Explain the reference in Genesis 3:15 about the woman’s seed bruising the serpent’s head.

The Lord gives a prophecy to Eve, who is a symbol of the church; saying that “her seed,” (her descendant, Jesus, and His followers), would bruise the head of the serpent, but the serpent would bruise His heel.

The only way to kill a serpent is to smash its head. And the word “bruise” there means to “smash” the head of the serpent. When a person is bruised on the heel, their progress is impeded. The devil has successfully hindered the progress of the Christian church, but it has not been a mortal wound. It has not stopped the church’s motion.

I believe God was making a prophecy about a battle that would rage in our world between the serpent (the devil) and the woman (the church) from the day of mankind’s fall in the Garden of Eden until Jesus returns.

In Revelation 12 you’ll find a dragon (also called a serpent in verse 9) trying to devour a woman’s baby as soon as the child is born (verse 4). This is the same serpent, Satan, who is called “the accuser of our brethren” (verse 10) and who persecutes “the woman who brought forth the man child” (verse 13).

Although Satan has been allowed to wound the heel of the woman, the prophecy in Genesis 3:15 adds that the woman and her seed, or offspring— which is Christ—would crush the serpent’s head. At the cross, Jesus crushed the head of the serpent, the devil.

Have you ever noticed that when you kill a snake, it can still thrash around after its head has been crushed? It can still bite for a time also. The devil was crushed at the cross, but he’s still thrashing around, snapping his jaws, and squirting venom. Not until our Lord returns will the church be fully freed from the torment of this defeated foe.