In the previous post, we dealt with the verses in which God announces the curse on the serpent for the role he played in deceiving the first humans to reject their vocation and turn inward. Now we turn to the verse in which God announces the consequences for the woman. And we will see how devastating patriarchal ways of interpreting this verse have been. We will offer, of course, a different way of reading the text.

Hebrew text:

16 אֶֽל־הָאִשָּׁ֣ה אָמַ֗ר הַרְבָּ֤ה אַרְבֶּה֙ עִצְּבוֹנֵ֣ךְ וְהֵֽרֹנֵ֔ךְ בְּעֶ֖צֶב תֵּֽלְדִ֣י בָנִ֑ים וְאֶל־אִישֵׁךְ֙ תְּשׁ֣וּקָתֵ֔ךְ וְה֖וּא יִמְשָׁל־בָּֽךְ׃ ס

Transliteration:

16 ’el-  hā·’iš·šāh  ’ā·mar, har·bāh  ’ar·beh ‘iṣ·ṣə·ḇō·w·nêḵ  wə·hê·rō·nêḵ, bə·‘e·ṣeḇ tê·lə·ḏî  ḇā·nîm; wə·’el- ’î·šêḵ tə·šū·qā·ṯêḵ,  wə·hū yim·šāl- bāḵ. s

NIV:

16 To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

Study:

God’s message to the woman hinges around two words – עִצָּבוֹן (its-tsaw-bone’), translated ‘painful labor’, and תְּשׁוּקָה (tesh-oo-kaw’), translated ‘desire’ and the way most translations have rendered these two words clearly indicates a bias against women.¹ What, then, is God telling the woman? What were the consequences of her disobedience? 

Tim Challies argues that, after eating the forbidden fruit, not only will the woman’s children multiply, but also the pain of childbirth will multiply.² Courtney Reissig similarly argues that this is not simply an issue of labor pains being multiplied but that there will be pain throughout the duration of rearing a child.³ Even worse than this is John Gill’s exposition of Genesis 3.16 in which he ascribes every possible physical, physiological and psychological symptom associated with pregnancy to the ‘curse’ on the woman.⁴ Still worse is Joseph Exell’s commentary in which not only are all the symptoms of pregnancy listed as part of the ‘curse’ on the woman but also the woman is expected to learn positive lessons from them.⁵ That Gill’s and Exell’s works have been hugely popular for over a century now (Gill’s for over three) is troubling because it shows how readily Christian leaders have lapped up views that denigrate women in the name of biblical exposition.

We must recognize that Genesis 3.16 does not indicate that God is punishing the woman. Indeed, the word ‘curse’ does not show up in v. 16 and all the previously mentioned resources fail to acknowledge this and read the idea into the text. And what they do is turn the otherwise natural process of childbirth into a ‘cursed’ experience. This has two devastating consequences. First, if this is something that God has inflicted on the woman as a ‘curse’ then there would be less of an impetus to reduce the debilitating symptoms women face during pregnancy. And indeed there have been some Christian groups that have done just that. Second, by not identifying correctly what God is saying in v. 16, these resources actually collude with patriarchy against women, in direct violation of what the text is actually intending to say. So let us try to make sense of this verse.

עִצָּבוֹן (its-tsaw-bone’) is used only three times in the bible, the other two instances being Genesis 3.17, in God’s message to the man, and Genesis 5.29, in the naming of Noah. In both these instances most translations recognize that there is no need to insist on any idea of pain. Rather, it is the grief associated with work that is in mind. Given this, there is no reason either to insist on an idea of pain in God’s message to the woman.

The word translated as ‘childbearing’ is הֵרוֹן (hay-rone’), which appears only three times in the bible. The next occurrence is in Ruth 4.13 and the final one is in Hosea 9.11, and in both cases it is translated as ‘conception’. There is no reason, in my view, to translate it as ‘childbearing’ or ‘childbirth’ in Genesis 3.16. More on this shortly.

תְּשׁוּקָה (tesh-oo-kaw’) is also used only three times in the bible. The next occurrence is in Genesis 4.7, in God’s message to Cain concerning sin. The final occurrence is in Song of Songs 7.10, where the Shulamite woman sings about the sexual desire her lover has for her. This last instance indicates that sexual desire is certainly within the semantic range of תְּשׁוּקָה (tesh-oo-kaw’). However, God’s message to Cain is closer in proximity, genre and content to the lyrics of the song. It pays to read Genesis 3.16b and Genesis 4.7c parallel to one another.

Genesis 3.16b – Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.

Genesis 4.7c – [Sin] desires to have you, but you must rule over it.

