revelation 12:9) and the woman’s offspring as the Son “born of woman” (Galatians 4:4), who through death destroyed “the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). God’s coverings for the guilty, and the way to the tree of life barred and later reopened, run straight to the cross.
Points for discussion
vv. 1–5
The serpent’s questions
Notice what the serpent does with God’s Word. First he twists it: God had said “You may surely eat of every tree” except one (2:16), and the serpent asks whether God forbade them “any tree.” Then he denies it: “You will not surely die.” Then he slanders God’s motive: God knows you will be like Him, and He is keeping it from you. The lie is not mainly about fruit; it is about God, that He is stingy and cannot be trusted. Many readers notice that the serpent and the woman speak only of “God,” never using the covenant name “the LORD God” the narrator has used since 2:4, as though God were being discussed at a distance rather than trusted as near. The woman’s reply adds “neither shall you touch it,” which God had not said; it is often read as a sign that the command was already becoming a burden in her mind, though the text does not tell us how she learned it. Jesus says the devil “was a murderer from the beginning” and “the father of lies” (John 8:44). His method has not changed.
For discussion
Where do the same three moves (twist, deny, slander God’s goodness) show up in the temptations we face? Compare Matthew 4:1-11, where Jesus answers each with Scripture.
vv. 6–7
The fall
The woman looks at the tree three ways: good for food, a delight to the eyes, desirable to make one wise. Many readers hear an echo in “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life” (1 John 2:16). Then the sentence moves quickly: she took, she ate, she gave, he ate. Her husband was “with her.” He was there, silent, and he ate. That is why Scripture lays the fall chiefly at Adam’s door: “sin came into the world through one man” (Romans 5:12), and “in Adam all die” (1 Corinthians 15:22). Paul notes that the woman was deceived (1 Timothy 2:14; 2 Corinthians 11:3); Adam sinned with open eyes, as the covenant head of the race. Their eyes are opened, as the serpent promised, but what they see is their own nakedness. The knowledge they grasped is the knowledge of guilt, and fig leaves are the first attempt to cover sin with something we make ourselves.
vv. 6–7
Adam and Eve, real and the first
Some faithful believers read these chapters differently: as a figurative telling of a real fall, or with Adam and Eve as a historical pair chosen to represent a wider, older humanity. We name those views with respect. This commentary holds that Adam and Eve were real people, the first man and woman, made by God, and that they really fell, because we believe it most faithfully reflects the Word. Scripture treats Adam as history. Genesis 5 runs a genealogy from him with his years, “all the days that Adam lived were 930 years” (5:5), and Luke traces Jesus back to “the son of Adam, the son of God” (Luke 3:38). The gospel rests on it. Paul’s argument in Romans 5:12-19 needs a real man whose one act of disobedience made the many sinners, as the one man Christ’s obedience makes the many righteous (Romans 5:19). If there was no first Adam, Paul’s account of the last Adam loses its footing (1 Corinthians 15:21-22, 45). The Westminster Confession summarizes the result: the guilt of that first sin was counted to all Adam’s descendants, and a corrupted nature passed to them (6.3).
vv. 8–13
“Where are you?”
God comes walking, and the guilty hide among the trees God planted. His first words are a question, not a verdict: “Where are you?” God knows where Adam is. The question is grace, calling the sinner out of hiding to speak. What follows is the first family argument. The man blames “the woman whom you gave to be with me,” which blames God as well; the woman blames the serpent. Neither says, “I did it.” Sin breaks every relationship at once: with God (they hide), with each other (they blame), within themselves (they are afraid and ashamed). The gospel reverses each step, beginning with confession: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:9).
vv. 14–15
The first gospel
God questions the man and the woman, but He does not question the serpent. He curses it. Then comes verse 15, which many have called the first gospel. There will be enmity between the serpent and the woman, and between their offspring, and at last “he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” The offspring is a whole line, yet the verse narrows to one, “he,” who strikes the deadly blow and is wounded in striking it. Genesis follows that offspring through Seth, Noah, Shem, Abraham, and Judah, and the New Testament names Him. God sent His Son, “born of woman” (Galatians 4:4); John writes, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8); He did it through death (Hebrews 2:14), and “the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Romans 16:20). Many readers see the bruised heel as the cross, a real wound but not a final one, and the crushed head as His victory there. The promise came first, before any word of judgment to the man or the woman. Grace had the first word.
