Tracing the Promise of Genesis 3:15

Considering the protoevangelium from Genesis 3:15-Matthew 2

“And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it.” –Revelation 12:4b

Revelation Chapter 12:4b offers us a picture covering the entire Old Testament. The woman who is pregnant, crying out in the agony of childbirth, represents the covenant people of God in the Old Testament. The child that she is pregnant with is the Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity incarnated in human flesh. He is the promised head-crushing dragon slaying seed of Genesis 3:15, our Lord and Savior who is to rule the nations with a rod of iron in fulfillment of the promise of Psalm 2.

The dragon that John sees is Satan himself. The dragon is “that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (Revelation 12:9). Here, he is seen, ever standing before the woman seeking to devour her child. This is the dragon’s primary goal; it is his driving ambition. There is nothing that motivates him more than stomping out the seed of the woman who is promised to bring about his ruin and the salvation of the elect of God. His desire is to ruin God’s plan and purpose to bring salvation to the nations through the child who is in the womb of this woman.

In considering Revelation 12, we must understand that the Bible is one narrative that tells one story. That story is the redemption of the elect of God through the Son of God, who is the promised seed of the woman. To understand Revelation 12, we must trace the narrative of the Old Testament into the New Testament.

God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden, where He had consistent and constant communion with them. God created them in his image to rule, exercise dominion, worship, and spread the knowledge of God through the cultural mandate to be fruitful and multiply. There was no sin to separate them from God. There was no enmity between them. There was communion and peace between God and man.

And God had given them his law. “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17). 

Deceived by the Serpent, the great Dragon of Revelation 12, our first parents, Adam and Eve, willfully transgressed the law of God; they ate of the forbidden fruit, declaring that they desired moral autonomy apart from God, thereby sinning against God and plunging the entirety of humanity into depravity and separation from God.

When this happens, God curses the serpent, the woman, and Adam. The woman will now experience multiplied pains in childbearing. Beyond that, the perfection of the relationship between man and woman is marred by their sin as God declares to her, “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.” (Genesis 3:16).

When God curses Adam, he declares to him that the relationship between humanity and creation is now marred. No longer will it be easy for man to exercise authority and dominion and control creation.

cursed is the ground because of you;
    in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
    and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
    you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
    for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
    and to dust you shall return. (Genesis 3:17b-19)

When God curses the serpent, he declares to him what is known as the protoevangelium—the first Gospel, as it is the first promise of the Gospel in the Scriptures. It is the promise of redemption and the plan of securing it. And we must notice that the Gospel is first preached to Satan because the Gospel is a proclamation of his defeat and destruction.

God says to the Serpent in Genesis 3:15—“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise (or crush) your head, and you shall bruise his heal.” In this sermon to Satan, God is preaching that the seed of the woman will defeat Satan and bring him to ruin, and the Messiah will suffer in the process as he victoriously secures the redemption of the elect of God.

This is the promise of the Gospel; this is the plan of Redemption. The entire Bible is the unfolding of the mystery of this promise. This promised seed of the woman is the Son that is being born in Revelation 12. This seed of Genesis 3:15 is the Son that Satan is striving to devour. And it is against this promised seed that Satan has been raging since the Garden. Everything that he does in the Old Testament is an attempt to stomp out the seed of this woman.

So then, in Genesis 4, Adam and Eve have two sons, Cain and Abel. This is Satan’s first attempt to destroy and devour the seed of the woman as Cain, the wicked son, rises up and slaughters Abel, the good son. Surely, at this point, early in the narrative, Satan must have felt as if he had some sort of victory. However, God’s plan is never thwarted by Satan’s schemes. For God has predestined for Seth to bring forth the promised seed of the woman—the Messiah.

So then, having failed to murder the seed, Satan resorts to Plan B, and he devises a plan to breed it out. As William Hendrickson notes, “He whispers into the ears of Seth’s sons that they must marry the daughters of Cain.” We read this in Genesis 6:2, “the sons of God (meaning the lineage of Seth) saw that the daughters of man (meaning the lineage of Cain) were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.” This is Satan’s plan to breed out the lineage of the seed of the woman, to annihilate the seed of promise. In order to protect this seed of promise, God executes his judgment and wrath upon mankind, sending the Great Flood and saving only Noah and seven others. It will be through the righteous Noah that God preserves the seed of the woman.

