A Syntactical Note (Genesis 3:15): Is the Woman’s Seed Singular or Plural?

Abstract

This article addresses the question whether the woman’s ‘seed’ in Genesis 3:15 is an individual (as LXX interprets) or her posterity, by an empirical study of how Biblical Hebrew used its pronouns and verb inflections when they are associated with zera‘, ‘seed’, when it has the nuance ‘offspring’. Syntactically Genesis 3:15 exhibits the pattern found when zera‘ refers to an individual. The article concludes with some suggestions for following the exegetical consequences of this syntactical result.