Every book has pages that are held together at the spine, and sometimes the publisher will tell you that this book has been smith-sown.

That refers to the way the pages are bound together by groups of pages being sewn together,

so that the book will hold together, perhaps even for centuries. That all used to be done by hand

until, sometime in the 1800s, a bright American by the name of David McConnell Smith invented a machine that could do it.

And ever since then, people have spoken about books being Smith-sown.

Actually, if you have a high-quality Bible, it may well be Smith-sown.

This week on Things Unseen, I want to make a very simple point.

Whether the Bible you use is physically smithson or not, it's theologically smithson.

I mean, it's pages, or more accurately, what's on those pages, is all held together by very strong threads.

And one of the strongest of these threads is found as you can probably guess in Genesis 315.

There, following the fall, God addresses the serpent and says,

I will put enmity between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

The first thing to say here is that the rest of the Bible makes clear

that the serpent is an instrument and representative of Satan.

Remember how the Book of Revelation notes that the dragon who appears in the drama that

John witnesses is that ancient serpent, the devil?

After the serpent's deception of Eve and his luring of Adam into eating the fruit of the

tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God pronounces these words of curse on the serpent.

But they're more than a curse. They're also a prophecy, and they contain a promise, a promise

of ongoing conflict between the serpent's seed and

...