For discussion
Why would God speak the promise of a Savior to the serpent, in the hearing of Adam and Eve, rather than to them directly? Read Colossians 2:15.
vv. 16–19
Pain, toil, and dust
The judgments fall on the very places each was made to flourish: the woman in bearing children and in marriage, the man in his work with the ground. “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (v. 16) is read in two main ways, and readers with earlier printings of the ESV will find “contrary to your husband” there, while the current ESV notes “against” as a possible rendering. Some take the desire as longing and dependence, which will be met with domination. Others, comparing 4:7, where sin’s “desire is for you, and you must rule over it,” take it as a desire to master, met with harsh rule. Either way, the verse describes what sin does to marriage, not what God commands. Headship belongs to marriage as God made it in chapter 2; domination belongs to the curse, and Christ’s headship is the opposite of it, self-giving love (Ephesians 5:25). This verse is never a warrant for harshness or abuse, and no one is commanded to remain in danger. For the man, the ground is cursed, work becomes toil, and the sentence ends, “to dust you shall return.” Death enters, as God warned, and creation itself was “subjected to futility” (Romans 8:20). Many readers note that Jesus wore a crown of thorns (John 19:2), and the last enemy, death, will be destroyed (1 Corinthians 15:26).
vv. 20–21
Eve, and garments of skins
Right after hearing “to dust you shall return,” Adam names his wife Eve, “because she was the mother of all living.” Many readers see faith in the promise of verse 15: under a sentence of death, he names life. Then God Himself makes “garments of skins” and clothes them. Their fig leaves were their own covering; these are God’s. The text says no more, but it is hard to miss that the covering cost a life, and many readers see here the first shadow of sacrifice. Scripture later teaches that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22), and that God clothes sinners in a righteousness not their own (Isaiah 61:10; Philippians 3:9).
vv. 22–24
Driven out, and the way back
God says, “lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever” (v. 22), and the sentence breaks off; and God acts. Being sent out is judgment, but it is also mercy: to live forever in a fallen state would be no gift. The cherubim with a flaming sword guard the way to the tree. Later, cherubim are woven into the curtain that barred the way into the Most Holy Place (Exodus 26:31), and when Christ died that curtain was torn in two (Matthew 27:51), so that we enter “by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh” (Hebrews 10:20). The tree of life reappears in the last chapter of the Bible, open to those who wash their robes (Revelation 22:2, 14). What Adam lost, Christ regains, and more.
Threads across the chapter
God’s Word trusted or doubted. The serpent’s twist of God’s command (vv. 1-5) leads to the fall (v. 6), and God’s Word of promise (v. 15) is the only way out of it.
Eyes opened. The promise “your eyes will be opened” (v. 5) comes true as shame (v. 7), and the delight of the eyes (v. 6) ends in hiding from God’s sight (v. 8).
Coverings. Fig leaves they make (v. 7), trees they hide among (v. 8), and garments of skins God makes (v. 21).
Curse and promise. The curses on the serpent and the ground (vv. 14, 17) are spoken alongside the promise of the woman’s offspring (v. 15) and the name Eve (v. 20).
Key words
- 3:1
- עָרוּם arum“Crafty”; a play on arummim, “naked,” in 2:25: the naked couple meet the crafty serpent
- 3:15
- זֶרַע zera“Offspring,” literally “seed”; both a line of descendants and one descendant, as Paul reads the promise to Abraham (Galatians 3:16)
- 3:16
- תְּשׁוּקָה teshuqah“Desire”; the same word used of sin’s desire for Cain in 4:7, which shapes the readings of verse 16
Cross-references
- Romans 5:12-19Sin and death through one man, righteousness and life through one man
- 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, 45In Adam all die, in Christ all made alive; the last Adam
- Galatians 4:4God sent His Son, born of woman
- Romans 16:20The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet
- Hebrews 2:14Through death He destroyed the one who has the power of death
- Revelation 12:9The ancient serpent called the devil and Satan
- 2 Corinthians 11:3The serpent deceived Eve by his cunning
- Revelation 22:1-5, 14The tree of life restored, and nothing accursed any longer
- 1
Why does God speak to the serpent first, and why does the first promise of a Savior come before any judgment on the man and the woman?
- 2
The serpent’s lie was that God is holding out on us. Where do we believe that lie today, and what answers it?
- 3
Adam blamed Eve and God; Eve blamed the serpent. What does honest confession look like in a family or a church, and why is it so hard?
- 4
How does Paul’s argument in Romans 5 depend on Adam being a real man, and what is at stake for the gospel if he was not?
- 5
Where in the rest of Scripture do you see the promise of verse 15 carried forward, and where is it finally kept?
My notes
Saved to your account, so they are on every device you sign in on, and private unless you specifically share them with another.
A different version of this note was saved in this browser before notes moved to accounts. Your account’s copy is above and was left alone; copy anything worth keeping out of this one, then let it go.
Notes are kept with your account rather than in this browser, so what you write here is still there on your phone, on another machine, and after you clear your history. Signing in takes an email address and one click, there is no password to remember.
Saved in this browser before notes moved to accounts. Sign in and it will be carried up to your account; it stays here until then.