Her Seed
Genesis 3:15
Excerpt
זֶרַע (zera˓). Sowing, seed, offspring. This noun is used 224 times. Its usages fall into four basic semantic categories:1. The time of sowing, seedtime; 2. the seed as that which is scattered or as the product of what is sown; 3. the seed as semen and 4. the Seed as the offspring in the promised line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob or in other groups separate from this people of promise. The most important theological usage is found in the fourth category. Commencing with Gen 3:15, the word “seed” is regularly used as a collective noun in the singular (never plural).
This technical term is an important aspect of the promise doctrine, for Hebrew never uses the plural of this root to refer to “posterity” or “offspring.” The Aramaic targums pluralize the term occasionally, e.g. the Targum of Gen 4:10, but the Aramaic also limits itself to the singular in the passages dealing with the promised line. Thus the word designates the whole line of descendants as a unit, yet it is deliberately flexible enough to denote either one person who epitomizes the whole group (i.e. the man of promise and ultimately Christ), or the many persons in that whole line of natural and/or spiritual descendants.
Precisely so in Gen 3:15. One such seed is the line of the woman as contrasted with the opposing seed which is the line of Satan’s followers. And then surprisingly the text announces a male descendant who will ultimately win a crushing victory over Satan himself.
This promise to Eve was enlarged and made more specific in the Abrahamic Covenant. God would grant a land and… More
Kaiser, Walter C. “582 זָרַע.” Ed. R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke. Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament 1999 : 252. Print.
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