Cheryl Schatz

gengwall,
You said:

God: Eve, there are some unfortunate consequences that are going to affect you personally because of the situation. You will have an increase in sorrow and in pregnancy and raising children will be generally not fun. This is all that jerk Adam’s fault, of course. Yet you will not succumb to what would be perfectly justified anger toward him. No indeed. Instead, you will continue to desire to connect deeply with him on the soul level in such a way that you are best friends; a level where you can share all your hopes and dreams with him. Yet, can you believe this, that dirty rotten no good so and so will not only not appreciate your efforts to be his soul mate, but he will take advantage of your goodness and purity and lack of ill will and instead dominate and oppress you all of your days. There is more, I’m sad to say. You, being female, will pass on your goodness to all your daughters. Oh sure, now and then one of them might go against her better nature and fall to her sin nature that she inherits from that misogynistic pig husband of yours, but by and large all women will naturally be kind hearted and model this pure desire you have for Adam. But since Adam is both evil and male, he will pass on only his abusive, ruling nature to men and they will subject their wives in the future just as Adam will subject you.

Now, that is quite dramatic, but it is in essence the argument that Cheryl puts forth as the correct interpretation of Gen 3:16.

Nope. Honestly I hear your own pain in this. It seems to me that you think that just because you are a male that egalitarians (and me?) look on you as a male, receiving only evil from Adam’s nature and we women are perfect and unaffected by sin. I don’t know where your reset button is, but if I could find it I would likely push it to clear out the bad thoughts. I am not against you and I don’t know anyone here who is against you. And I will say it once more….our father Adam brought sin into the world and all of us are influenced by a nature that causes us to rebel.

And the biggest reset button is our Lord Jesus. He is able to change us into His image. Now men don’t get more of the image of Jesus than women do or vice-versa. We all share the same human first father and we as Christians will all share in the same Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

see Gen 3:16 as more balanced than that. But I still must postpone my interpretation and first look at the rest of scriptural teaching (not biblical history) when it deals with
marriage.

Oh my goodness, I hope so. That was a terribly unfair rendering.

When God instructs us about marriage in scripture, He always maintains a balance between husband and wife. Genesis 2:24 is the best example of this. Although He created them distinctly male and female, the two are equal and create, in godly marriage, a one flesh union. 1 Cor 7 is also a stark example, with Paul addressing husband and wife with instructions to be explicitly equal in relation to each other in sexual matters. We see the balance in Song of Solomon, where neither lover is dominant and both of their desires are unconditionally met. And we see it in Ephesians 5 and 1 Peter 3, where, although making gender distinctions, the instructions to each gender have equal weight and produce balanced results to the marriage. In all of these cases God’s teaching on marriage is gender balanced, with neither gender being better or worse, or getting more or less, than the other.

I don’t have any problem with this.

Why would God deviate from the pattern here? Why would God all of a sudden elevate one gender while denigrating the other?

Oh, I see the problem. You think that because God says something that He is proposing it. But that is not the case. God is saying what Eve will do and He is telling Eve what her husband will do.

Notice two things here. He isn’t telling her that any of this is what He wants. He is predicting their human wills.

Secondly notice that He doesn’t tell Adam what he will do. Why? Because Adam doesn’t need to be warned about something that he can’t control. So what is this all about? It is about two people who are one in flesh in their marriage union dealing with a bad situation out of the garden. What has this got to do with the good things that are set up for all marriages?

Moreover, why would God predict a pattern of behavior that is neither lived out in real life human experience or addressed in subsequent teaching?

Do you mean why would God predict Adam’s bad behavior to Eve? Because she has the option of whether to leave the garden or not. He isn’t forcing her out. It isn’t going to be a rose garden out there with the sin cursed earth and the one who brought sin into the world. Is God predicting that all men will rule women? Whether this is something that a lot of men do or not doesn’t mean that God is telling Eve that this is what her sons are going to do to her. God is specifically talking to one person (Eve) and telling her about her own husband.

It just doesn’t make any sense unless Gen 3:16 has nothing to do with marriage; unless it is exclusively about Adam and Eve. But nobody suggests that that is the case.

I think people have taken Genesis 3:16 far beyond the prediction that God made. Now if God had said to Eve that Adam and all her sons will rule her, then that would have been a double warning for her and a predictor about all men. But is God actually telling Eve that all men will rule her?

Gen 3:16 is the sin axis around which Gen 2:24 and Eph 5 rotate – the ideal of Gen 2:24 on one pole, the path to return to the ideal on the other pole of Eph 5. Of course, for this to be true, one would need to establish that Eve’s “desire” is sinful.

So it seems like you have a package deal that would fall to pieces if Eve was not sinful. I don’t know, my friend, but if I had to make a woman sinful without a second witness, I think I would drop my package deal on Genesis 3:16. For if for you to be right, you have to make her sinful, then your desire to be right is going to be a stumbling block to see anything other than what you want to see in the passage.

On conjunctions – Cheryl is correct that the conjunctions could be translated “yet”, but that is only one possibility. If the verse says what she says it says, then her conjunctions are correct. But you can’t decide what the conjunction must be and then determine the meaning of the conjoined phrases. You have to determine the meaning of the phrases and then the conjunctions fall in line. It is just as likely that phrases 2 and 3 are not subsequent and antithetical to each preceding phrase, but are instead simply items 2 and 3 in a list of consequences and not so intimately related to the preceding phrases. So “and” is just as valid an interpretation.

It isn’t just a conjunction, it is a coordinating conjunction.

..therefore the connection between the parts is established and it isn’t just a list of unrelated events.