88 The Sentence on the Serpent. CHAP. 



Hosts hath blessed them, saying, Blessed be Egypt 

 my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and 

 Israel mine inheritance." l The Lord shall smite, 

 smiting and healing. Observe, this is not said of 

 Israel but of Egypt; we are here taught that all 

 God's judgments are for ultimate mercy. And in 

 the only psalm ascribed to Moses, we are taught 

 that destruction is for ultimate restoration. " Thou 

 turnest man to destruction, and sayest, Return, ye 

 children of men." 2 



The threatenings and the promises of the Old Test- 

 ament are mostly addressed to nations. But the first 

 promise of restoration that we meet with, and perhaps 

 the most emphatic in the Old Testament, is for man- 

 kind ; and it admits of none but a purely spiritual 

 interpretation. I mean the sentence of Jehovah on 

 the Serpent. In the moment of his triumph at the 

 loss of Paradise by Man, the Lord says to him : "I 

 will put enmity between thee and the woman, and 

 between thy seed and her seed ; it shall bruise (or, 

 lie in wait for) thy head, and thou shalt bruise (or, 

 lie in wait for) his heel." 3 Whether this is history 

 or allegory (and in my opinion it is certainly 

 allegory), and whether it was written in the time of 

 Moses or in that of Ezra, it is a Divinely-inspired 

 prophecy "the seed of the woman" is the Christ, 



1 Isaiah xix. 22, 24, 25. 2 Psalm xc. 3. 



3 Gen. iii. 15. The meaning is the same whether we trans- 

 late "bruise" or "lie in wait for" (see the margin of the 

 Revised Version) ; lying in wait must be in order to attack 

 and to wound. 



