Genesis 3:16: How Was the Woman Punished?

The meaning of the second part of the woman's penalty centers around two very important words that have a most amazing translation history, "desire" and "will rule." Seldom has so much mischief been caused by a translation error that became institutionalized.

Is it true that due to the Fall women naturally exhibit overpowering sexual desires for their husbands? And if this is so, did God simultaneously order husbands to exercise authority over their wives? In one form or another, most conservative interpreters answer both of these questions emphatically yes and point to Genesis 3:16 as the grounds for their answer. But will the text itself bear the weight of such important claims?

The Hebrew word tesuqah, now almost universally translated as "desire," was previously rendered as "turning." The word appears in the Hebrew Old Testament only three times: here in Genesis 3:16, in Genesis 4:7 and in Song of Songs 7:10. Of the twelve known ancient versions (the Greek Septuagint, the Syriac Peshitta, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Old Latin, the Sahidic, the Bohairic, the Ethiopic, the Arabic, Aquila's Greek, Symmachus's Greek, Theodotion's Greek and the Latin Vulgate), almost every one (twenty-one out of twenty-eight times) renders these three instances of tesuqah as "turning," not "desire."

Likewise, the church fathers (Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Epiphanius and Jerome, along with Philo, a Jew who died about A.D. 50) seem to be ignorant of any other sense for this word tesuqah than the translation of "turning." Furthermore, the Latin rendering was conversio and the Greek was apostrophe or epistrophe, words all meaning "a turning."

With such strong and universal testimony in favor of "turning," how did the idea of desire ever intrude into the translator's agenda? Again, it was Katherine C. Bushnell who did the pioneer research on this problem. She traced its genesis to an Italian Dominican monk named Pagnino who translated the Hebrew Bible. Pagnino, according to the infamous biblical critic Richard Simon, "too much neglected the ancient versions of Scripture to attach himself to the teachings of the rabbis." Pagnino's version was published in Lyons in 1528, seven years before Coverdale's English Bible. Now except for Wycliffe's 1380 English version and the Douay Bible of 1609, both of which were made from the Latin Vulgate, every English version from the time of Pagnino up to the present day has adopted Pagnino's rendering for Genesis 3:16.

The older English Bibles, following Pagnino, rendered this verse as "Thy lust [or lusts] shall pertayne [pertain] to thy husband." Clearly, then, the sense given to the word by Pagnino and his followers was that of libido or sensual desire. The only place that Bushnell could locate such a concept was in the "Ten Curses of Eve" in the Talmud.

It is time the church returned to the real meaning of this word. The sense of Genesis 3:16 is simply this: As a result of her sin, Eve would turn away from her sole dependence on God and turn now to her husband. The results would not at all be pleasant, warned God, as he announced this curse.

Nowhere does this text teach, nor does nature confirm by our observations, that there would now be a tendency for a woman to be driven by a desire for sexual relationships with her husband or with other men. This is both a misrepresentation of the text and a male fantasy born out of some other source than the Bible or human nature. Even if the word is tamed down to mean just an inclination or a tendency, we would be no further ahead. These renderings would still miss the point of the Hebrew. The Hebrew reads, "You are turning away [from God!] to your husband, and [as a result] he will rule over you [take advantage of you]."

Though this text only predicts how some husbands will take advantage of their wives when the wives turn to their husbands after turning away from God, some argue that this second verb should be rendered "he shall rule over you." This would make the statement mandatory with the force of a command addressed to all husbands to rule over their wives.

The Hebrew grammar once again will not allow this construction. The verb contains a simple statement of futurity; there is not one hint of obligation or normativity in this verb. To argue differently would be as logical as demanding that a verb in verse 18 be rendered "It shall produce thorns and thistles." Thereafter, all Christian farmers who used weed killer would be condemned as disobedient to the God who demanded that the ground have such thorns and thistles.

The often-repeated rejoinder to this will rule/shall rule argument is to go to Genesis 4:7: "Sin is crouching at the door; unto you is its turning, but you will [or shall in the sense of must] rule over it." There is no doubt that both the word tesuqah ("turning") and the verb to rule are found in both contexts. But what is debated is the best way to render the Hebrew.

Several suggestions avoid the traditional interpretation that insists on an obligatory sense to the verb to rule. One way predicts that Cain, now governed by sin and pictured as a crouching beast at his door, will rule over him (his brother, Abel). This, however, does not appear to be what the author meant.

A preferred way of handling this phrase would be to treat it as a question. (The absence of the particle introducing questions is a phenomenon witnessed in about half of Hebrew questions.) Hence we would render it "But you, will you rule over it?" or "Will you be its master?" (This interpretation is also favored by H. Ewald, G. R. Castellino and, to some extent, Claus Westermann.)

Even though many hold to the belief that 1 Corinthians 14:34 refers to Genesis 3:16 when it records, "Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says," I cannot agree. When the Corinthians referred to the law (it seems that Paul is answering a previous question they wrote to him), it was to the Jewish law found in the Talmud and Mishnah that they referred. There it was taught that a woman should not speak and that she must be silent, but that is not taught in the Old Testament!

The only conceivable way a person could link up Genesis 3:16 with 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 would be if the Genesis passage said husbands must rule over their wives. Since such a wording of the verse has been proven impossible, this reference should be surrendered. We should lay no stronger burden on God's people than what is warranted in God's Word.

Later on in God's revelation, our Lord will affirm a job subordination within the marriage relationship, and the husband will be answerable to God for the well-being of his wife and family. However, Genesis 3:16 does not carry any of those meanings.

We may conclude, then, that tesuqah does not refer to the lust or sexual appetite of a woman for a man. Neither does the verb to rule over her express God's order for husbands in their relationships to their wives.

See also comment on EPHESIANS 5:22; 1 PETER 3:6; 3:7