The dragon is unrelenting; he continues standing before the woman, ever waiting to devour the seed of promise. He now convinces man to reject the authority of God, refuse to spread the image of God across the face of the earth, and to establish the fame of their own name by building the Tower of Babel. God responds by visiting them and confusing all of their languages, which forces them to spread out over the face of the earth.

Now, the promise of the seed moves from Noah to Abraham and Sarah. Immediately upon this promise, a severe famine struck the land, and Abraham descended into Egypt (Genesis 12:10-20). This scene foreshadows the Exodus event, as one can easily see the parallels. When Abraham arrives in Egypt, he continues in utter passivity like his father Adam, refusing to protect his wife from the serpent, and tells Pharoah, “She’s my sister.” Pharoah seizes her with plans to have sex with her, but the Lord intervenes, striking Pharoah with plagues, protecting the womb of Sarah, and persevering the seed of the woman.

Now, humanly speaking, it seems as if this promise would never come to pass, for Abraham is old, and Sarah’s womb is barren. Abraham even goes into Hagar to have a son, but Ishmael is not to be the son of promise. For God had predestined that Sarah would miraculously have her womb opened, and she would bring forth Isaac, the son of promise. Abraham has this son, and then God calls Abraham to sacrifice this son on Mt. Moriah. Now, this scene is the working of God and not Satan, but as we are reading the bible, we are shocked by what we are reading here. The child of promise is finally born, and now, if he is killed, the promise will be broken. What would have happened to the promise if Abraham had been obedient? Well, he is obedient, and just as he is about to sacrifice his son—the Angel of the Lord intercedes and protects the lineage of Christ, and the angel affirms the Abrahamic Covenant through an oath. (Genesis 22)

Now, the promise of the seed moves to Isaac and Rebekah. She, too, is barren, but by God’s miraculous providence, gives birth to Jacob, and the promise of the seed continues through him. Jacob grows up to deceive his father and take the birthright that is rightfully Esau’s. Esau is furious and vows to kill Jacob, so Jacob flees to his mother’s homeland. After many years, he returns with his family and great wealth, and providentially, by God’s Grace, Esau does not kill Jacob. And so, the promise is saved yet again—even through barren wombs and murderous brothers, God protects the seed. (Genesis 25:19-33:20)

From Jacob, the promise continues through Judah. But there is trouble in the future. There will be a severe famine that will threaten the seed of the woman. How is it that God will govern creation to preserve Judah? In Genesis 37-50, we have this story. Joseph, the youngest of his brothers at this time, has a prophetic dream that all of his family will come to bow down before him. His brothers hate that he is clearly his father’s favorite (he is the firstborn of Rachel), and now they despise him because of this dream. So, they take him and sell him to Ishmaelites for 20 shekels of silver. The Ishmaelites sell him to the Egyptians, and he is taken into Potiphar’s house.

While in Potiphar’s house, he is a diligent and faithful worker and brings much success to Potiphar. He also draws the undesired sexual attraction of Potiphar’s wife. Even though he faithfully rejects her sexual advances, proclaiming that he does not want to sin against God or his master, she seizes an opportunity to falsely accuse him of trying to have sex with her. This lands him in prison.

In his father’s house, it was dreaming that landed him in Egypt; now, while in prison, it will be dreams that exalt him to the right hand of Pharaoh. First, he correctly interprets the chief cupbearer and chief baker's dreams. This eventually leads to him having the opportunity to interpret the dreams of Pharaoh. In interpreting the dreams of Pharoah, Joseph declares that there will be seven years of plenty and abundance followed by seven years of an extreme famine extending over the known world. Pharoah, appreciative of his ability to interpret his dreams, set Joseph in the second seat of power over all of Egypt to make preparations for the upcoming famine.

