Wherefore after this great original promise had been thus set forth generally in the beginning and had by degrees been more circumstantially particularized, and then confined to the seed of Abraham; and further restricted by means of the patriarch Jacob to a certain tribe, the tribe of Judah; after this the devil became unconcerned about other peoples and tribes, and persecuted this one line of generation with marvelous cruelties and stratagems; until about the time of Christ it had been reduced to the extremest poverty and had become a hopeless trunk-root, from which no one could hope for either fruit or leaves. And hence it is that the Scriptures term that line of succession a "stem" or bare root as it were of Jesse, Is. 11:1, signifying thereby a decaying trunk from which nothing whatever could be expected. This hatred and this fury of Satan are the effects produced on him, which the Lord here predicts, when he warns the serpent of the enmity which he had put between his seed and the Seed of the woman. For Satan primarily sought this Seed of the woman with hostile hatred, through all the peoples, families and lines throughout the whole world. When the promise was transferred to Abraham and restricted to his posterity, we see from history by what various means Satan attempted to hinder its fulfilment. And when this glorious promise was further transferred to the line of Judah and restricted to that tribe, we behold with what horrible calamities it was oppressed and agitated, until at length it seemed to be wholly subverted and eradicated. So that at the time of the birth of Christ poor Mary was living at a long distance from Jerusalem in the little and insignificant town of Nazareth, and Jerusalem itself was possessed and governed by wicked heathen. Wherefore most correctly and beautifully was this tribe of Judah compared to a dead and hopeless "stem" of Jesse. But as God cannot lie, this "root," so much decayed and despaired of, at length blossomed forth.