In my last article, I introduced a character that appears in the biblical narrative whom I described as the “Dragon-snake”. You may want to review it and get some of the background as to why I described him as such.
As you may have guessed, the Dragon-snake is in fact the crafty one — Satan, himself. And while he certainly steals the storyline from Adam, Eve, and potentially God in the first portion of Genesis 3 (vv. 1-13), he doesn’t get the last word — God does. In Genesis 3:15b, He states: “… he will crush your head …”. The “he” in 3:15b is none other than the One whom the Apostle John calls in John 1:1-5 (NIV), “The Word”:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Thankfully, Jesus is that Word, and John lets his readers know that He was there in the beginning, with God, for He was, is, and ever will be God Himself. There He is, the incarnation of the God of all the omnis, come to earth — all of His omni-power incarnated and physically present on the planet. That means that He is eternal and that no one, or no thing, can be before or after Him, or ever get the last word pertaining to Him. The Bible is His story, He is the Thesis of the entire narrative, and the reader must never forget that.
However, There Is the Dragon-Snake Problem
We can’t forget that in Genesis 3, although God has spoken, the Dragon-snake seems to have won the day — temporarily at least. The Maker of Days, the Ancient One Himself, cannot ever be outdone, for the Bible is His story and will be written and played out only as He decides. One cannot forget that in Genesis 3:15, He set things in order for the rest of the story by stating His thesis directly to the Dragon-snake’s face, while Adam and Eve are hiding shamefully in the bushes.
All of the great stories have a thesis, which simply put, is a central claim or argument that an author puts forward in an essay, paper, or story, then attempts to prove it throughout the body of his work. I believe that, in the greatest of all stories, the Bible, God has done this emphatically:
So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring (seed) and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
— Genesis 3:14–15 (NIV, my emphases)
There it is! The Dragon-snake will be cursed to crawl on his belly, not walking or flying anymore. There would also be “enmity,” or a murderous battle between the Dragon-snake and the woman. His head, now slithering in the dust, would be repeatedly crushed and ultimately obliterated by the Seed of the Woman. Yes, there would be an epic and bloody battle for thousands of years, but the Dragon-snake had been cursed and put on notice. He would not steal the storyline anymore, for the Author Himself had another plan and had prophesied a Heavenly end to the temporarily hellish story.
So, note that we will now be calling him the Serpent, not the Dragon-Snake, since dragons can fly, walk, and talk, and this one cannot do those things anymore. He has been cursed to be a lowly serpent. His fate would be to remain a slithering, dust-eating snake. Thus, we speak of and remember him merely as the Serpent.
The Rest of the Serpent-Crushing Story
The rest of the Bible is the playing out of this epic, serpent-crushing tale. It’s a tale that will consistently remind the Serpent and the reader that there is One who will ultimately come and eternally crush the dust eater. The Serpent-Crusher would be Jesus — the Thesis. He is the Seed of the Woman spoken of in Genesis 3, as well as the Light who outshines the darkness in John 1:1.
Yes, the Serpent, who is darkness incarnate, would attempt to drown out the Light throughout the annals of time, but he would never get the last word, for God had spoken and the slitherer was cursed to be crushed time and time again. Jesus, the Thesis, shows up to crush him in every book of the Bible, in every way imaginable, sometimes obvious and sometimes hidden, yet always reminding the readers of yesterday, today, and tomorrow that God has an ever-living plan to see His Thesis be proven over and over, again and again, for all eternity.
Serpent Crushing Highlights in the Old Testament
Scripture is filled with the stories of men and women who exercised their faith in the Serpent Crusher and would crush the Serpent in their own unique times and places, pointing to an ultimate, eternal crushing and life in a “country” where the faithful would live in a Serpent-free environment, wherein Jesus would make “…all things new” (Rev. 21:5). The Thesis would be fully realized and emphatically proven. The writer of Hebrews speaks of the faithful ones:
“All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” (Hebrews 11:13-16 NIV)
Some of the Serpent Crushers of the Old Testament were people like Abraham, who was called to go to a place he had never heard of and, by faith, enter into a covenant relationship with a God he did not yet know (see Genesis 12-25). He would perpetuate the Serpent Crushing seed of the woman to his seed — Isaac, Jacob, and their seed.
There was Joseph, kidnapped by his brothers and sold into slavery. Yet, by faith, he trusted God to crush the Serpent (see Genesis 37-50) and ultimately save his family and his nation. He would, by faith, perpetuate the Serpent Crusher’s seed to his seed.
Perhaps one of the most famous Serpent Crushers was King David. He would engage in an epic battle with Goliath, a serpent-like giant (see 1 Samuel 16-17), and not only crush his huge “hairy crown” (see Psalm 68:21) but cut it off, lift it up, and display it for all the world to see and give God glory. This was so profound an occurrence that Jesus would eventually be called “Son of David” (see Matt. 1:1, 21:9).
There is not enough space in this article to mention where in the other books of the Bible (all of them in my opinion), Jesus, the Thesis, makes appearances. For a larger list of those appearances, you may want to check out my book, Jesus is the Thesis.
Does the Serpent Get Crushed in the New Testament Too?
Absolutely, the Serpent gets crushed in the New Testament, too. In fact, Jesus, the Serpent Crusher Himself is the connecting force between the Old and New. As we have already seen, John reminds us that He, the Word, was there in the beginning at creation (John 1:1), then prophesied by the mouth of God to be the One who would crush the serpent and his seed (Gen. 3:14-15). I have given a few Old Testament examples of Him working through various serpent-crushing heroes of faith. Then, as Paul puts it, “When the set time had fully come,” Jesus came to the planet to initiate a final assault on the Serpent and his minions:
“But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.” (Galatians 4:4-5 NIV)
Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem brought about the crushing reality that, in Him, and through Him, there would be both temporal and eternal hope for all who would have faith in Him. Through Jesus, they would have hope in the Serpent Crusher and could become Serpent Crushers themselves. The Serpent would not get the last word; Jesus would.
In my next article, I will outline what serpent-crushing looked like in the New Testament and then what it might look like today and for all eternity. In fact, Paul gives us an encouraging sneak peek when he says to us, “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you” (Romans 16:20 NIV).
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In the Weird Stuff series from Cavetime, Dr. Jeff Voth and Hebrew scholar, Dr. Nathan French, discuss and make sense of some of the weird stuff in the Bible to ultimately point us back to the needed redemption of Jesus Christ.
Dr. Jeff Voth is a pastor, professor, and Founder of Cavetime. Jeff has a Doctorate of Ministry-Leadership in Community Spiritual Formation, a Master of Divinity, and a Master of Arts with an emphasis in Philosophy, Apologetics & Christian Worldview. He is the author of Cavetime, Defending the Feminine Heart, Why Lewis?, Jesus is the Thesis, A Thousand More Amens, and Serpent Crusher. He was selected into the Resident Scholars Program at the Kilns (home of C.S. Lewis) to do research at the Weston and Bodleian Libraries in Oxford England. Jeff has been married to his wife Lori for 40 years. They have three sons, one daughter, a son-in-law, a daughter-in-law and four grandchildren. They make their home in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
