NOTES for Gen 3:15

Enmity between man and the devil – where is it from and why? It would seem that the answer is clear: man was created friendly of God, and the devil became the enemy of God. But indeed, the author of the Pentateuch speaks about enmity, which begins after the fall, that is when it could seem, man has become closer to the devil, than he was him before the fall! Why the real enmity begins only now? Meanwhile, if we examined attentively the situation that occurred after the fall, the answer will be rather obvious. Before, man was asked to only guard the outer borders of this garden, which was charged to him by God; now hostilities have moved into the garden itself, which stopped to be a garden, and became a battleground.

Before the fall man fought with the evil, which was for him an external strength and a foreign will; now a strength, that would henceforth be necessary to resist, turned out inside, and the will which was before rather inflexible, often disappoints now, disappoint treacherously, playing on the enemy side. Formerly there was a duel, where the participants did not get closer of each other; now it is replaced by a fight of two grappled with each other into one club of enemies, and to deliver oneself from his enemy is possible only by destroying him. Such has become the spiritual war after fall - a war not for life, but for death.