In both these verses, the word for ‘rule’ is מָשַׁל (maw-shal’), furthering the parallel. In the latter verse, it is clear that תְּשׁוּקָה (tesh-oo-kaw’) is used to mean ‘desire to dominate’. There can be no element of longing or appetite or sexual desire. Sin wants to dominate and defeat Cain. And this seems to be the sense in which תְּשׁוּקָה (tesh-oo-kaw’) should be taken in Genesis 3.16.⁶ God is telling the woman that she will want to dominate her husband. However, she will fail and in the end he will be the one to rule over her.⁷

This is an indictment of patriarchy from within patriarchy. The conflict between the sexes is a consequence of the disobedience of the first humans. The woman’s drive to dominate the man is a fallen desire. The man’s domination of the woman is also equally fallen.

With the above suggestions, Genesis 3.16 would read, “To the woman he said, ‘I will greatly increase the grief of your conception. With grief will you bring forth children for your husband. You will want to dominate him, but he will rule over you.’” What God is telling the woman is that the joyful occasions of conception and childbirth will become tainted as the world becomes one in which her only role becomes that of bearing children. With the rise of patriarchy, she will be under pressure to produce children for her husband. And, as recent studies indicate, increased stress can make women infertile.⁸ In other words, society will place so much weight on a woman conceiving and bearing children, especially sons, that this stress itself will make the whole process a sorrowful one instead of the joyful one it initially was supposed to be.

Since we are talking about biology, it pays to bear in mind that, among mammals, human babies are least developed at birth when compared to the adult of the species. Despite this, the gestation period of humans is exceptionally long for a mammal of equivalent size. Could it be that the gestation period was much shorter? The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists accepts that fetuses are viable at 25 weeks after conception.⁹ After this, with proper postnatal care, the newborn can survive into adulthood. Could it be that, knowing that the world is going to be a harsher place for humans, God extended the gestation period so that the newborn is more fully developed at birth, requiring less intensive care? Of course, extending the gestation period would mean that the fetus is much larger at birth, resulting in more adverse symptoms in the third trimester and more pain during childbirth. While this is pure speculation and not based on the text, it does offer an explanation for the amount women have now to endure during pregnancy and childbirth. And it presents this not as a curse but as a blessing (in disguise) that increases the newborn’s chances of survival.

Genesis 3.16 is God’s message to the woman, announcing the consequences of her disobedience. They are not words that pronounce a curse on the woman. Rather, read correctly, they give scathing condemnation of patriarchal practices in which this person, who was created to be עֵזֶר (ezer) for the man, will now be relegated only to being a vessel for bearing children. Our failure to recognize the polemic nature of the text has contributed to the suppression of women in our churches and it is time this stopped.

Prayer:

Our gracious, loving Father. You have created us humans with all our distinctiveness, including our gender. And you have created each one of us with the capacity of bearing your image to other humans and to the rest of creation. We, however, have developed a world that is driven by disparity and inequity, most acutely revealed in the disparity between women and men. We have read your words to the first woman as words that cursed her rather than as words that cursed our inequitable societies. We ask that, in your grace, you would enable us to work toward a more equitable and egalitarian world, one in which all of us know that we are your children. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

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^{1. See particularly R.C. Sproul. Pain in Childbearing.(Accessed on 14 July 2019), where without any groundwork he pits biblical womanhood and feminism against each other.↩}

^{2. Tim Challies. Pain in Childbearing. (Accessed on 14 July 2019)↩}

^{3. Courtney Reissig. Pain in Childbearing, (Accessed on 14 July 2019)↩}

^{4. John Gill. ‘Genesis 3:16’ in Exposition of the Entire Bible. (Accessed on 14 July 2019)↩}

^{5. Joseph Exell. ‘Genesis 3:16’ in The Bible Illustrator (Vol. 1) (Accessed on 14 July 2019)↩}

^{6. Contrary to Marg Mowczko. Teshuqah: The Woman’s “Desire” in Genesis 3:16. (Accessed on 14 July 2019) who rejects this meaning in favor of ‘turning’ which, being quite vague, does not actually throw light on the verse. While her discussion is brilliant at points, I think she so desperately wants תְּשׁוּקָה (tesh-oo-kaw’) to not mean ‘desire’ that she ends up grasping at straws.↩}

^{7. See John Piper. Manhood and Womanhood: Conflict and Confusion After the Fall. (Accessed on 14 July 2019), in which Piper identifies the parallel between the two verses despite unnecessarily reading his complementarian view of male-female relations into the text.↩}

^{8. Hallie Levine. How Stress Can Hurt Your Chances of Having a Baby. (Accessed on 13 July 2019)↩}

^{1. Periviable birth. Obstetric Care Consensus No. 6. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Obstet Gynecol 2017;130:e187–99.↩}