Poor Eve. For many millennia, she’s been blamed for the cause of all human suffering. But does Eve really deserve the weight of humanity’s sin upon her shoulders? And should all her female descendants forever be subjugated to their male counterparts because of it?
Adam and Eve’s Sin
Understanding what exactly happened when Adam and Eve took that bite of fruit from the forbidden tree of knowledge is instrumental in understanding Eve’s curse. Prior to eating from the tree, Adam and Eve were concerned about caring for the garden, the animals, and one another. The moment they took that bite of knowledge, that moment of "self-awareness," the object of their concern immediately shifted. They neglected the garden and caring for each other and immediately the language went from "we" to "I." Walter Brueggeman notes in his Genesis commentary of the "Interpretation" series that the language is now: "I heard... I was afraid... I was naked... I hid... I ate..."[1] I, I, I, I... suddenly, it's all about me! The communal concern for well-being disappeared, replaced by a concern for the self that overrode concern for the "other." Man and woman's concern now is about covering their nakedness, concerned about being shamed, concerned about how they might look to each other and to God. In other words, it’s become "all about appearances." And of course, concerned about the kind of trouble they're now going to get into.
Likewise, the moment they realized God wasn’t going to be happy, the blame game began. Adam blamed Eve, despite the fact that the bible clearly states that Adam was with Eve as a silent bystander as she engaged in the debate with the serpent, never uttering a word of protest or argument, and Eve in turn blamed the serpent. None, however, escaped God’s judgment.
Eve’s Curse
As a part of her punishment, God doled out the following curse to Eve: “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." (Gen. 3:16)
This understanding of the curse has been used to argue that since the fall, the woman has been put in a place of "subjugation" under her husband. A husband rules his wife and that's the natural "order" of things. However, is subordination what God had in mind here? Or rather, was God simply stating the natural outcome of what two people whose object of concern was now turned inward would be?
A Woman Shall “Desire” Her Husband
Traditionally, the word “desire” has been interpreted as a woman wanting her husband romantically in some fashion, while the husband has now been placed in a position to rule over her. However, there are a few problems with this interpretation.
First, do men not also desire their wives? In fact, who is it that usually has to feign the headache on more than one occasion? Is “desiring” one another in fact a bad thing? Much less a “curse”? This doesn’t make much sense when one thinks about it, given that the pre-fall order by God was that men and women go forth and multiply. Desire for one's spouse should have been seen as a good thing!
Second, the word “desire” (tashuqah in Hebrew) appears only one other time in the book of Genesis—in the story of Cain and Abel. There, sin is described as "desiring" to overtake Cain[2] like a beast ready to devour, and his response to this "desire" should be to "rule" over it, take control, don't let it do what it wants, what it DESIRES to do. Given the phrasing is almost identical between Genesis 3 and Genesis 4, and that these are the only places the Hebrew word tashuqah appears in all of Genesis (and most of the bible, for that matter, as Song of Solomon 7:14 is the only other use), it seems likely there is a connection between the two.
Thus, rather than a "sexual" desire for her husband, Eve's "desire,” like sin's desire, is to rule and control her husband. Adam's response to this, naturally, is to act like a tyrant to keep her subdued, to keep her from doing that which she "desires" to do... "and he shall rule over you." It is not necessarily a prescriptive curse, but a descriptive statement about the battle of the sexes that has now started. Given that what happened at the fall was the turning in on oneself, the sudden "I" factor becoming far more important to both Adam and Eve rather than the "we" factor and tending to one another and tending to the garden, this makes sense. The fall turned us in on ourselves, and our desire is now to each be able to control everything around us - including other people, especially those we are closest to. We have now, as both God and the serpent noted, ceased to see ourselves as a creature of God but rather as autonomous beings separate from God.
The two struggle for control, and as a result, neither lives for the best interest of the other - the very nature of sin itself. Ephesians 5:21 does begin to talk about how this can be remedied, however. To be "subject to one another out of reverence for Christ." Only when both people are working for the good of the other can a relationship once again thrive and be closer to what was originally intended by God.
[1] Walter Brueggeman, Genesis, vol. 1 of the Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching series (Louisville: Westminste/John Knox, 1984), 46
[2] Genesis 4:6
