The editors of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood,
John Piper and Wayne Grudem, agree with Christians for Biblical
Equality that Genesis 3:16 is not a prescription of what should be.[1]
However, Grudem does not believe that the verse is the beginning of the
man’s rule, but that it describes a distortion of the previously
harmonious relationship due to man’s harsh rule and the woman’s desire
to rebel against the man’s authority.[2]
Piper acknowledges that historically there has been “grave abuse” and
that even in our days men are sometimes “too possessive, harsh,
domineering, and belittling,”[3]
but he cannot provide historical proof of a similar “grave abuse” of
women controlling men, for women have never ruled over men;[4] instead, they have cooperated by “trying hard to live down to what is expected of them.”[5] Most women have been, and still are, dominated by men and Raymond C. Ortlund Jr. believes there is a good reason for it.
Because she usurped his headship in the temptation, God hands her over to the misery of competition with her rightful head. This is justice,
a measure-for measure response to her sin. … First, God may be saying,
“You will have a desire, Eve. You will want to control your husband. But
he must not allow you to have your way with him. He must rule over
you.” … In this case, we would take “rule” as the exercise of godly
headship. … Second, God may be saying, “You will have a desire, Eve. You
will want to control your husband, But he will not allow you to have
your way with him, He will rule over you.” If this is the true sense,
then, in giving the woman up to her insubordinate desire, God is
penalizing her with domination by her husband. Accordingly, 3:16b should
be rendered” “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule
over you.” The word “rule” would now be construed as the exercise of
ungodly domination.[6]
Ortlund
cannot choose either of the two options he gives, for the first option
goes against Grudem’s view that “he must rule over you” is not “a
prescription of what should be.”[7]
The second option would make God, not sin, the source of the man’s
harsh rule, since God is seen as penalizing the woman with the man’s
ungodly dominion, which Ortlund himself calls “a monster and a virus,”
from which women need to be released .[8]
That God punished Eve with subjection was the patristic interpretation
based on the sole guilt of Eve which became the foundation for the
twofold subjection of the woman in the thirteenth century. And as seen
in Ortlund’s theology, it is still a necessary component to support the
subjection of woman as a created order.
Neither Grudem nor Ortlund are able to explain Genesis 3:16 for they give teshuwqah
the meaning “desire to conquer or control” because of Genesis 4:7:“If
you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin
lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over
it.” Grudem finds a connection between the two verses because of the
similarity of the language and he concludes that the woman has a desire
to conquer the man just as sin has a desire to conquer humans.[9] But if the woman desires to control the man while the man becomes increasingly passive [10]
how should one explain the conspicuous absence of matriarchs,
especially since a society in which sin is ruled by humans does not
exist? In addition, if the woman desires to conquer and control the man,
she becomes an enemy who must be subjected and ruled as Ortlund perhaps
unwittingly recognized.
Despite
all efforts, it is not possible to create an analogy between the woman
and sin, for as Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato explains, when the objects are
found to be dissimilar, the analogy is invalid.[11] In chapter 3 God speaks to Eve about the man’s rule, while in chapter 4 God speaks to Cain about his own rule over sin; one
is acted upon while the other is the actor. In other words, Cain is
warned that the he must resist sin to protect himself, but the woman is
warned that the man is going to rule over her when she turns to him.
The pre-Christian Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, (ca 250 B.C.) translated teshuwqah with apostrophê,
which means “to turn,” “to resort, to recourse,” and rhetorically,
“when one turns away from all others to one, and addresses him
specially.”[12]
The apostolic church used the Septuagint, but with the introduction of
the sole guilt of Eve, the woman’s turning to the man begun to be viewed
as a sentence from God – a tradition begun, as far as can be
ascertained, in the second century with Tertullian.
