wlotus | Biblical Ponderings

To the woman [God] said, “...Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.”
~Genesis 3:16b, NKJV

In the later years of my identification as an evangelical Christian, I understood this account of God's word to Eve after Adam and she sinned to be a warning: God was warning Eve that because they were no longer sinless, men would oppress women, rather than women and men living and ruling the earth (not each other) as complete equals as Eve and Adam had done up to that point (Genesis 1:27-30). But it was only this afternoon that I realized God made no mention to Adam of a backlash against men because of the way they had oppressed women. It couldn't be because God (as the writer of this account knew God) did not know; according to the Bible, God knows everything. So was that part of God's word left out by the writers (or later editors), who were products of their misogynistic culture? Or, perhaps, did God not say anything to Adam about the inevitable backlash, because he knew Adam's sinful state would not allow him to hear and understand the danger of giving in to that sinful desire to rule over women?

Discuss.

Threaded | Flat

Personally, I believe that the statement to Eve is a product of misogynistic culture, a justification for the lack of equality between the sexes.

I grew up understanding it as a judgement against Eve: You disobeyed. You will be punished. But it can equally well -- or even better? -- be read as a regretful statement of consequences. It's not God declaring that women should be ruled over by men, it's a prediction of what's going to happen.

The lack of warning to Adam -- as you observe -- helps to give the passage a sense of being a judgement.

I also believe that our ability to hear the voice of the Divine is limited by our mental-spiritual state and our conditions. I think it's entirely possible that if God had given a warning to Adam about the backlash, the original writer might not have heard it. A backlash against men for ruling women? Inconceivable!

There is word about that. God's punishment to man would be that he would have to labour and work the earth, and be a labourer. There may be stuff left out, but I don't think so. My understanding of it is, that women would have pain in childbirht, they would desire their husbands but he would "rule" over her. Not in the I'm the boss of you kind of rule, but the responsibility for. And in her desiring of her husband, she would be disappointed because it would no longer be the close three way relationship between man, God and woman. Man's punishment would be the heavy responsibility of providing for and working land that would no longer be as fruitful as when they were in the garden. Which, I believe fits if you look at the area in which they lived.

But here is the beauty of it. Jesus changed all that. He brought grace. And woman no longer has to fear birth, and her desire can be for a deeper relationship with Jesus. Man and woman are equal. Different of course but equal. Man has grace. And he is instructed to love his wife, as Christ loves the church.

I don't know if that makes any sense. SO much of my faith is tied to the emotional, "knowing" in my spirit the truth, even though there is so much I don't understand and may never understand until I get to Heaven.

Personally I think it's a racket; men wrote it, and wrote it thus in order to provide divine justification for the oppression of women. I highly doubt that God said any such thing at all. But then, I'm a godless heathen with all manner of unapproved religious notions.

Do you know the Gnostic version of Scriptures? The idea that the God Yahweh of Genesis is actually the Demiurge, a false God who created the earth and humankind because he wanted to rule over something? It goes on that Satan was actually sent by the true Creator (or came of his own volition, the stories vary) to encourage Adam and Eve to partake of the Tree of Knowledge in a bid to free them from the blind enslavement forced on them by the evil Yahweh. In this interpretation, Christ came not to offer people eternal life with Yahweh via the traditional Christian take on salvation, but to offer them freedom from Yahweh's tyranny through enlightenment.

Alternatively, there is the story of Lilith, said to be Adam's first wife. The story for her follows that because she was created simultaneously with Adam, she considered herself his equal and would not submit to him (some variations put a decidedly sexual spin on this, saying that Adam wanted Lilith to be on the bottom, and she adamantly refused). She left him, and was turned into a demon, and Eve was given to Adam as a replacement. She had no real choice but to submit because she owed her existence to Adam, originating from his rib and all.

Both stories put a veeerrrry interesting new spin on how to interpret the Fall, and the Gnostic stories have always made much more sense to me, lending some internal consistency to the Scriptures that otherwise aren't there in the traditional texts.

Personally, as a Jew, I think the scriptures contain a great deal that was editorially slanted, corrupted, or outright made up. This doesn't make them useless or wrong, just something that requires thought to read.

They're useful as a textual representation of several thousand years of conversations between the Divine and the Jewish people, but they should be the beginning of discussion, not the end of it.

For info on the Gnostic gospels I highly recommend Elaine Pagel's classic book on the- simply titled The Gnostic Gopels. Some of the Gnostic gospels refer to an original Mother goddess, and that Yaweh was jealous of her.

I flirted with a sort of feminist Gnostic Chritianity from age 13-15, then was sort of "new-agey" minus the guru worshipping from 15-17, Then at 17 I finally discovered Paganism and found my spiritual home. (My mother was a liberal Southern Baptist and my dad was Agnostic, so individualism and personal questing for spirituality was a natural thing in my household.) At 19 I found my path within Paganism, as a skeptical solitary eclectic Wicca. That's been my path for 23 years now.

Hmmmm.... interesting discussion. Personally I feel that that verse is a this-shall-happen-and-have-such-and-such-consequences thing. If you desire someone, you'll be inclined to put up with some things that maybe you wouldn't if you didn't have that desire. So to me, this verse answers the question 'why do women put up with so much lousy behavior from men?' ... And yeah, I know that's an over-generalisation, but it seems to cover some things well enough...

did God not say anything to Adam about the inevitable backlash, because he knew Adam's sinful state would not allow him to hear and understand the danger of giving in to that sinful desire to rule over women?

To what backlash are you referring?

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