Messianic Perspectives

Chris Rodriguez: Shalom and welcome to Messianic Perspectives, a daily program where we look into the scriptures from a distinctive first-century Jewish point of view. Today, our Bible teacher, Stephen Ger, continues his six-part series on the foundations of Messianic prophecy.

Stephen is a long-time friend of ours and has his own organization, Sojourner Ministries, dedicated to exploring the Jewish heart of Christianity. Stephen also currently serves as teaching pastor at Messianic Congregation Beth Sar Shalom in Plano, Texas. This is Chris Rodriguez, and I'll have some important information for you at the end of our program, so be sure to have a pencil and paper ready. And now, with today's teaching, is Stephen Ger.

Stephen: Shalom, this is Stephen Ger. We are going to be looking at Messianic prophecy. We're in our series, "Messianic Prophecy," but we have danced around the topic. We have introduced the topic for three sessions. I think it's high time that we get into the text itself. Where better to start when we're talking about the Messianic prophecy contained in the Hebrew Scriptures than the very first book? It is always best to start at the beginning, and that's the book of Genesis.

We find our first Messianic prophecy in Genesis 3:15, which for those of you who have been around the church for any length of time and Messianic prophecy, you know this particular prophecy is called the Proto-Evangelion. That's just a fancy way of saying the first good news, the first Messianic promise in the scripture. What we're going to see in Genesis 3:15 is that a coming Messiah, who is born of woman, will defeat Satan, the adversary.

Now, you know the context of the third chapter of Genesis. We have Eve looking at the tree that was forbidden, and she ate from the tree and gave to Adam, her husband, and he indeed ate as well. They both ate, their eyes were both opened, and they hid from God. The Lord God called to the man and said, "Where are you?" Adam says, "You can't find me because I'm hiding."

But God then says, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" The man said, "The woman whom you gave, she gave me from the tree and I ate. It's all her fault." The Lord God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" And the woman said, "It's not my fault. It's the serpent's fault. The serpent deceived me and I ate."

Here's the salient text. Here is the curse that God gives to the serpent and the promise that comes from that curse. The Lord God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle, more than every beast of the field. On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity," that's hatred, animosity, hostility, "between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He," her seed, "shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel."

So, the earliest, the foundational Messianic prophecy, you don't have to go very far into Hebrew Scripture to find it. It's just three chapters into the Bible. Following the moral failure of Adam and Eve, and in conjunction with the explanation of the harsh, enduring consequences that come about because of their disobedience, God turns His attention to the motivating cause of His creation's disobedience and insubordination.

The Lord declares war on the motivating cause of the Garden of Eden's sin, and the motivating cause is the serpent, i.e., Satan, the adversary. It's in the Lord's curse upon the serpent that an initial glimpse of God's overarching plan for humanity's redemption can be seen. A lot of people think that this is just the passage talking about the origin of the antagonistic relationship between mankind and snakes.

That's an important enough issue that we should take a whole huge portion of the first three chapters and make it all about why man and snakes hate each other? Nonsense. What this passage is teaching is that a descendant of Eve is going to be born. This descendant, the seed of this woman, would successfully wage holy war against Satan and against his offspring.

Both the holy warrior and the evil adversary are going to sustain punishing injuries, one to his heel and one to his head respectively in this battle and this conflict. But the damage dealt to the adversary, to Satan, is going to prove fatal. Now, this prophecy absolutely shrouds the identity of God's chosen warrior in mystery.

One thing is clear, however: the key to this individual and his identity has to do with his being the offspring of a woman. The man, Adam, is not mentioned in this passage, mysteriously. What does it mean? The Bible keeps us in suspense. How did the rabbis interpret this passage? Is it really talking about Satan? Is the serpent really the devil?

There is an ancient Jewish text called the Wisdom of Solomon, and it reveals one popular Jewish view in identifying the serpent. The Wisdom of Solomon, that's part of the Apocrypha by the way, it's a Jewish document, and it reads as follows in Chapter 2: "For God created man for incorruption, and made him in the image of His own eternity. But through the devil's envy," there is the identification, "death entered the world, and those who belong to his party experience it."

So, there you have a document well-read in the time of Jesus identifying the devil as the serpent. But surely, you may say, that could not be the traditional Jewish position. That may be just a minority position that's found in ancient Judaism, but certainly not Pharisaic, rabbinic Judaism. Well, if we look at the great Rabbi David Kimchi, a 13th-century rabbi, he writes on this passage: "As thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people by the hands of the Messiah, the son of David, who shall wound Satan, who is the head, the king and prince of the house of the wicked, and shall overturn all his strength, power, policy and dominion." Wow, he sounds like someone who believes Genesis 3:15 is talking about the final battle between the Messiah and Satan.

I always like to check what are called the Targums to see what they say. Do you know what the Targums are? Do you know what a Targum is? No, a Targum is an Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Bible. This was the kind of Bible that was read in the first century, when many Jewish people could only read and speak Aramaic and were not familiar enough with Hebrew to be able to read the straight Hebrew Bible.

And so there were paraphrases, kind of like "The Living Bible," an interpretive translation in the Aramaic language. These Targums often really shed a lot of light on what these passages may have meant and how they were understood, certainly how they were understood in the time of Yeshua by perhaps the majority of Jewish people.

The paraphrase of that passage reads as follows: "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between the seed of thy sons and between the seed of her sons. And it shall be that when the sons of the woman keep the commandment of the Torah, they will be prepared to smite thee on thy head; but if they forsake the commandments of the Torah of the Lord, they will be prepared to wound them in the heel. Nevertheless, for them there shall be a medicine, and they shall make a remedy to be healed for the heel in the footsteps in the days of the King Messiah."

So, while it is not a straight interpretation and certainly does not identify the seed of the woman as the Messiah specifically, it does say that the serpent is Satan and that this victory will be wrought by the Jewish people over Satan in the days of King Messiah by his hand. Does the New Testament use this passage at all? Does the New Testament discuss this passage?

Well, of course it does. Revelation 20:2, the Garden of Eden's serpent is specifically referenced in the book of Revelation and labeled as Satan, identified by John specifically as "that serpent of old." It says that he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. Of course, Paul himself uses this passage, Genesis 3:15, when he says, "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet," in Romans 16.

And of course, I love that powerful scene in the film "The Passion of the Christ." In the film's opening moment, set in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus crushes a serpent under his sandal. It is very clear New Testament teaching that the Messiah's resurrection will most assuredly result in final victory over Satan. I certainly hope that Genesis has more to say about the Messiah than just this introductory concept in 3:15. I wonder what else we can find regarding the Messiah in the book of Genesis. I'm afraid for the time being I'm going to have to leave us in suspense, but we will pick up Genesis next time in our continuation of our series on Messianic prophecy. Until then, shalom.

Chris Rodriguez: Thank you, Steve. And thank you, listening friend, for joining us today. It's always good to have you with us. If you missed part of this series or would like to share it with a friend, you'll be glad to know that it's available on one convenient compact disc for the suggested gift of just six dollars.

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And as always, when you're in touch with us, whether it's through the mail or by phone or even on the internet, if you would please mention the call letters of the station. This is Chris Rodriguez. Join us tomorrow for another edition of "Foundations of Messianic Prophecy" right here on Messianic Perspectives. Messianic Perspectives is sponsored by CJF Ministries in San Antonio, Texas, and is made possible on the station by the free-will contribution of our listeners in this area.