June 2, 2026

The Seed of the Woman

A reflection on the first gospel promise — the seed of the woman who would bruise the serpent — and on what Joseph Smith's translation restores: the Son named and worshipped from Adam's day.

The first promise of the gospel is spoken in a garden, to a serpent, over a fallen pair: I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. It is easy to read past. But the Christian witness has always heard in it the first prophecy of Christ — the seed of the woman who would crush the power that had ruined Eden, and be wounded in the doing of it.

In the received text the promise stands almost alone, a single hard verse before the long silence of the genealogies. The Restoration Edition restores what surrounds it. Adam is taught the meaning of the sacrifice he is commanded to offer — a similitude of the sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father, who is full of grace and truth. The gospel, it says, was preached from the beginning, declared by angels and by the Lord’s own voice. The seed of the woman is not a riddle left for later prophets to decode; it is the opening line of a gospel already being preached to the first man.

To read the promise this way is to see the whole of scripture differently. The covenant carried through Enoch, through Noah, through Abraham, is not a slow approach toward a Christ who has not yet been revealed. It is the keeping of a name already known. The woman’s seed is named and worshipped from Adam’s day; the rest of the record is the working out of the enmity, toward the heel that is bruised and the head that is crushed.

The passages are gathered in Prophecies of the Son of God. Read them as the first chapter of the life of Christ, not the prologue to it.