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Not to get into apologetics or anything , BUT the accurate wording of Sacred Scripture says: I will put enmities between thee and the woman and thy seed and her seed, she shall crush thy head and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel. Gen 3:15 I'm sure I don't have to tell you our Lord is not a "she", so Mel's right on. ~~ gypsigirl
How long have you studied Hebrew? For me, it's about thirty years now. The Hebrew text is unambiguous and, in fact, emphatic. The masculine pronoun is added, though not needed; and the verb is Qal imperfect, third person masculine singular with a second person masculine singular pronominal suffix. "He, he shall strike you." No doubt about that. ~~ BibChr
St. Jerome knew Hebrew very well, maybe even a little better than yourself ;-), as well as being fluent in Latin, Greek, and Chaldaic. His Vulgate is the most accurate translation of Sacred Scripture and was used exclusively until the 1500's. ~~ gypsigirl

Well, Jerome may or may not have been a better Hebrew scholar than Dan (in fact, Jerome was simply one of the relatively-few Major Fathers at the time who knew much Hebrew at all, which does not prove he was a "Hebrew linguistic savant"...

...Except that you're not even quoting Jerome, are you now, lass; you're quoting that deplorable cheesecloth, the "Douay-Rheims Bible".

From a Roman Catholic (and therefore right and good, natch) Apologetics website:

The essential difference between these two renderings -- or at least the one people always ask about -- concerning who will crush the serpent's head and who the serpent is trying to strike. The Douay-Rheims uses feminine pronouns -- she and her -- implying that the woman is the person being spoken of in this part of the verse. All modern translations use masculine pronouns -- he and his -- implying that the seed of the woman is the of that part of the verse.

The reason for the difference in the renderings is a manuscript difference. Modern translations follow what the original Hebrew of the passage says. The Douay-Rheims, however, is following a manuscript variant found in many early Fathers and some editions of the Vulgate (but not the original; Jerome followed the Hebrew text in his edition of the Vulgate). The variant probably originated as a copyist error when a scribe failed to take note that the subject of the verse had shifted from the woman to the seed of the woman. ~~ http://www.cin.org/users/james/questions/q105.htm

The Latin word for “He” is ipse (not ipsa, "she") and is translated as such in the Latin translation of the Bible by Jerome (405 A.D.), as well as every ancient translation of Scripture we have.

Ahh, the ever-bumbling Douay-Rheims, quite possibly the single most incompetent "translation" of the Bible ever penned by the hand of man -- it's not faithful to the Hebrew, it's not faithful to the Greek, it's not even bloody well faithful to JEROME, fer cryin' out loud.

By the way, Dan, when you say "The masculine pronoun is added, though not needed" -- not to nitpick, but actually the addition of the Masculine Pronoun here (in addition to the singular voice of the verb and suffix) may well be God's predestinarian way of providentially countermanding the anti-messianic Jewish reading. Notice how the Jewish Publication Society re-words the Verse:

I will put enmity
Between you and the woman'
And between your offspring and hers;
THEY shall strike at your head,
And you shall strike at their heel.

Thus turning this from a Messianic prophecy, into a pro-Judaism prophecy. But in addition to the singular voices of the verb and suffix which you point out, I would argue that with the Masculine Pronoun "HE" included, God is making it all the more emphatically a prophecy of Jesus in particular and all the more adamant that our otherwise-admirable Jewish friends are not Biblically permitted to re-word the verse as they have.

My knowledge of Hebrew being somewhere between "microscopic" and "infinitesimal", It'll probably be thirty more years before I have any opportunity to teach you anything on the matter -- so I thought I'd throw that little morsel-for-thought at you when I had the chance. ;-)

Best, OP

Thanks for the information; good, as usual!

I never doubt the hand of God's infinite wisdom in the wording of God-breathed Scripture, and it is remarkable how some texts seem to anticipate errors not invented for centuries, or even millennia, after their publication.

What I was saying is this: Hebrew verbs, unlike English but like every other language I know anything about, have built-in number-reference, and even gender-reference. By that I mean this: in English, "strike" says very little until I add pronoun and helping-verbs, such as "he will, she will, they used to, it may," etc. Not so in Hebrew (or Greek, or Latin, or Spanish, etc.). The verb itself MEANS "he-will-strike." No need to add a separate pronoun. If a separate pronoun IS added, the result is emphatic in some way.

In this text, a separate pronoun IS added. "He [pronoun] he-will-strike-you [verb]."

And ma'am, I don't dispute that Jerome knew things I don't. But I would suggest that an additional seventeen HUNDRED years of Hebrew studies has added some to the corpus of Hebrew knowledge.

And in this case, all the ballast from the "bull" (ironic name) is just that. NONE of it arises either from that text, nor from any other. It is no more legitimate to join Mary to the singular masculine verb than it is to join ay other of Jesus' ancestors according to the flesh: David, Solomon, Rahab, Bathsheba....

It's just another case where a Christian rejoices to be bound in conscience to God's Word alone, while RC's feel themselves shackled to the accumulated errors of the centuries.

Dan