The Promised Redeemer!

God promised a redeemer to Adam and Eve even before He cast them out of the Garden of Eden. After the Creator confronted our first parents with their sins, He spoke to Satan, who appeared in the form of the serpent. He told him, “… 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” (Genesis 3:15).

What is the meaning of this prophecy, and what does it have to do with the redemption of humanity?

As Walter Kaiser Jr. writes in his book The Messiah in the Old Testament : “Genesis 3:15 has commonly been called the protoevangelium (the ‘first gospel’) because it was the original proclamation of the promise of God’s plan for the whole world … The ‘seed/offering’ mentioned in this verse became the root which the tree of the OT [Old Testament] promise of a Messiah grew. This, then, was the ‘mother prophecy’ that gave birth to all the rest of the [messianic] promises” (1995, p. 38).

In this great prophecy, “woman” can refer to Eve, the mother of all living, who was present in the garden. “Woman” in prophecy can also symbolize Israel—the physical nation or the spiritual Israel, the Church of God (Revelation 12:1; Revelation 12:6; Revelation 12:13; compare Genesis 37:9-10).

In this particular prophecy, then, we should consider that through the woman Eve, the mother of all living, will come the “woman” Israel. Revelation 12 pictures a child being born of the woman Israel. The nation gives birth to this child through an actual woman. Thus we have here also a picture of Mary, the mother of Jesus: “… A woman … being with child … cried out in labor and in pain to give birth … And the dragon [Satan] stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born” (Revelation 12:1-4).

With this background in mind, we can see the prophecy becoming clearer. The Seed of woman (Christ) bruises the head of Satan by eventually nullifying his influence (Romans 16:20). In the meantime, however, the devil wages war against Jesus.

Satan attempted to “devour” the woman’s child by influencing Herod to order the murder of all male children age 2 and younger in Bethlehem, and Satan eventually instigated Jesus’ crucifixion.

However, Satan’s scheme backfired, for the death of the Son of God provided mankind with a redeemer.