in the beginning of the Bible, it is written of Christ, that he should do the will of God. By faith in this promise, we have reason to think, our first parents, and the patriarchs before the flood, were justified and saved; and to this promise, and the benefit of it, instantly serving God day and night, they hoped to come. Notice is here given them of three things concerning Christ.
(1.) His incarnation; that he should be the Seed of the woman, the Seed of that woman; therefore his genealogy, Luke 3, goes so high as to show him to be the son of Adam, but God does the woman the honour to call him rather her seed, because she it was whom the Devil had beguiled, and on whom Adam had laid the blame; herein God magnifies his grace, in that though the woman was first in the transgression, yet she shall be saved by child-bearing, (as some read it,) that is, by the promised Seed which shall descend from her, 1 Tim. 2. 15. He was likewise to be the seed of a woman only, a virgin; that he might not be tainted with the corruption of our nature; he was sent forth, made of a woman, Gal. 4. 4, that this promise might be fulfilled. It speaks great encouragement to sinners, that their Saviour is the Seed of the woman, bone of our bone, Heb. 2. 11. 14. Man is therefore sinful and unclean, because he is born of a woman, (Job 25. 4.) and therefore his days are full of trouble, Job 14. 1. But the Seed of the woman was made sin and a curse for us, so saving us from both.
(2.) His sufferings and death; pointed at in Satan's bruising his heel, that is, his human nature. Satan tempted Christ in the wilderness, to draw him into sin; and some think it was Satan that terrified Christ in his agony, to have driven him to despair. It was the Devil that put it into the heart of Judas to betray Christ, of Peter to deny him, of the chief priests to prosecute him, of the false witnesses to accuse him, and of Pilate to condemn him; aiming in all this, by destroying the Saviour, to ruin the salvation; but, on the contrary, it was by death that Christ destroyed him that had the power of death, Heb. 2. 14. Christ's heel was bruised, when his feet were pierced and nailed to the cross, and Christ's sufferings are continued in the sufferings of the saints for his name. The Devil tempts them, casts them into prison, persecutes and slays them; and so bruises the heel of Christ, who is afflicted in their afflictions. But while the heel is bruised on earth, it is well that the Head is safe in heaven.
(3.) His victory over Satan thereby. Satan had now trampled upon the woman, and insulted over her; but the Seed of the woman should be raised up in the fulness of time to avenge her quarrel, and to trample upon him, to spoil him, to lead him captive, and to triumph over him, Col. 2. 15. He shall bruise his head, that is, he shall destroy all his politics and his powers, and give a total overthrow to his kingdom and interest. Christ baffled Satan's temptations, rescued souls out of his hands, cast him out of the bodies of people, dispossessed the strong man armed, and divided the spoil; by his death, he gave a fatal and incurable blow to the Devil's kingdom, a wound to the head of this beast, that can never be healed. As his gospel gets ground, Satan falls, Luke 10. 18, and is bound, Rev. 20. 2. By his grace, he treads Satan under his people's feet, Rom. 16. 20, and will shortly cast him into the lake of fire, Rev. 20. 10. And the Devil's perpetual overthrow will be the complete and everlasting joy and glory of the chosen remnant.
16. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow, and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
We have here the sentence passed upon the woman for her sin: two things she is condemned to, a state of sorrow, and a state of subjection; proper punishments of a sin in which she had gratified her pleasure and her pride.
1. She is here put into a state of sorrow; one particular of which only is specified, that, in bringing forth children; but it includes all those impressions of grief and fear which the mind of that tender sex is most apt to receive, and all the common calamities which they are liable to. Note, Sin brought sorrow into the world; that was it that made the world a vale of tears, brought showers of trouble upon our heads, and opened springs of sorrows in our hearts, and so deluged the world: had we known no guilt, we should have known no grief. The pains of child-bearing, which are great to a proverb, a scripture-proverb, are the effect of sin; every pang and every groan of the travailing woman, speak aloud the fatal consequences of sin: this comes of eating forbidden fruit. Observe, 1. The sorrows are here said to be multiplied, greatly multiplied; all the sorrows of this present time are so; many are the calamities which human life is liable to, of various kinds, and often repeated, the clouds returning after the rain; no marvel that our sorrows are multiplied, when our sins are; both are innumerable evils. The sorrows of child-bearing are multiplied; for they include, not only the travailing throes, but the indispositions before, (it is sorrow from the conception,) and the nursing toils and vexations after; and after all, if the children prove wicked and foolish, they are, more than ever, the heaviness of her that bare them. Thus are the sorrows multiplied; as one grief is over, another succeeds in this world. 2. It is God that multiplies our sorrows; I will do it. God, as a righteous Judge, does it, which ought to silence us under all our sorrows; as many as they are, we have deserved them all, and more; nay, God, as a tender Father, does it for our necessary correction, that we may be humbled for sin, and weaned from the world by all our sorrows; and the good we get by them, with the comfort we have under them, will abundantly balance all our sorrows, how greatly soever they are multiplied.
II. She is here put into a state of subjection; the whole sex, which, by creation, was equal with man, is, for sin, made inferior, and forbidden to usurp authority, 1 Tim. 2. 11, 12. The wife particularly is hereby put under the dominion of her husband, and is not sui juris—at her own disposal; of which see an instance in that law, Numb. 30. 6..8, where the husband is empowered, if he please, to disannul the vows made by the wife. This sentence amounts only to that command. Wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; but the entrance of sin has made that duty a punishment, which otherwise it would not have been. If man had not sinned, he would always have ruled with wisdom and love; and if the woman had not sinned, she would always have obeyed with humility and meekness, and then the dominion had been no grievance: but our own sin and folly make our yoke heavy. If Eve had not eaten forbidden fruit herself, and tempted her husband to it, she had never complained of her subjection; therefore it ought never to be complained of, though harsh; but sin must be complained of, that made it so. Those wives, who not only despise and disobey their husbands, but domineer over them, do not consider that they not only violate a divine law, but thwart a divine sentence.
Lastly, Observe here, how mercy is mixed with