Joseph is successful. When the famine struck, Egypt was the only place in the known world to have food provisions. His family is nearly starving to death in the land of Canaan, so they travel to Egypt for food. God providentially fulfills Joseph's dream, causing his brothers to bow down to him. Through this process, Joseph is reconciled to his brothers and father, and he is able to establish them in the land of Goshen, where they prosper and survive the famine. Joseph tells his brothers, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20). God does all of this to persevere the promise of the seed of the woman who will come through the lineage of Judah.

In Genesis, God overcomes murderous and jealous brothers, pagan kings, barren wombs, and severe droughts to protect the promise of Genesis 3:15. He overcomes the assaults of the dragon.

As we turn the page into the book of Exodus, we immediately see that the dragon has not ceased his raging. Now, he will use the Serpent King, Pharaoh, to do his bidding. 

Israel has been living in the land of Goshen for nearly 400 years. Joseph has died, and Israel is keeping the cultural mandate and multiplying greatly. In those days, a new Pharaoh became king over Egypt, and he saw Israel as a threat to his kingdom, so he responded. To cause the Hebrews to cease producing children, Pharaoh first employed slavery as the tool of oppression and population control. When this backfires in the increased production of Hebrew children, he seeks to have the Hebrews kill themselves by forcing the Hebrew midwives to kill any Hebrew sons as soon as they are born. When the midwives refuse to murder their own people’s innocent infant sons and the Hebrew population continues to multiply greatly, Pharaoh responds, thirdly, with government-sanctioned mass male infanticide. In Exodus 1:22, Pharaoh commands all his people, “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.”

In Exodus 1, Pharoah is doing the work of his father, the devil—the dragon of Revelation 12. He is seeking to destroy and devour the son of the woman who will bring about Satan’s destruction. The Hebrews cry out to God, and he raises up Moses to deliver them. Through Moses, God will deliver Israel from their Egyptian oppression, redeem them to himself, destroy Egypt and their gods in a series of 10 plagues, and ultimately bring the Hebrews into the promised land under the leadership of Joshua, Moses’ successor. Again, God providentially protects the seed of the woman from the devouring attacks of the dragon.

As we trace through Judges, we see the unfortunate downward cycle of the people abandoning God, falling under oppression, crying out to God for deliverance, God raising up a warrior-judge to deliver them, and then their subsequent rejection of God yet again, until the final climatic statement at the end of Judges, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). During the days when the Judges ruled, there was a severe famine in the land (Ruth 1:1). God providentially orchestrates the events of this famine to bring a Moabite widow named Ruth to lay at the feet of Boaz, who serves as her kinsman redeemer and preserves the lineage of the seed of the woman through the most unlikely of sources. Recall the Moabites are the product of Lot’s drunken sexual intercourse with his firstborn daughter and are despised by the Hebrews, and yet God uses a Moabite widow to fend off the assaults of the dragon.

Moving on from the Judges, we finally enter into the time when Kings reign in Israel. The first king to reign in Israel was Saul, and his reign was a dismal failure. This should have been expected; he was a Benjaminite, after all. When the lot fell to the tribe of Benjamin in 1 Samuel 10:20, there should have been a collective gasp from the people. They should have immediately thought to themselves, “Surely we have errored in rejecting Samuel’s counsel.” The last time we read about the Benjaminites, they were becoming Sodomites at the end of Judges (Judges 19:22-21:24). After God rejected Saul for not placing the entirety of the Amalekites under the ban, God chose the youngest son of Jesse, who was from the tribe of Judah. Now things are falling in line, for Jacob prophesied that kings would come from the tribe of Judah (Genesis 49:10) and that Bejemanain would be a ravenous wolf dividing the spoil (Genesis 49:27).

God chose David to be king and had Samuel anoint him as king in 1 Samuel 16. Immediately, in 1 Samuel 17, David goes out to battle with giants. Will young David be defeated? Will the dragon finally be victorious in thwarting God's plan? No! Of course not! God grants David victory. “David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone, struck the Philistine and killed him” (1 Samuel 17:50). Once David kills Goliath, he takes the sword of Goliath, cuts his head off with Goliath’s own sword, and marches the head of Goliath to Jerusalem, and puts the Jebusites on notice that he’s coming to claim the mountain of God for the glory of God. Serving as a type of Christ, David is seen in the typological pattern of the head-crushing seed of the woman.

