Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“To the woman he said,
“I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth.
    You will bear children in pain.
Your desire will be for your husband,
    and he will rule over you.””
Genesis 3:16

The first human to be dealt with in our group of four is NOT cursed. She has consequences for her actions, but she is NOT cursed. In judgment, God shows MERCY and GRACE. Also, the female receives PARALLEL consequences with the male. This is not one above another, or one subservient to another. They were EQUAL partners and received EQUAL consequences. If anything, the male had greater culpability since he WASN’T deceived and she was (1 Timothy 2:14). This verse should NEVER be used to bring women down. ALWAYS look at it in tandem with verse 17.

The revised JPS 2025 has this verse as: “And to the woman [God] said, “I will greatly expand Your toil—and your pregnancies; In hardship shall you bear children. Yet your urge shall be for your husband, And his will shall prevail over yours.”. Torah: The Woman’s Commentary has this to say about the language of this verse: ‘“your toil and your pregnancies.” Older translations and some recent ones translate this pair of nouns differently. The New JPS version has “your pangs in childbirth,” and Chaim Stern’s translation of Genesis in The Torah: A Modem Commentary, revised edition, has “your pains of pregnancy.” The Hebrew noun itzavon (from etzev), is here translated as “toil.” In ancient Israel women regularly worked long hours—in food preparation and storage, in the manufacture of clothing, in farming alongside of men, and more. For the Torah’s original audience, this story would have brought such labors readily to mind. The word can also be rendered as either “sorrow,” “hardship,” or “anguish.” All these meanings appear elsewhere in Genesis (for example, “hard labor,” 5:29). Indeed, itzavon does not mean “pain” elsewhere in the Bible.’ This verse ‘neither imposes physical pain upon the woman nor condones it. The passage describes the hardship that often accompanies birthing and raising children. Unlike the pronouncements to the serpent, which speak of perpetual enmity, nothing suggests that this etzev is a continual condition. Thus along with her joy in being a parent (4:1), the first woman will herself experience—and express—sorrow and the need for comfort after her first-born kills his brother (4:25).’

The ‘ruling’ of the male over the female is here connected to her desire for him. This is not a legal ruling status. This is not the woman forced to give herself to the male (in Jewish AND Christian thought they are EQUAL partners and in any marriage are EQUALLY responsible to give and be giving with their physical passions – see 1 Corinthians 7:5). This is woman having to undergo toil in pregnancy and maybe not wanting to do it again, but being unable to help themselves because their passions are for their husbands. It would seem God is simply informing her that because they chose to take on this knowledge of the flesh (thinking in lustful terms), it ‘will greatly increase your discomfort, etc.,’ including that regarding pregnancy, that even if the woman takes care to minimize the incidence of marital relations in order to not become pregnant, her natural tendency to engage in marital relations will overcome her unwillingness to become pregnant again and again. He is warning her that taking on purely fleshly thinking – without the buffer of a godly spiritual nature – they would be slaves to those passions. It is the same kind of warning Cain gets to rule over sinful temptation in Genesis 4:7. When we don’t get serious about monitoring our thinking and desires, they can easily rule over us and take us where we don’t want to go (or where we haven’t prepared ourselves to go). God is warning her that before there was desire, but now it will almost seem like a function of biology and not a choice – if we give into biological thinking we can get VERY animalistic and start calling it a NEED or a MUST, which it is NOT. Also, I believe this is why God puts periods of must-not-touch into the Law when He gives it – to enforce breaks and recovery times for the women so that it doesn’t need to be an animal urge we constantly give into (a framework for self-control when we don’t have the self part of it).

This verse does not make males the masters of females. Within marriage there is still headship for the male (1 Corinthians 11:3), but it is like the CEO of a company not the dictator of a nation. It is a RESPONSIBILITY thing, not a DO WHAT I SAY thing. Why is it there? Partly so that males and females know their responsibilities (Adam SHOULD have said something since he was right there). And partly so that no one can try to say they didn’t know better (Eve SHOULD have double-checked with Adam who was right there). As far as who is ‘in charge’, we are commanded to submit to one another before the Lord in Ephesians 5:21 – again EQUAL PARTNERS before God (1 Peter 3:7; Ephesians 5:22-33), because we have different ROLES but one MARRIAGE. If the female was commanded to be a slave, she would constantly be seeking to run away (what slave in their right mind wouldn’t flee?). Instead, her position would be the reverse and females would seek the males. Seek their presence and nearness and in THAT sense, choose to be subordinate to them AS EQUAL PARTNERS. The Vice President to his President.