MPV Commentary

14. The Lord God spoke to the serpent, pronouncing judgment on it and its offspring. First, the material serpent was cursed above all creatures, becoming a type of everything odious and disgusting. It had been transformed from a beautiful creature into one that is avoided with horror.

Next, the spiritual serpent, the seducer, was condemned. Already fallen, he would be further degraded and his power completely destroyed by the offspring of those he had deceived.

15. The serpent's seed refers not only to evil spirits but also to wicked men. The seed of the woman, on the other hand, is a reference to the Messiah or His Church.

The Lord God put enmity between the serpent and the woman, which means that He would leave them to their own corruption and allow those measures that lead to salvation to fill Satan and his angels with envy and rage.

16. The serpent was told it would bruise the heel of the woman's offspring, referring to the suffering and persecution Christ and His people would endure. However, the woman's seed would ultimately crush the serpent's head, a fatal blow that would be the result of Christ's victory over Satan.

17-19. To the woman, the Lord God said her sorrow would be greatly multiplied as she suffered pain in childbirth and distress of mind. She was no longer the help meet of man, but rather one who would live in humble subjection.

To Adam, He said that he would have to gain his livelihood by tilling the ground, a task that had become painful and difficult due to sin. His body would eventually return to the dust from which it came, and he became mortal, liable to all the miseries of this life and eternal punishment in hell.

20. Adam named his wife Eve, likely because she was a mother of the promised Savior as well as all humanity.

21. God taught them how to make coats of skins for themselves, an institution of animal sacrifice that was of divine appointment and instruction in the only acceptable mode of worship for sinful creatures through faith in a Redeemer.

22. The Lord said, "Behold, what has become of the man who was as one of us!" He had been formed in God's image to know good and evil but now lived in a state of sin and suffering. To prevent him from eating from the tree of life and deluding himself that it would restore his lost innocence, the Lord sent him out of the garden.

24. The passage should be rendered as follows: "And he dwelt between the cherubim at the East of the Garden of Eden and a fierce fire, or Shekinah, unfolding itself to preserve the way of the tree of life." This was the mode of worship established after sin, showing God's anger at sin and teaching the mediation of a promised Savior as the way of life and access to God. The figures of cherubim were the same ones used in the tabernacle and temple, where God said, "I will commune with you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims."