Genesis 3:8-11:
Then they heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God in the midst of the trees of the garden. Yahweh God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
Did this surprise God? No. God breathed out and the Milky Way appeared in the night sky. God knew what His creation would do. He gave them free will. I have built robots and programmed them to do things, and they always did what I programmed them to do. God created man and his woman, and because He is a loving God (Ephesians 2:4: “But God, being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us”), He granted us free will. To believe Him or not. Those in the “believe Him not” category will find themselves living through eternity in torment and loneliness. Forever.
From Jesus — the Word who was there in the beginning — the word He uses most for this place is Gehenna. The Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, where trash burned and worms fed. He uses a real, visible place as a picture of a real, invisible reality:
Matthew 5:22 — “Anyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment… anyone who says ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”
Matthew 10:28 — “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
Matthew 25:41 — “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.'”
Matthew 25:46 — “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” Same word for both. If eternal life is eternal, eternal punishment is eternal.
Mark 9:43-48 — “Where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.” Jesus says this three times in a row. The only place He repeats Himself like this.
Luke 16:19-31 — The rich man and Lazarus. The rich man is in torment in Hades. He can see Abraham. He feels thirst. He asks for a drop of water. Abraham says, “Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed.” He asks Abraham to send someone to warn his brothers. Abraham says: “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”
I implore you, if you are a non-believer, pray to God for mercy, that He would save you.
The Curse — and the Promise
Adam tries to distance himself from his woman. Genesis 3:12:
And the man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.”
He didn’t take responsibility. He blamed her. Genesis 3:13:
Then Yahweh God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
She knew she had been deceived. But the temptation was too great. For many of us, and for the sin that lives within us, the temptation is too great. Matthew 26:41: “Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
God gets down to business with the culprit. Genesis 3:14-15:
And Yahweh God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
Cursed are you more than any of the cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you will go,
And dust you will eat
All the days of your life;And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel.”
God will put enmity between the woman and the serpent. The Hebrew word in Genesis 3:15 is shuph (שׁוּף). It means to crush, to bruise, to strike at — the sense of pressing or grinding with the foot or head. It appears twice in the same verse:
- “He shall shuph your head” — the seed of the woman crushes the serpent’s head
- “You shall shuph his heel” — the serpent strikes at the seed’s heel
Same word. Same action. Different targets. A crushed head versus a bruised heel. One is fatal. One is not.
This is the first prophecy in the Bible. It is also the whole gospel in one verse. A woman’s offspring will crush the serpent’s head. The serpent will bruise his heel. The victor takes damage — but the wound is survivable. The loser takes a blow to the head — and that wound is fatal. The bruised heel is the cross. The crushed head is satan’s defeat. The resurrection is the Victor walking away from the fight.
Every prophecy after this is an expansion of this one verse. Abraham — which offspring? This line. Moses and the Passover — the seed preserved through blood. David — which king? The seed through David’s line. Isaiah 53 — which suffering servant? “He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities.” The bruised heel becomes a crushed servant. Daniel 9 — when? Seventy weeks are decreed. The timeline narrows. And Christ — Hebrews 2:14: “That through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil.” 1 John 3:8: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.”
The thread does not break. Not once. From Genesis 3 to Revelation 20, the same promise keeps expanding, narrowing, specifying — and every expansion was written before it was fulfilled.
An interesting side note: on August 16, 2026, we had a celebration of my wife’s and her younger brother’s birthday. Same day, seven years apart. The whole family — think large — came to celebrate, and I got to spend an hour or two talking to my nephew, a man of God. In the course of our theology discussion, I mentioned I had bought a book called The Gospel of the Skull Crusher by Joel Richardson. My nephew said he knew the author personally. It is a very good book dealing with the enmity between the woman and the serpent.
The Curse on the Woman and the Man
Genesis 3:16 — To the woman He said:
“I will greatly multiply your pain and conception; in pain you will bear children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
“Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” What is going on here? The first look at this is not what you think. The desire she has for her husband is not romantic. It is a desire to rule over him. To be the head, not the helper. If you don’t believe me, look at Genesis 4:7 — the same word, the same construction:
“If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is lying at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”
The Hebrew word is teshuqah. It appears only three times in the entire Old Testament — here, in Genesis 3:16, and in Song of Songs 7:10. Both times in Genesis, it is paired with the verb mashal, “to rule.” Sin’s teshuqah is to rule over Cain. The woman’s teshuqah is to rule over her husband. Same word. Same grammar. Same meaning. This is not how God designed it. This is the curse. Untold trouble has been caused in marriages from the woman seeking to be the head of the household instead of the helper. A Stanford University study found that women initiate roughly 69% of divorces in the United States. Not every divorce is caused by this. But I find it interesting that the helper of man is able to initiate divorce more often than the man. I will leave that as testament to our fallen world.
God deals with Adam. Genesis 3:17-19:
Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’;
Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
The End of the Story
Because a woman, made to be a helper to the man, listened to a serpent while the man was doing — what, we don’t know — they broke the one commandment their Creator had given them. We live in a fallen world. The creation groans, longing for the day when God will make all things right. And He will.
Revelation 21:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain. The first things have passed away.”
And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.” Then He said to me, “They are done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son. But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and sexually immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
A woman’s offspring will crush the serpent’s head. The serpent will bruise his heel.
That’s the whole story. The rest of the book just fills in the details.
Sources
- Shuph (שׁוּף): Genesis 3:15 — Hebrew verb meaning to crush, bruise, or strike at. Appears twice in the same verse: the seed of the woman crushes the serpent’s head; the serpent bruises the seed’s heel. See Francis Brown, S.R. Driver, and Charles Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1907), p. 1003.
- Teshuqah parallel (Genesis 3:16 / 4:7): The Hebrew word teshuqah (desire) appears only three times in the Old Testament — Genesis 3:16, Genesis 4:7, and Song of Songs 7:10. In both Genesis passages it is paired with the verb mashal (to rule). Susan Foh, “What Is the Woman’s Desire?” Westminster Theological Journal 37 (1975): 376–83, first developed the “desire to rule” interpretation. Also: John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible, notes on Genesis 3:16 and 4:7.
- Panourgia (2 Corinthians 11:3): Greek noun meaning craftiness, cunning, shrewdness — used by Paul to describe the serpent’s deception of Eve. Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (BDAG), p. 748.
- Joel Richardson, The Gospel of the Skull Crusher: The Gloriously Good News of God’s Plan to Fix Everything (Winepress Media, 2025). Available at joelstrumpet.com.