I just want to stomp my little foot one more time and insist that for centuries the Bible has said in Genesis 3:16, your desire shall be FOR your husband.
The KJV says, “and thy desire shall be TO thy husband”
The RSV says, “your desire shall be FOR your husband”
The Message Bible says, “You’ll want to PLEASE your husband“
It isn’t until we get to the ESV in modern times, real modern like just a few decades ago, that we suddenly find, “Your desire shall be CONTRARY to your husband.”
Wut??! “FOR” and “CONTRARY” are words that are nearly the precise opposite of one another! They mean totally different things. They are not interchangeable at all. This is a totally bogus translation.
Why does it matter? Well, it’s a false presupposition that really tends to taint our entire faith, even our very perception of God Himself. This comes up over and over again in my world. Maybe it is just because of how people are hardwired, I don’t know, but without fail what happens is that if her desire is CONTRARY to mine than God’s desire soon becomes CONTRARY to mine.
God is FOR you, right? We say this all the time. “God is FOR you,” meaning He is on your side. Well Eve is also FOR you, wives are also FOR you, women are also FOR you.
That is the truth. It may not “feel” like the truth if you have been abused, divorced, or rejected, but it is still the truth.
If you open yourself up to this modern idea that Eve is against me, contrary, and the devil is also against me, contrary to me, and the world is against me, contrary, you’re on a downhill slide to no where. Throw in politicians just for fun and good measure and you soon wind up with, everyone is against me, so even God Himself must be against me.
In fact, God hates me! I refuse to follow a God who hates me, put me in a world that hates me, and then cursed me with a companion who hates me.
Those are all lies, deceptions, and basic psychology at play, but they are real enough, false ideas that people have.
I’m not even kidding, I’ve heard this very thing dozens of times. Just today a man told me he wants nothing to do with my “God-god” on account of the fact that he didn’t believe his wife’s desire was contrary to him. He actually said, “she is clearly not against me so what else in the Bible is a lie?”
Men will wrestle with this lie, men will be driven from faith by it. This is not a feminist issue at all. Also, imagine what it is like if you believe a woman’s desire for you is somehow evil, shameful. God had to put a curse on her to make her desire you? It’s actually really demasculating and unhealthy. It’s also false and unbiblical.
“Mary, Mary quite contrary” is a nursery rhyme, not a theological revelation.
I don’t really like to provide a lot of links because I figure if people actually want to go find the truth, they’ll do their own research. I’ve spent years playing linky wars on the internet and so I’m not interesting in doing that anymore. However, here is one article that does support some of what I am saying.
It’s like when we read about “fearing”God— and in turn people take that and are like ‘oh, be afraid, be very afraid’ but if you look at the Greek translation, the Septuagint, the oldest translation from the Hebrew translation, the word fear is actually respect— so that puts a whole new spin on our perception of God— respect the Lord your God— don’t go hide under a rock from Him.
I like that you look at the various translations and point others to do the same—keep pointing and maybe those boneheads, me included, will “get it” finally!!!
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So true, Julie! It is much like what we do with that word “fear,” and now we think God is scary so we have to hide and try to avoid Him entirely.
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Exactly
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It’s similar to the think Satan did upon his first appearance. “Yay, hath God said???”
Casting aspersions and doubt on God’s Word.
That’s why I’m KJV.
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I like the KJV, too! God’s word is true, it’s really pretty amazing if you think about finding bits of text in clay pots somewhere and having to put it all together and then go on to translate it into multiple languages that are not always so compatible. Even in English we will all look at the same word and disagree with the full meaning and intent. I really like how Jesus is the Word as it says in John 1:1. The Greeks used the word Logos, which is more like, “the governing power behind all things.”
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The attack of Satan has always been on what God said. Basically, create confusion about God’s Word and you’ve got them licked. You have pointed out one example that shows that different versions are, in essence, opinion driven.
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“Opinion driven,” that’s a good way of putting it! Kind of interesting, it was actually women who really influenced that modern change in wording, and that’s exactly what they were doing, inflicting their own opinions on the text, rather than letting the text change them. If you think about it, if being contrary is what God willed or ordained as a consequence of sin, then it is now innate to your nature, ingrained in who you are, and no change is possible or needed.
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We vainly suppose that we live in some “enlightened” era because of our technology. Fact is, it has made us dumberer (lol). All the so-called advances of 400 years since Modern English began, culminating in social media, gradually encouraged opinions without depth of knowledge. It would now be easier to fit a camel through the eye of a needle than to bring together 6, let alone 60, with the range of languages and knowledge that characterized the KJB Translators.
A quick sampling: Lancelot Andrews spent 5 hours a day in prayer, was proficient in 15 languages and a Semitic language expert, and wrote devotionals in Greek. Miles Smith translated all the writings of the church fathers into English. John Boyce, at the age of five, could read the entire Hebrew Bible – still boggles my mind. William Bedwell wrote the Arabic Lexicon that is still in use today.
I defer to the “opinions” of this group of experts before any others and, most especially, before my own.
But let’s keep that just between me and thee. 😉
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Really good point about how we assume that because of technology we’re all so much smarter than our ancestors. That’s a real prevalent fallacy. I don’t believe it for a minute. 🙂
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“Mary, Mary quite contrary” is a nursery rhyme, not a theological revelation.”
Exactly! Well said, IB. The ESV shows how learned scholars can project their bad ideas onto God and make it theology. Two things about using this verse for anything theological….
1)The original Hebrew only uses two words here that means “desire….husband.” Everything else the translators put in this sentence is adding to what it says to make it a sentence, which may be grammatically correct but it’s NOT inspired. Furthermore, there is no way you can come up with “contrary” to this sentence without projecting your own negative bias into it.
