God's Great Patience, not Withstanding Man's Provocations
Genesis 3:15
And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; it shall bruise your head…


Suppose a man should come into a curious artificer's shop, and there with one blow dash in pieces such a piece of art as had cost many years' study and pains in the contriving thereof. How could he bear with it? How would he take on to see the workmanship of his hands so rashly, so wilfully destroyed? He could not but take it ill and be much troubled thereat. Thus it is that as soon as God had set up and perfected the frame of the world, sin gave a shrewd shake to all; it unpinned the frame, and had like to have pulled all in pieces again; nay, had it not been for the promise of Christ, all this goodly frame had been reduced to its primitive nothingness again. Man by his sin had pulled down all about his ears, but God, in mercy, keeps it up; man by his sin provokes God, but God, in mercy, passeth by all affronts whatsoever. Oh, the wonderful mercy — oh, the omnipotent patience of God!

(J. Spencer.)



Parallel Verses
KJV: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

WEB: I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel."




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