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Isaiah 53:5I am no Hebrew linguist but I will attempt to answer this. The Garden of Eden was a place of total innocence where all the animals lived in peace according to the myth. This is important to keep in mind for a moment. In this verse God is cursing the serpent --- see vs14. God informs the serpent that there will be enmity (a feeling or condition of hostility; hatred; ill will; animosity; antagonism) between the serpent and Eve (Eve being the only woman alive at the time). For the first time the innocence of Eden is broken, not just between the serpent and Eve but also between the serpent's offspring and all of humanity subsequently. The myth thereby neatly explains the natural caution we all have concerning snakes.
The next phrase is much more difficult "it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel". We have to ask just who or what "it" is. Grammatically "it" has to be enmity --- an concept rather than a creature. Somehow this enmity will damage the serpent and somehow the serpent will retaliate and damage enmity's heel. It is a difficult and puzzling passage. I do not see how Christ could possibly come into this story unless Christ is the "enmity" which seems extremely strange and very problematic. I can only conclude this is not a prophesy in the usual sense but merely an attempt to explain why humanity has always had a loathing for snakes. The author is far from clear perhaps deliberately so because an element of puzzlement and disconnect is characteristic of mythologies in general.
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
"Christ has therefore, in His work of recapitulation, summed up all things, both waging war against our enemy, and crushing him who had at the beginning led us away captives in Adam, and trampled upon his head, as thou can perceive in Genesis that God said to the serpent, 'And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; He shall be on the watch for thy head, and thou on the watch for his heel.' For from that time, He who should be born of a woman, namely from the Virgin, after the likeness of Adam, was preached as keeping watch for the head of the serpent. This is the seed of which the apostle says in the Letter to the Galatians, 'that the law of works was established until the seed should come to whom the promise was made (Galatians 3:19).' This fact is exhibited in a still clearer light in the same Epistle where he thus speaks: 'But when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman (Galatians 4:4).' For indeed the enemy would not have been fairly vanquished, unless it had been a man born of a woman who conquered him. For it was by means of a woman that he got the advantage over man at first, setting himself up as man's opponent. And therefore does the Lord profess Himself to be the Son of man, comprising in Himself that original man out of whom the woman was fashioned, in order that, as our species went down to death through a vanqushed man, so we may ascend to life again through a victorious one; and as through a man death received the palm of victory against us, so again by a man we may receive the palm against death."
- St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book V, 21, 1
I would contextually consider the woman to be Eve rather than Mary, but would otherwise concur with Irenaeus in his recognition of Christ as the prophetic Theme of the verse.
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