But David’s troubles are not over. There is another foe, a mightier one than even Goliath. It is King Saul who has the military might of a kingdom behind him. Knowing that God’s hand is upon David, Saul, doing the dragon’s bidding, seeks to kill David. But God will not have it. He protects David because he is protecting the promised seed of the woman. David ultimately flees from Saul twice. Saul then kills himself before he can kill David, and the dragon is not successful at this point in devouring the seed.

After the failure of Saul, the dragon strikes at David again, this time with his own son Absalom, and yet again, God protects his promise in Genesis 3:15 and protects David from the assaults of his own son.

As we trace through the 1^st and 2^nd Kings, we see the kingdom divide; the northern kingdom never recovers from the idolatrous bull-calf worship introduced by Jeroboam (1 Kings 12), and then, in an act of foolish political expediency, Jehoshaphat enters into a marriage alliance with Ahab (1 Kings 22, 2 Chronicles 18), giving his son Jehoram to marry Athaliah. Athaliah is the offspring of Ahab and Jezebel, so she’s essentially the offspring of Satan himself. This insane move by Jehoshaphat will introduce the North’s idolatry to the South and put them on a downward spiral that ends in exile to Babylon. Terrible decisions bring terrible consequences.

Now, Jehoram and Athaliah have a son whom they name Ahaziah, and he was a wicked king who walked in the way of the house of Ahab and did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.  That is to say, he was a God-rejecting idolator. As Jehu executes God’s judgment on the house of Ahab, killing his descendants, Ahaziah is killed by the bow of Jehu’s men (2 Kings 9).  

This brings us to 2 Kings 11, where the dragon who was surly behind Josaphat’s foolish alliance with Ahab pounces yet again. This time, through Athaliah, as she sees that her son is dead, she seizes the throne of Judah for herself. Like all despotic, tyrannical rulers, she seizes power and protects her position by killing every possible legal dynastic threat to the throne. The text tells us that “she arose and destroyed all the royal family” (2 Kings 11:1). The royal family spoken of in 2 Kings 11:1 is the entire family and dynastic lineage of King David. Anyone and everyone who could have made a legitimate claim to the Davidic throne was slaughtered in her wrath.

She is nearly successful; she kills every member of the household of David, except for one infant child, who, by the faithfulness of a single priest named Jehoidia, is saved from her wrath and hidden in a room in the temple for seven years. If Athaliah’s wrath had killed this child, the dragon would have finally been successful in stomping out the seed. But he lives, he’s hidden for seven years, and then ascends to the throne of the kingdom of Judah, and the seed of the woman, the lineage of Christ the Messiah, is preserved by the narrowest of margins. One infant named Joash was all that was left in the line of Christ. The dragon was so close, yet once again, he was unable to thwart God's plans.

As we trace through the rest of the 1st and 2nd Kings, because of the rampant wickedness and unrepentant idolatry in the land surely caused by the deceptions of the dragon, God sent the Assyrians to destroy the Northern Kingdom in 722 BC and then sent the Babylonians to destroy the Southern Kingdom in 586 BC. Due to their covenant infidelity, God executes the covenant curses, and exiles all of the Jews from the land.

While they’re exiled, weak, powerless, and under the authority and rule of pagan kings, the dragon seizes his opportunity again. He raises up a wicked man by the name of Haman, who manipulates King Ahasuerus (King of Persia) into issuing an irreversible decree that every single Jew in the world will be killed. Yet through the providence of God, Mordecai the Jew comes to hear of Haman’s plan. And by God’s providence, Esther, a Jew, is the Queen of the land and the wife of Ahasuerus.

Ultimately, Haman is hung by his own gallows that he intended for Mordecai; the Jews are protected and defeat their enemies, but even more importantly, the seed of promise is preserved. The story of Esther is not a story about how great Esther is. And certainly, no God-fearing father would desire his daughter to “Be an Esther” in Esther chapter 2. The story of Esther is a story about God providentially protecting his covenant people and the seed of promise against the dragon, pagan kings, and unfaithful Jews. Sure, by Chapter 4, there is a change in Esther, and she surely does great things, but the story is more about how God uses broken vessels to bring about his providential plans and purposes than it is about how great Esther is.

