XI. CONCLUSION

The interpretation of Gen 3:15 throughout history has confronted three basic issues: (1) whether the statement is a threat or a promise—a threat to the serpent or a promise to mankind or to Eve; (2) whether the passage is to be interpreted literally or allegorically; and, assuming some sort of figurative interpretation, (3) whether the expression "her seed" is to be interpreted as including all mankind, as including mankind with reference also to Christ as the prime representative, or as uniquely predictive of the virgin birth of Jesus. These issues are to some extent intertwined. The third assumes that the passage is a promise and that the serpent is to be understood as the devil.

To say that the passage is messianic does not necessarily imply that it is virgin-birth messianic. This paper has attempted to distinguish between these writers who give special attention to "her seed" from the mass of writers who parallel Eve and Mary and those writers who speak in general terms of Christ's victory over Satan. Its thesis is that what should have been first considered—whether the feminine possessive pronominal suffix attached to zera' is a unique construction—has been ignored by exegetes. That being true, the passage has been made to say what should have never been attached to it. Making the woman to be the addressee had its influence in convincing interpreters that the statement was a promise rather than being a part of the curse on the serpent. Once the pronoun ipsa got into the Latin translation, and once "her seed" was elaborated into the terminology "woman's seed" and what that term suggested, there was really no way to exegete the passage apart from the idea of its predicting the virgin birth. A look at texts about Hagar and Rebekah in Genesis could have safeguarded interpreters from the whole misguided exegetical effort.