Genesis - Chapter 03 - Line 00071

Contemplative Summary

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall strike your head, and you shall strike his heel.

Out of judgment arises prophecy. The divine voice moves from consequence to pattern, weaving tension into the fabric of time. The Hebrew ve’eyvah ashit — “I will put enmity” — is both decree and design, the deliberate placing of polarity. Between serpent and woman, instinct and awareness, divergence is born. The word zera, “seed,” carries a double pulse — singular and collective, potential and progeny — a living continuum through which conflict and redemption will unfold.

The mirrored phrases — he shall strike your head, and you shall strike his heel — form a rhythm of reciprocity. The head, seat of vision and dominion; the heel, origin of motion and vulnerability. In this symmetry, the cosmos learns balance: injury and overcoming, cycle and countercycle. Enmity here is not endless warfare but the field of evolution — the friction through which awareness refines itself.

To contemplate this line is to glimpse divine paradox — that separation itself becomes instrument of return. Every polarity, once resisted, teaches coherence; every wound contains its opposite healing. Between head and heel, the eternal dialogue continues — ascent and descent, wisdom and motion, serpent and seed — each shaping the other toward a wholeness still forming beyond sight.