Concerning the exile, Isaiah prophesies that Cyrus will be raised up by God to one day send the Jews home from their Babylonian exile.

He says,

    who says of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd,

        and he shall fulfill all my purpose’;

    saying of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be built,’

        and of the temple, ‘Your foundation shall be laid.’”

    Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus,

        whose right hand I have grasped,

    to subdue nations before him

        and to loose the belts of kings,

    to open doors before him

        that gates may not be closed: (Isaiah 44:28-45:1)

Roughly 150 years later, we read in Ezra, “In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: (Ezra 1:1).” In his decree, Cyrus sends the tribes that Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon exiled back to Jerusalem to rebuild the house of the Lord and restore the right and proper worship of Yahweh.

When we read in Ezra 1:5, “Then rose up the heads of the fathers’ houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites, everyone whose spirit God had stirred to go up to rebuild the house of the LORD that is in Jerusalem,” we are overwhelmed with the sense of relief and joy. The tribe of Judah has been persevered by God’s grace, and the seed of the woman has been protected from exile and pagan kings. When the Assyrians destroyed and deported the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom, they never returned. But God is faithful to keep his promises and preserve the seed of the woman, and so the Southern Kingdom is preserved, and the lineage of Judah is saved. The dragon fails yet again; God is victorious and faithful.

As we enter the New Testament, this drama continues to unfold before us in the pages of redemptive history. We enter a manger where the Christ is born. The seed of promise is now here among us. Through it all, from the Garden, through Egyptian oppression, to Babylonian Exile, to the virgin womb of Mary, God has been providentially at work to bring this seed forth, and the child is finally here. The dragon has ever been standing before the woman, seeking to thwart the plans of God and devour the child in her womb.

But now, the fullness of time has finally come, and Immanuel, God with us, is finally dwelling among us. But there he lays, a helpless babe, in a manger with defenseless young parents.

The dragon is still standing before the woman, and this child is seeking to devour him. The dragon is relentless, and he will not give up his fight. Filled with rage and fury and built-up anticipation, the dragon attacks.

King Herod was only concerned with one thing, and that was establishing a dynasty. When he heard that a King of the Jews had been born, he knew there was a legitimate threat to his throne and dynastic ambitions. He responds as any despotic, tyrannical ruler would; he sends an army of men to Bethlehem to slaughter every male child that is two years old and younger. In this way, we see Herod as the antitype to Pharaoh in Exodus 1 and even to Athaliah in 2 Kings 11. However, in God’s providence and through the instruction of angels, the family had already taken the child of the woman, the seed of promise to Egypt where Christ is protected, in the place where his fathers were once enslaved, and God redeemed them through the Exodus (Matthew 1-2). After the death of Herod, Christ will experience his own exodus from Egypt and return to the land of promise.

The Serpent was unsuccessful in devouring this child. Jesus grows up to live a perfect and sinless life, earning for us a righteousness we could never have earned for ourselves. He dies the death we deserve, taking our sins and God’s wrath due to us upon himself. Nailed to a cross, he propitiates the wrath of God due to us. He is buried and raised again on the third day, defeating sin and death on our behalf. He defeats the dragon, crushing his head, and ascends to the right hand of the Father, where he reigns forever.

This one simple phrase, this half of one single verse, Revelation 12:4b, “And the Dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it,” covers the entirety of redemptive history from the promise of the Christ made in the Garden to the birth of the Christ in the Gospels. It shows us the beautiful providence of God and the unwavering faithfulness of God, as he protected this lineage and kept this promise to bring forth this child who will save his people from their sins.  

God has done all this to bring to you a Savior. Behold his glory. Stand in awe of his power, might, and love. God has done everything throughout the ages to bring forth his Christ to be your Savior so that you can have eternal life and be reconciled to God!

Our God is a mighty and gracious God; worship him in Spirit and truth, for he alone is worthy.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,  to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.  And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”  So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. (Galatians 4:4-7)

Soli Deo Gloria,

Chase

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