2) Aren’t we all delivered from the curse, in Christ? It’s crazy how people want to keep what Christ set us free from on cross. Seems we have an unhealthy case of Stockholm Syndrome with our former captors.
28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Gal.3:28 NIV)
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Exactly, Mel! Those prepositions in English are pretty fascinating because to us they are everything, they totally orientate the entire sentence and give it it’s whole meaning. Conversely however, we ironically often ignore those tiny words and dismiss them as unimportant. Go figure.
I’ve often said the most important word in the Bible is the very first one, “in.” If you aren’t “in” the story, “in” Jesus Christ, “in” for an adventure, then none of the other words are going to even matter. 🙂
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Hrrm… This is really interesting. I’m confused by the ESV. All of the Evangelicals I grew up around were all gung-ho about the NIV, than I blinked and the ESV was the only acceptable Bible. It all felt very Orwellian.
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Oh, so true! “Orwellian” is the right word for those strange obsessions with particular versions of the Bible that pop up and suddenly it’s the only version anyone should ever have. That’s silly! Besides, everyone should always be gung ho about the KJV since that’s the Bible the Apostle Paul himself used!
Kidding, just kidding. 🙂
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Right!
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I probably should not wade in here because I have no scholarly basis for saying what I’m about to say, but here goes.
In my younger days, I used to think that “your desire shall be for your husband” meant sexual desire, but as I really dug in to Genesis 3, I began to suspect that maybe it meant something more along the lines of “your desire shall be to usurp your husband’s authority and take it for yourself”. I came to this conclusion unassisted, and long before the ESV came along, based solely on the textual narrative. I could be very wrong in my conclusion, but it fits nicely.
I hear “your desire shall be…” not as part of the curse, but as a simple statement of fact – in our fallen state we will struggle to be content with our God-given station in life, and men and women will compete with each other to grasp what we can for ourselves. It’s not a curse so much as it is a revelation about how things will work going forward. And I think our history as a species pretty much bears this out.
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I hit send before I finished…
If God had simply left us there in our lust and envy, that would have been pretty shitty, but our God immediately then gives us Good News – He will send his Saviour to rescue us and reconcile us to Him and each other. No longer will we strive to compete with each other, instead we will *serve* one another in humble gratitude.
My 4 cents, FWIW
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I like what you said about God just making “a statement of fact,” because that’s what I read too. We are not cursed! There is no curse. God does not curse His children in the garden, He curses the ground and He curses the snake. There are consequences, results, the fall alters the course of mankind and sin enters the world.
I really don’t sense this part in the text at all, but it’s a frequently held belief, so you’re in good company, “your desire shall be to usurp your husband’s authority and take it for yourself.” I do kind of like that interpretation in the context of co-dependancy, Women often do try to take responsibility for men, for areas of their life that are not ours to fix, and we seek some kind of control over our lives. Unfortunately those words are often sued to try and claim women are power hungry, envious of men, so “usurp authority,” has far too often meant, out to get you, trying to steal your job. 🙂
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It is pretty amazing just how many interpretations come out of that one verse. In my “Genesis Diaries” series I know I’m going to have to address this but..I’ve looked it up in the Hebrew and the same word in other contexts which amount to three times and it’s a strange one. And as it’s part of the Curse to Eve…does that mean that desire is a curse? And it says the man will rule over her, so is that component the curse and not the ideal as well? What’s going on here?? Sigh. I am not looking forward to having to cover this.
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LOL! I’m glad you’re looking into it. You make a good point about how many interpretations come out of just one verse. I’ve written volumes about this “curse of Eve stuff,” and I genuinely believe there was no curse. God curses the ground and He curses the snake. There are consequences to sin, there is cause and effect happening, but there is no God cursing His children. There is especially no curse that follows Eve for all of eternity and leaves her outside of the redemption of Christ and believe it or not, there are many who teach exactly that either outright or with subtlety.
Even if one believes there was a curse, which I think is false, but even if one believes it, Jesus Christ came and set us free. We are redeemed. Any such curses are now broken. To live as if Eve is still under some kind of curse is really to ignore the sacrifice of Christ and that bothers me.
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I hope I come across as open minded and curious (curse the internet and it’s lack of tone context), but how would you then describe the greatly increasing in childbirth? You are right about none of the things given to Adam and Eve out them outside of redemption. That’s a very good point I haven’t heard before. Maybe my definition of a “curse” is too broad. Maybe God is just making their “purpose” (not the word I want to use but I’ve got nothing better) harder. Eve= childbirth Adam=harder working of the ground and being less satisfied with it. Hmmmm…
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You do come across as open minded and curious. 🙂
I think pain in childbirth is definitely a consequence of sin as it says in the Bible. Not a curse, but a consequence. It’s kind of interesting how women tend to desire children, want to give birth, and men tend to desire to work, want to provide for themselves and others. We all complain about these things of course, but in truth infertility and unemployment often causes us a lot of grief and sadness.
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Wow. Yeah. My definition of curse is too broad and that last sentence is a lot deeper than it first appears. I’m going to be chewing on that for a while. The ground is cursed because of Adam…but Adam is not cursed. They suffer consequences. Good words. 🙂
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As translations go, I truly dislike the ESV.
There. I said it.
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Ha! Good for you! Well done.
I honestly close my eyes a bit like listening to poetry, and just let the Holy Spirit convey the intent and meaning, and what parts I need to hear in a passage at any given time. So I don’t worry about translations too much, but when you get a bunch of literalists together who need everything cut and dry, the ESV is just a blasted nightmare, LOL!
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