Cheryl Schatz

Charis,

Can you tell me from the passage where we know that the first man and woman had marital relations before the fall? I don’t see it in there.

There are two places where we can understand that Adam and Eve had normal marital relations in the garden. The first indication is that God commanded it in Genesis 1:28.

Genesis 1:28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it;

There is no indication at all that the man and woman would not have naturally obeyed the command. The second very strong indication is in Genesis 2.

Gen 2:23 The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.”
Gen 2:24 For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.

Right after Adam accepts Eve as his own flesh and bone mate, it is immediately said “For this reason” that they are to come together and it is so that “they shall become one flesh.” Although it isn’t worded that Adam “knew” Eve, it is clear that God joined the man and woman together in marriage and right after he joined them their becoming one flesh is a very proper way of letting us know that they indeed did become one flesh as a result of God joining them in marriage. If they didn’t have sex, then verse 24 is meaningless in the verse immediately following Adam’s complete acceptance of Eve.

When we also take into consideration that Adam and Eve likely lived in the garden for an extended period of time before the fall happened, it would be unnatural for two married people who are sexual beings to not obey God and have marital relations.

You also said:

I think that the “desire” in “your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you” must have a sexual component to it. I base this on the context of Genesis 3:16 which mentions pregnancy and childbirth twice. As you observed, God increases her fertility post-Fall per Gen 3:16. I think God not only increased her fertility but also increased her sexual desire.

God did not say that he would increase her sexual desire. He only said that he would greatly increase her conception and her toil. The problem with making sex a post fall thing would be that we would have to see Adam’s desire as not there also before the fall because sex can certainly happen with only one person’s strong desire and the other person’s lesser desire but willingness to give of themselves. If we see animals as blessed by God and going about obeying God by doing what animals do naturally, surely we shouldn’t think that God’s blessing on the man and woman would cause them to choose to ignore the marital “becoming one flesh” in order to only enjoy talking with each other. Nothing in the text shows that “one flesh” was not part of their obedience to God.

I believe the “desire” spoken of in Genesis 3:16 has other components besides the sexual component. She desired to please, to satisfy, to “be enough” for her husband. This can go off the deep end into husband idolatry- where she lives to please man instead of God. I say this from personal experience living in a woman’s skin.

The Hebrew word for “desire” according to Strong’s means:

in the original sense of stretching out after; a longing: – desire.

Since it is a stretching out after, a longing for the man and since only Adam was forced out of the garden, it clearly explains why Eve left to go after the man instead of staying in the Garden with God.

So as far as sexuality goes, unless God said that he would increase the man’s sexuality after sin happened, and he didn’t say that, then we can assume that Adam and Eve had normal sexual relations in the garden just as they were commanded by God.