Don’t Mess with the Ladies

In traditional Western art, you will notice that it is the Blessed Virgin whose foot stomps the serpent’s head. This is due to the Vulgate rendition of Gen. 3:15: SHE will crush your head. The Woman will crush the serpent’s head? Hmm. Well, see Treasury p. 40, where Luther’s Babylonian Captivity supplies the writing for the day: “In this word of promise Adam, together with his descendants, was carried as it were in God’s bosom, and by faith in it he was preserved, waiting patiently for the woman who should bruise the serpent’s head as God had promised.” But then also think about this:

You read in Judges the story of Jael and Sisera, and there is no way that Gen. 3 does not come to mind.

Judges 5:23-27 (ESV) 23 “Curse Meroz, says the angel of the LORD, curse its inhabitants thoroughly, because they did not come to the help of the LORD, to the help of the LORD against the mighty. 24 “Most blessed of women be Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, of tent-dwelling women most blessed. 25 He asked for water and she gave him milk; she brought him curds in a noble’s bowl. 26 She sent her hand to the tent peg and her right hand to the workmen’s mallet; she struck Sisera; she crushed his head; she shattered and pierced his temple. 27 Between her feet he sank, he fell, he lay still; between her feet he sank, he fell; where he sank, there he fell--dead.

Says the angel of the Lord! That is, the words “Most blessed of women be Jael” are words from an angel! She proved to be the unlikely instrument through whom God wrought a great salvation in Israel, as the angel made this clear in the song, and she did so by crushing the enemy’s head.

Then, of course, there’s another text along similar lines. This one from the Apocrypha. A woman again, this time Judith, triumphs over the enemy by…removing his head! (You noting a pattern?) As she carries General Holoferenes’ head back to Uzziah, the old man says to her: “O daughter, you are blessed by the Most High above all women on earth!” (Judith 13:18) A woman again became the unlikely instrument through whom God wrought a great salvation.

NOW you go to Luke 1:28 (reading with the Majority Text), and another Angel, Gabriel, announces to Mary that she is “blessed among women” and later Elizabeth will declare the same (Luke 1:42). That should make Satan VERY nervous about the state of his head!

With this declaration, and the connection to the Judith and Jael, you can see why Western art pictures the Blessed Virgin stomping on the serpent’s head and crushing it. Of course, she does in very different way from her two predecessors among womanly blessedness with their bloody violence; Mary simply does it by speaking her fiat to God and then by giving birth to her Son, giving birth to the One Human that Satan never could and never would get his claws into. 

If you ever want to understand Satan’s hatred of women and children, it takes its origin right here. He knows through whom he was defeated. A mother and her Child.