have before us, I consider it advisable to repeat the reminder which l remember
Book XI 429
And the Lord God said to the serpent: Because you have done this, accursed are youfrom all cattle andfrom all wild beasts which are upon the earth. Upon your bosom andyour belly shallyou walk, and earth shall you eat all the days of your life. And l will set hostilities between you and between the woman and between your seed and between her seed. She will look outfor your head, and you will look outfor her heel.
And to the woman he said: Multiplying l will multiply your sorrows andyour groaning. ln sorrows shall you bring forth children, and your turning round shall be towards your husband, and he shall lord it over you. But to Adam he said: Because you have hearkened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree about which lcommandedyoufrom it alone not to eat, accursed is the earth in your works. ln sorrows shall you eat it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall it bringforthfor you, and you shall eat the hay ofthefield. ln the sweat ofyourface shall you eat your bread, until you are turned into the earth from whichyou were taken, because earth you are and into earth shallyou go.
AndAdam called the name of his wife "Life, " since she it is who is the mother of all the living. And the Lord God made Adam and his wife tunics ofskin and clothed them. And the Lord God said: Behold, Adam has become like one ofus in gaining knowledge ofgoodand evil. Andnow, lesthe should stretch out his hand and take of the tree of life and should livefor ever—and the Lord God sent him awayfrom the paradise ofpleasure to work the earthfrom which he had been taken. And he threw Adam out and set him down over against the paradise of pleasure; and he ordered the Cherubim and theflaming sword which twists and turns to guard the way to the tree of life1 (Gn 2:25—3:24).
2. Before we deal in due order with the text of this passage of scripture that we have before us, I consider it advisable to repeat the reminder which l remember having already given elsewhere in this work,2 that what is being demanded of us is that anything the author who wrote it relates as historical event should be upheld as such in its proper literal meaning. lf, however, in the words of God or of any person performing the prophetic office something is said which taken literally is simply absurd, then undoubtedly it should be understood as being said
1 . The oddities of this version—for example, Adam being told that he will eat earth and the hay of the field—derive from the Greek Septuagint of which it is an over-literal translation. But there is one exception—the serpent being told about the woman and her seed that she. not he or it, will be looking out for its head, and it father heel. Though "seed" is neuter in Greek, the Septuagint has the masculine here, thus enabling a messianic prophecy to be read into the text by the earliest Christian tradition. Putting it in the feminine seems therefore to be the responsibility of the old Latin translators alone, possibly prompted to this by the scene in Rv
1 2: 1 -6 of the Woman and the Dragon. This Marian implication of the passage was presumably so well entrenched in the Latin-speaking Churches, that when Jerome came to make his new Vulgate translation of the Old Testament, he did not dare to change the gender of the pronouns here. 2. 1n Book V111, 1,1—7,14; and not infrequently elsewhere almost from the beginning of the whole work.