Genesis 3:15

Hebrew Bible

14 The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the cattle and all the living creatures of the field! On your belly you will crawl and dust you will eat all the days of your life. 15 And I will put hostility between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.

Neofiti Genesis 3:15

Targum

14 And the Lord God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, you will be more accursed, O serpent, than all the cattle and than all the wild beasts that are on the surface of the fields. On your belly you will crawl and dust will be your food all the days of your life. 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your sons and her sons. And it will come about that when her sons observe the Law and do the commandments they will aim at you and smite you on your head and kill you. But when they forsake the commandments of the Law you will aim and bite him on his heel and make him ill. For her sons, however, there will be a remedy, but for you, O serpent, there will not be a remedy, since they are to make appeasement in the end, in the day of King Messiah.

 Notes and References

"... The understanding of verse 15 of the Hebrew text has in itself certain difficulties. The Revised Standard Version renders: 'he shall bruise (shuph) your head and you shall bruise (shuph) his heel.' Shuph can mean either 'bruise' or 'lie in wait for,' and it is by no means certain whether it is to be rendered in the same way in both the oc­currences in this verse. The Palestinian Targum is intent on bringing out all the possible meanings and implications of the text. It renders shuph both as 'to aim at and bite' and 'to bruise.' The biblical text speaks of an enduring struggle between the seed of the woman and that of the serpent. For the targumist the outcome of the fight will depend on the attitude of the woman's children to the Law. Final victory will come with King Messiah when the children of the woman will effect a crushing (shephiyyuta, from the root shuph), that is, a crushing victory, over the serpent. (The paraphrase of the Palestin­ian Targum Genesis 3:15 recalls Paul's promise to the Romans; Romans 16:20) Certain biblical texts must have had a given interpretation attached to them, an understanding that was naturally inserted into the Aramaic paraphrase ..."

McNamara, Martin Targum and Testament Revisited Aramaic Paraphrases of the Hebrew Bible: A Light on the New Testament (p. 116) William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010

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