In the beginning, God declared war. To the serpent he vowed,
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. (Genesis 3:15)
God first announces his gospel (his protoevangelium) within a context of battle. To the woman, he promises a champion; to the serpent, he promises defeat. But to both, he promises mutual hostility: “I will put enmity between you and the woman.” God would keep the warfare burning. Earth became a battlefield, but he promised an offspring to end it.
Mouth full of dust, Satan wasted no time hunting the woman’s offspring. He slithered away, only to return and destroy the woman’s first two sons. One son was murdered, the other exiled for murder. The serpent smiled, satisfied — Cain “was of the evil one and murdered his brother” (1 John 3:12). The first son of Eve was a son of the devil. Instead of bruising the serpent’s scaly head, Cain struck his brother’s. But God would give another offspring, Seth, to keep the promise alive.
Beheading a Serpent
God’s story in Scripture traces this war between the serpent’s offspring and the woman’s. A son was coming, and Israel traced family lines to find him. The serpent, it seems, followed suit:
Behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. 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 12:3–4)
The promised offspring would rise from the lineage of David, of Judah, of Jacob, Isaac, Abraham, Noah, Seth, Adam. And along the way, Israel would wonder at her champions: Is this the final seed to conquer where the first man fell?
King David seemed to be such a seed. Israel is being taunted by a giant dressed in bronze and scaled in armor. History with the bronze serpent in the wilderness connects Goliath and the serpent. One young man steps forward to challenge the overgrown snake. As Rick Shenk observes,
David proceeds to bruise Goliath on the head with a stone. The Serpent-warrior fell on his face and ate dust. And then, David removed Goliath’s head with his enemy’s own sword. In this battle against the Serpent, the seed won!
Was this “man of war” the promised Seed (1 Samuel 16:18)? He even prevails against one named “son of a serpent” (2 Samuel 10:2; “Nahash” means “serpent” in Hebrew). But the next scene shows David upon the rooftop, bitten by lust and stretching out his hand to take another man’s wife. David is not the Seed they have been waiting for.
Whose Cross?
Enter Jesus Christ — the second Adam, the Son of David, the offspring of the woman. The one born to “destroy the works of the devil,” including the sin of his people and the just penalty for them (1 John 3:8). Here we have no ordinary man. We have a son of the woman and the Son of God. In the beginning, God declared war not for another to fight but for his own Son to finish.
Remember, he came to bruise the head of the dragon and, in the process, to be bruised himself. The battle of Genesis 3:15 was decided at Golgotha, “the place of the skull” — a hill possibly named such because David may well have mounted the skull of Goliath there on a hill for all to see. A place possibly named “Golgotha” because it has its etymology in “Gol(iath of)Gath”?
Regardless, contrast Jesus’s great victory with David’s. How differently “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David . . . conquered” (Revelation 5:5). To natural men, Christ’s victory looked nothing like conquering. They saw his bruised heel and nothing of the bruised skull under that heel. He chose to share in flesh and blood, not that he might have hands to sling a stone and kill a giant, but that he might have hands to be “pierced for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53:5). He took on a human brow, not first to be adorned with a golden crown as David, but to be torn with a crown of thorns. His feet did not sprint toward a bronze giant but limped up a hill to be lifted up like the bronze serpent.
Through death, he destroyed the devil. The cross was not only Rome’s lethal weapon but his. He climbed the cross to commandeer it. Read slowly: “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). Through death, the long-promised Offspring destroyed the devil.
Bruised Heel
In the beginning, our Lord declared war, a war against the Dragon, a war he himself would finish. He hinted at being like a “man of war” — “The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is his name” (Exodus 15:3). And “like a man of war he stirs up his zeal; he cries out, he shouts aloud, he shows himself mighty against his foes” (Isaiah 42:13). Then he literally became a man of war.
Again, how does he deliver the fatal blow? He could have killed the devil with the “breath of his mouth” as he soon will smite the antichrist (2 Thessalonians 2:8). But then all sinners would be doomed to hell with that dragon. Here is the predicament of Scripture: How can this God wage war against evil and spare sinners? Yet God makes a way by declaring that his Son, the offspring, would bruise the serpent’s skull while himself being bruised as man — disfigured beyond the appearance of a man (Isaiah 52:14) — bearing the awful wrath of his Father in our place and nailing the record of our sins to that tree (Colossians 2:13–14). He was bruised, not for his sins, but for ours.
But if he died, why was it not predicted that he would bruise the serpent’s head and have his head bruised as well? Death, as deadly as it seemed on Friday and Saturday, merely bruised his heel because it was impossible for death to hold him (Acts 2:24). His was a true but temporary death — the bruise not finally fatal. Sunday came with He is risen!
Man of War
To those who do not know him as Lord, let me say this. This King died once, never to die again. Death and suffering and shame he traveled once. None shall make him bleed again. None shall slap him. No spit shall ever again splash upon his cheeks. He will come again to make war, and none shall bruise him. His eyes are fire, his sword shall find its target, his robe is dipped in blood, he is flanked by angelic armies, and on his thigh he has a name written: “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Revelation 19:11–16). Today is a day of mercy. Today he extends his ring to kiss by faith. Notice his hands pierced for sin. See your sins nailed to the tree and the serpent’s head beneath, crushed. Refuse his mercy, and you shall find him merciless. But “blessed are all who take refuge in him.”
And what about you, his harassed and endangered people — you who still journey through enemy territory with serpents at your feet? To you, soldiers of the cross, the promise is given: “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Romans 16:20).
Take heart, the Man of War comes quickly.
