Missing the Trees for the Forest

Hey all,
When can we properly talk about the Messiah in Genesis? Most of us would ascribe to a text-oriented approach to reading; that is, we allow the text itself to inform us about the author's intent. But, all we've had so far in Genesis is one passage that talks about a "seed" or "offspring" that for all we know is quite ambiguous. Granted, we know the end of the story - but we shouldn't allow the end of the story to spoil how the author is getting us there. Moses makes a multitude of connections between different themes and concepts that are only peripherally concerned with the Messiah in these early chapters, and these are just as important to the author as the Messiah.
Let us not forget that the main topic of the Torah is the giving of the Law, the Sinai covenant. It covers about 2/3 of the text within the Torah, and to miss how Moses is setting us up for the giving of the Law at Sinai would be a great tragedy. Starting in Genesis 12 the author is going to start making some important commentary that sets us up for Sinai, making the Abrahamic covenant an essential ingredient on properly understanding Sinai. Though the messianic figure will emerge as a primary figure in the Torah, Moses' commentary on Sinai and faith deserves an equally fair share of attention. I mean, it's not until Numbers 23-24 that the concept of seed is clearly given a singular meaning. Before then, it ambiguously refers to all Israel and individual offspring of Abraham, with no indication of which is the seed of Eve in Gen 3.15. Moses purposefully leaves this tension in the book of Genesis for a reason, and we would do well to follow his story and argument as much as possible.
For some of us, this may be the first time we are reading through the Bible in a Tanakh order, or even reading through it with an eye to the author's intent and compositional strategy. Maybe restraining the Messiah references until the text leads us there would be helpful. What do you all think?
~aw