Genesis 3:15

Summary

This verse records a declaration of hostility placed between the serpent and the woman, and between their respective zera ("offspring", H2233) lines. The text states that one entity will strike the other's rosh ("head", H7218A) while being struck in the 'aqev ("heel", H6119).

Key words

• 'eiVah ("enmity", H0342) — feminine singular noun, the object of the verb "I will put"; denotes a state of hostility rather than a single act.
• 'aShit ("I will put", H7896H) — Qal imperfect, 1st person; imperfect aspect marks this as an action extending into the future rather than a completed event.
• zar'a ("offspring", H2233H) — masculine singular noun in construct form twice ("your offspring" / "her offspring"), grammatically singular though it can denote a collective descendant line.
• hu' ("he", H1931) — independent masculine personal pronoun functioning as the subject of yeshufekha; its gender is masculine, matching the grammatical gender of zar'a ("offspring"), not the feminine ha'ishah ("the woman", H0802G).
• yeshufeka / teshufenu ("he will bruise you" / "you will bruise him", H7779) — same Qal imperfect verbal root H7779 used for both actions, with different subject/object suffixes, producing a mirrored, symmetrical construction.

What the text says

The verse is built around a chain of bein...u-bein ("between...and between", H0996G) phrases, each introduced by the construct form of "between," creating four paired relationships: you/the woman, and your offspring/her offspring. This repeated syntactic frame places the enmity simultaneously at two levels — the immediate parties and their respective zera lines.

The second half of the verse uses the same verbal root H7779 for both actions ("bruise/strike"), rendered with reversed subject and object each time, producing a chiastic, mirrored structure: subject hu' ("he") strikes the addressee's rosh ("head"), then the addressee ("you") strikes him (suffix -nu) in the 'aqev ("heel"). The pronoun hu' is grammatically masculine, which agrees with the masculine noun zar'a ("offspring") as its most immediate antecedent in the Hebrew sentence, rather than with the feminine ha'ishah ("the woman").

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (VULCLEM) renders the subject of the first strike as ipsa ("she"), a feminine pronoun, where the Hebrew hu' (H1931) and the LXX autos ("he", masculine) both use a masculine form. The LXX also shifts yeshufeka ("he will bruise/crush you") to tērēsei ("he will watch/guard"), and teshufenu to tērēseis ("you will watch/guard"), differing from the Hebrew root H7779 ("bruise") used identically in both halves of the Hebrew verse.