Saturday, March 18, 2023

zera‘

"On the messianic promise in Genesis 3:15 ( I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring, and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. ESV), rather than being a collective noun, the woman’s ‘seed’ should be taken as singular, given that whenever seed is used with singular verbs and adjectives and especially with singular pronouns it is always singular
rather than collective. 
In this verse, the verb ‘strike’ (shuph; ‘bruise’ in some translations) is singular.....it is used with a singular pronoun, even though a pronoun is not required by Hebrew syntax in this instance. The superfluous use of the pronoun emphasizes that God is promising a particular seed—a single descendant—of the woman who will crush the serpent’s head.The word זרֶַע (zera) always conveys the concept of a close resemblance between the seed and what produced it. 
*In other words, the descendant is like the ancestora human being like Eve—and this keyword zerais used throughout Genesis to refer to the original promise of the Messiah, and the notion is further developed as the story of God’s people is elaborated." CMI