Commentary on Genesis, Vol. 1: Luther on the Creation

by Martin Luther

This hatred and this fury of Satan are the effects produced on him, which the Lord here predicts, when he warns the serpent of the enmity which he had put between his seed and the Seed of the woman. For Satan primarily sought this Seed of the woman with hostile hatred, through all the peoples, families and lines throughout the whole world. When the promise was transferred to Abraham and restricted to his posterity, we see from history by what various means Satan attempted to hinder its fulfilment. And when this glorious promise was further transferred to the line of Judah and restricted to that tribe, we behold with what horrible calamities it was oppressed and agitated, until at length it seemed to be wholly subverted and eradicated. So that at the time of the birth of Christ poor Mary was living at a long distance from Jerusalem in the little and insignificant town of Nazareth, and Jerusalem itself was possessed and governed by wicked heathen. Wherefore most correctly and beautifully was this tribe of Judah compared to a dead and hopeless "stem" of Jesse. But as God cannot lie, this "root," so much decayed and despaired of, at length blossomed forth.

Satan however did not even then cease from his cruelty, hatred and enmity against the Seed of the woman. While he lay in the cradle Satan sought him out by the instrumentality of Herod. So that the new-born Christ was compelled to live among the Gentiles in Egypt. After this also, Satan adopted and tried all possible means to destroy him, until finding him and seizing him, he threw him into the hands of the Jews and nailed him to the cross. No! nor could his inexhaustible hatred be satisfied even then. He feared him even as he lay in the tomb, so desperate was the enmity which was "put" between him and the Son of God! Nay, even now, when Satan sees the Seed of the woman sitting at the right hand of God, and, according to the old proverb, "out of gun-shot," he vents his fury in every possible way against his Church and the poor helpless members of his body. Of all these sufferings and perils the clauses of the divine passage now before us were prophecies. From these same words nevertheless, in meditating upon which we ought to employ our whole souls, we derive a confidence in the Son of God, that he will bruise Satan utterly.

But to return to the text. This promise, as I have already said, is at the same time most clear and yet most obscure. For since God, as I have also observed, here uses the expression, "The seed of the woman" generally, he does it that he might cause all women alike to be suspected by Satan, and that he might thus rack the serpent with perpetual suspense and dread. The expression therefore is a wonderful synecdoche, "condensation of instruction." It bears a general reference to all individual women, and yet contains a direct reference to one individual woman only, to Mary and to her Seed, who was to become a mother without any intercourse with the male sex. For God, I repeat, thus willed all women to be suspected by Satan, while on the other hand he willed that a most sure hope should be left to the godly, which should lead them to expect this salvation from all parents until in the fullness of time the true mother should be revealed. As therefore the first clause of the passage, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman," refers to all women in general; so this second clause, "her Seed" refers, with a special individually, if I may so express myself, to that seed which should be born of Mary, of the tribe of Judah, who was espoused unto Joseph.

This text therefore contains that glorious promise which revived Adam and Eve and raised them again from death unto that life, which they had lost by their sin; though the life to which they were thus raised again was rather a life hoped for than a life possessed; as Paul also frequently speaks when he uses the language, "We die daily." For although we do not wish to call the life which we live here death, yet it is in truth nothing more or less than a continual living on to death. For as he who is infected with a pestilential and fatal disease begins to die from the moment of his infection; so from the moment this life of ours is infected by sin, it can no longer properly be called life on account of that sin and death, its sure punishment. For we begin to die even from our mother's womb.

But by baptism we are restored to the life of hope, or rather to the hope of life. For this is the true life, which we live, before God, in our renewed state. Before we come unto that life, we are in the midst of death. We are ever dying and rotting on the earth like other carcasses are; as if there were no life at all in us. But we who believe in Christ possess a hope that we shall be raised again at the last day unto the life eternal. It was in this manner also that Adam was raised again from his state of death by sin through this promise, thus spoken by the Lord. Not that he was raised to a perfect life; for he did not as yet regain that life which he had lost. But he conceived in his soul a hope of that perfect life, when he heard that the tyranny of Satan was thus to be bruised and destroyed.

Under the divine mind and promise, declared in this text therefore, is included redemption from the law, from sin and from death. And by the same text is set forth the plain and certain hope of resurrection from the dead, and of being called into another life after the present. For if the "head" of the serpent is to be destroyed, most certainly death is to be destroyed also; and if death is to be destroyed, with equal certainty that which deserveth death, namely, sin, is also to be abolished. And if sin is to be abolished, so also is the law; and not only so, but that obedience which was lost is to be restored. And as all these things are promised through this Seed of the woman, it is perfectly manifest, as a natural consequence, that human nature since the fall can neither take away sin by any powers of its own nor escape death, the just punishment of sin, nor regain the obedience to God, which it has lost by the sin of the fall. For all these things require a greater power, a mightier strength than is possessed by man.

Hence it was absolutely necessary that the Son of God should become a victim or sacrifice for us, that by the offering of himself he might accomplish all these things for us; that he might take away sin, swallow up death and restore unto us the obedience which we had lost. All these treasures therefore we do possess in Christ, but in hope. Thus Adam, and thus Eve, lived and conquered by this hope. And in the same manner all believers live and conquer, by the same hope, and will so live and conquer until the last day. Death is indeed a horrible and invincible tyrant; but the divine power thus makes that, which is in all things horrible, nothing; just as the same power of God made out of that which was nothing all things. For only behold Adam and Eve. They were filled with sins and with death. But as soon as they heard the divine promise concerning the Seed of the woman, which should bruise the serpent's "head," they were comforted by the same hope which comforts us, that death shall be destroyed, and sin shall be abolished, and that righteousness and life and peace shall be restored. In this hope did our first parents live and die, and on account of that hope they were truly holy and righteous.

In the same hope do we also live. And when we come to die, we hold fast this hope of eternal life for Christ's sake, which hope the Word always sets before us, while it commands us to trust in the merits of Christ. But in vain do we expect to attain unto that perfection in this life, that we should be altogether righteous, that we should love God perfectly and that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. We do indeed begin and make progress, but sin which is in our members ever wars against us and is ever present; so that it ever mars or altogether prevents this our obedience.

As therefore this life of ours, on account of the death within us and before us, may truly be called a death; so righteousness is altogether buried under our sins. It is in hope therefore alone that we hold fast life and righteousness, as things altogether hidden from our sight, but which will be revealed in their time. Meanwhile our life is a life in the midst of death; and yet, in the midst of this death, we hold fast the hope of life by the teaching, commanding and promising Spirit of God. This consolation is blessedly set forth in, Ps. 68:2, "He that is our God is the God of salvation; and unto God the Lord belong the issues from death." For we ascribe to our God the great glory that he not only helps us in this temporal life, as the devil sometimes stands by his worshippers, as is manifest from numberless examples among the heathen; but the glory which belongs to our God, is that "to the Lord our God belong the issues from death;" that he delivers from death those who are oppressed thereby on account of their sins and translates them into eternal life, Col. 1:13. And our God does this as Moses here teaches us by crushing the "head" of the serpent.

In this part of the divine history of Moses therefore we have Adam and Eve restored, not indeed perfectly into that life which they had lost, but into the hope of that life, by which hope they have escaped, not indeed the first taste of that death, but the whole eternal substance of it. That is, although their flesh was sentenced to suffer and was compelled to suffer a temporal or momentary taste of death, yet, on account of the promised Son of God, who should crush the head of the devil, they hoped for a resurrection of the flesh and a life eternal after the temporal death of the flesh, which hope we also have.