Genesis 3:16

Effects on women 3:16

1. Eve would experience increased pain in bearing children. There evidently would have been some pain in the process of bearing children before the Fall, but Eve and her daughters would experience increased pain. The text does not say that God promised more conception as well as more pain. [Note: Cf. Schaeffer, p. 93.] "Pain" and "childbirth" is probably another hendiadys in the Hebrew text meaning pregnancy pain.

2. Women’s desire would be for their husbands. There have been several different interpretations of what the woman’s "desire" would be.

a. The phrase "your desire will be for your husband" means that a woman’s desire would be subject to her husband’s desire.

"Her desire, whatever it may be, will not be her own. She cannot do what she wishes, for her husband rules over her like a despot and whatever she wishes is subject to his will." [Note: E. J. Young, Genesis 3, p. 127. Cf. John Calvin, Genesis, p. 172.]

b. The woman will have a great longing, yearning, and psychological dependence on her husband.

"This yearning is morbid. It is not merely sexual yearning. It includes the attraction that woman experiences for man which she cannot root from her nature. Independent feminists may seek to banish it, but it persists in cropping out." [Note: Leupold, 1:172. Cf. Gini Andrews, Your Half of the Apple, p. 51.]

c. The woman will desire to dominate the relationship with her husband. This view rests on the parallel Hebrew construction in Genesis 4:7. This view seems best to me.

"The ’curse’ here describes the beginning of the battle of the sexes. After the Fall, the husband no longer rules easily; he must fight for his headship. The woman’s desire is to control her husband (to usurp his divinely appointed headship), and he must master her, if he can. Sin had corrupted both the willing submission of the wife and the loving headship of the husband. And so the rule of love founded in paradise is replaced by struggle, tyranny, domination, and manipulation." [Note: Foh, p. 69. See also her article, "What is the Woman’s Desire?" Westminster Theological Journal 37:3 (Spring 1975):376-383; Mathews, p. 251; and Waltke, Genesis, p. 94.]

d. The woman would continue to desire to have sexual relations with her husband even though after the Fall she experienced increased pain in childbearing.

". . . the woman’s desire for the man and his rule over her are not the punishment but the conditions in which the woman will suffer punishment. . . . It may be concluded that, in spite of the Fall, the woman will have a longing for intimacy with man involving more than sexual intimacy. . . . [Note: Irving Busenitz, "Woman’s Desire for Man: Genesis 3:16 Reconsidered," Grace Theological Journal 7:2 (Fall 1986):203, 206-8. Cf. Song of Solomon 7:10.]

This view takes this statement of God as a blessing rather than a curse.