Who Crushes the Serpent's Head in Genesis 3:15? (Copy)

Douay Rheims: I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.

NIV: And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.

KJV: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

NAB: I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; They will strike at your head, while you strike at their heel.

Notice the different renderings of each translation regarding who will crush the head of the serpent. The Douay Rheims says “she.” The New International Version says “he.” The King James says “it.” The New American says “they.” So which one is correct? And why do they each have a different translation if all of them are based off of the Hebrew?

The actual reason is because the Hebrew phrase used is a very confusing term for translators, and ultimately boils down to an issue of theological and contextual interpretation for most. Even the English rendering of the Tanakh put out by the Jerusalem Publishing Company uses the term “they.”

The Hebrew root is hū, but even in the Old Testament it has varied usages. It is a masculine term and so the predominant usage is male, such as Genesis 4:4, “He also brought.” However, in other places it is rendered as “it,” such as Genesis 3:6, “it was pleasant.” In Exodus 1:10, it is “they join.” In Genesis 29:12, “she ran and told.” So we can understand why it is an ambiguous phrase for a translator in English.

So then the issue becomes one of context. Here again is the context from the Douay Rheims:

I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.

So God will put enmity between the serpent and the woman, and between the serpent's seed and the woman's seed. So the question then becomes, in the following sentence, which is the primary object being discussed with reference to crushing the serpent's head? Is it the woman, or is it her seed?

St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, and St. Gregory the Great believed the primary object contextually was the woman. St. Robert Bellarmine noted the text was very confusing, because the Latin translation from the Hebrew could either be ipsum (masculine) or ipsa (feminine). St. Jerome, who gave us the Latin Vulgate, went with ipsa (feminine).

The Jewish scholar Philo, in 1 BC, also acknowledged this confusion. He believed the proper term linguistically was “he,” however that contextually it should be rendered “she.” He wrote, “And the expression, ‘He shall watch thy head, and thou shalt watch his heel’ is, as to its language, a barbarism, but, as to the meaning which is conveyed by it, a correct expression. Why so? It ought to be expressed with respect to the woman: but the woman is not he, but she. What, then, are we to say?”

Many modern Protestant editions of the Bible prefer “he,” although it can be argued this is more for theological reasons, since the usage of “she” potentially gives too much credence to the Blessed Virgin Mary, since she of course is the Woman whose Seed, our Lord Jesus Christ, is being prophecied in this passage.

However, interestingly enough, even Protestantism's founder, Martin Luther, believed the proper rendering of the text was “she.” He stated, “Is Christ only to be adored? Or is the holy Mother of God rather not to be honoured? This is the woman who crushed the Serpent’s head.”

St. Justin Martyr, writing around 160 AD, comments, “And by Mary has Jesus been born, to whom we have proved so many Scriptures refer, and by whom God destroys both the serpent and those angels and men who are like him.”

From the Catholic perspective, we are fine, safe, and secure with either “he” or “she” or even “they,” since the crushing of the devil's head is a corporate work, meaning that in one sense we can say Christ crushed his head at the Cross, and yet in another sense, Mary crushed his head with her “Fiat” which gave conception to the Savior. You really can’t separate one from the other. Jesus and Mary, as the New Adam and the New Eve, both were a team in crushing the serpent's head. This also explains why we see the dragon in pursuit of the Woman and the Child in Apocalypse 12. It is because it is the Woman and her Seed in Genesis 3 that are prophecied to crush his head.

So from our point of view, one can just as easily say it is Jesus as saying it is Mary, because we believe both worked harmoniously together in this sacred task.

The Haydock Bible Commentary summarizes it perfectly: “She shall crush. Ipsa, the woman: so divers of the fathers read this place, conformably to the Latin: others read it ipsum, viz. the seed. The sense is the same: for it is by her seed, Jesus Christ, that the woman crushes the serpent's head.”

So is it he, she, or they who crush his head? Is it Jesus, Mary, or both of them? We answer: yes.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. We love you. Save souls. Amen.