In rabbinical Judaism, the contrasting groups of "seed of the woman" and "seed of the serpent" are generally taken as plural, with the promise "he will bruise your head" applied to Adam and mankind bruising the serpent's head. There is a Jewish tradition where a messiah is said to be a remedy to the bruising of the heel of the "seed of the woman." Although a possible Jewish messianic interpretation of Genesis 3:15 in some schools of Judaism during the Second Temple Period has been suggested by some Christian scholars, no evidence of such an interpretation has yet come to light.
Identification of the "seed of the woman" with Christ goes back at least as far as Irenaeus, and the phrase "seed of the woman" is sometimes counted as one of the titles of Jesus in the Bible. A tradition found in some old eastern Christian sources holds that the serpent's head was crushed at Golgotha, described as a skull-shaped hill at the centre of the Earth, where Shem and Melchizedek had placed the body of Adam. More commonly, as in Victorian homilies, "It was on Golgotha that the old serpent gave the Saviour the deadly bite in his heel, which went quite through his foot, fastening it to the cross with iron nails."
Mary
often understand the woman of to refer primarily to Mary, the mother of Jesus. The promised seed therefore must refer primarily to the Messiah. Thus, the text in Genesis also foreshadows the sign the Lord gives to King Achaz through, "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." The EnglishDouay–Rheims Bible 1609 onwards has "she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel." The reading was supported in the Bull Ineffabilis Deus of December 1854 and is defended in the Catholic Encyclopedia, where Anthony Maas acknowledges that the Douay–Rheims English version of the Latin Vulgatedoes not follow the Masoretic Text. Maas also writes: "One may be tempted to understand the seed of the woman in a similar collective sense, embracing all who are born of God. But seed not only may denote a particular person, but has such a meaning usually, if the context allows it. St. Paul gives this explanation of the word 'seed' as it occurs in the patriarchal promises: 'To Abraham where the promises made and to his Seed. He saith not, and to his seeds, as of many; but as of one, and to his Seed, which is Christ.'" Some newer versions of the Catholic Encyclopedia contend that the translation "she" of the Vulgate is interpretative; it originated in the fourth century and is not defended by modern critics. The conqueror from the seed of the woman, who should crush the serpent's head, is Christ; the woman at enmity with the serpent is Mary. The New Jerusalem Bible, however, retains "she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel". The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission explains the controversy: Apart from the existence of alternate Hebrew text versions, that view was also apparently held by Philo Judaeus, Flavius Josephus and most notably by Rabbi Moses Maimonides. A revised Latin version , authorised by the Vatican, changed it from ipsa to ipsum in the Latin. The notes in the Catholic New American Bible, explain this verse: "They will strike... at their heel: the antecedent for 'they' and 'their' is the collective noun 'offspring,' i.e., all the descendants of the woman. Christian tradition has seen in this passage, however, more than unending hostility between snakes and human beings. The snake was identified with the devil, whose eventual defeat seemed implied in the verse. Because 'the Son of God was revealed to destroy the works of the devil', the passage was understood as the first promise of a redeemer for fallen humankind." Irenaeus of Lyons, in his Against Heresies 5.21.1, followed by several other Fathers of the Church, interpreted the verse as referring to Christ, and cited Galatians 3:19 and 4:4 to support the reference. In the Roman Catholic and in the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Marian role against Satan in the eschatological history of salvation also concerns the hyperdulia, reserved to the Virgin Mother of God, as well as the exorcistic and intercessory power of the Holy Rosary.
Luther's view
, in his Commentary on Genesis, identifies the "seed of the woman" as the coming Messiah, Jesus, and not Mary: "When we are given instruction in this passage concerning the enmity between the serpent and woman - such an enmity that the Seed of the woman will crush the serpent with all his powers - this is a revelation of the depths of God's goodness... clearly declares that the male Seed of the woman would prostrate this enemy." In a derived sense, Luther, in his Lectures on Romans, identifies the seed of the woman with the word of God in the church.