If
there dwelt upon earth a faith as great as is the reward of faith which
is expected in the heavens, no one of you at all, best beloved sisters,
from the time that she had first “known the Lord,” and learned (the
truth) concerning her own (that is, woman’s) condition, would have
desired too gladsome (not to say too ostentatious) a style of dress; so
as not rather to go about in humble garb, and rather to affect meanness
of appearance, walking about as Eve mourning and repentant, in order
that by every garb of penitence she might the more fully expiate that
which she derives from Eve,—the ignominy, I mean, of the first sin, and
the odium (attaching to her as the cause) of human perdition. “In pains
and in anxieties dost thou bear (children), woman; and toward thine
husband (is) thy inclination (conuersion),
and he lords It over thee.” And do you not know that you are (each) an
Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert—that is, death—even the Son of God had to die [13]
That
all blame was placed on women was a decidedly Roman concept, which
departed from the Grecian belief that the woman was helpless and
therefore blameless, for the Roman woman was a force to be reckoned
with. Even when the fault was clearly the man’s, the woman had to accept
the consequences, wherefore Lucretia committed suicide after being
raped rather than be a living unchaste example. Although the woman’s
only option was to die if she fell for temptation, the man went ahead
and married someone else, innocent as he was in the eyes of the world.[14]
Ellen G. White, the founder of the Seventh Day Adventists, had a
similar view of the superfluity of women, for she wrote, “Had Adam
remained faithful God would have created another companion for him.”[15]
Jerome knew teshuwqah meant “to turn,”[16] but he understood the woman’s turning to signify her subjection to the man because of her sole guilt. Also Jerome’s contemporary, Chrysostom, believed that the woman was subjected because “she made an ill use of her privilege and she who had been made a helper was found to be an ensnarer and ruined all then she is justly told for the future, ‘thy turning shall be to thy husband.’”[17]
Sir
Lancelot C.L. Brenton translated the Septuagint into English in 1851,
but he followed the theology of his time (or the Vulgate) more than the
Greek text for he wrote, “And thy submission shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”[18] Robert
J.V. Hiebert (2007) followed the Greek literally and therefore
translated the verse, “Your recourse will be to your husband and he will
dominate you.”[19] In La Sagrada Biblia, a Spanish translation of the Septuagint, teshuwqah is translated with the word “conversion,” which is derived from the Latin convertere (“to turn around”).[20]
Because
modern theology rejects the sole guilt of Eve, and because the belief
that the woman desires to conquer the man is clearly incorrect, how
should we understand Genesis 3:16? The context is that of childbearing
and the woman’s relationship to the man. Caring for an infant in the
hostile new world made Eve unable to provide for herself and her child,
which caused her to turn to Adam for protection and provisions.
According to Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, “The new conditions of life
that made sustenance the product of hard labor would naturally make
women dependent on the physically stronger men.”[21]
But as the woman turned to the man, he had an opportunity to rule over
her due to his greater physical strength. Childbearing and ruling have
traditionally been considered the dividing difference between men and
women due to the false interpretation of Genesis 3:16. But in reality it
is only in the physical realm that men and women differ, for both men
and woman are equally intelligent and capable of making decisions,
although they may perform the tasks differently.
John Stuart Mill explained how man’s strength became the source of his rule in The Subjection of Women (1869):
And
in the second place, the adoption of this system of inequality never
was the result of deliberation, or forethought, or any social idea, or
any notion whatever of what conducted to the benefit of humanity or the
good order of society. It arouse simply from the fact that from the very
earliest twilight of human society, every woman (owing to the value
attached to her by men, combined with her inferiority in muscular
strength) was found in a state of bondage to some man. Laws and system
of polity always begin by recognising [sic] the relations they find
already existing between individuals. They convert what was mere
physical fact into a legal right, give it the sanction of society, and
principally aim at the substitution of public and organized means of
asserting and protecting these rights, instead of the irregular and
lawless conflict of physical strength. Those who were already been
compelled to obedience became in this manner legally bound to it.[22]
Mill
explained that as “the law of the strongest” was abandoned and no one
was allowed to practice it in the civilized nations, people forgot the
true reason for the institution. He wrote, “People flatter themselves
that the rule of mere force is ended; that the law of the strongest
cannot be the reason of existence of anything which has remained in full
operation down to the present time.” Instead, they thought the
institutions had “been preserved to this period of advanced civilization
by a well-grounded feeling of its adaptation to human nature, and
conductiveness to the general good.”[23]
But as Mill points out, the “unnatural generally means only
uncustomary, and that everything which is usual appears natural.” Thus
Aristotle considered slavery natural; the divine right of the king was
believed to have originated from God and the feudal nobility considered
their power over the serfs to be “supremely natural” - as did the serfs
themselves.[24]
The
seductiveness of the man’s rule over the woman is that it gives every
man the opportunity to rule, even if they are subject to other men.
Instead
of being, to most of its supporters, a thing desirable chiefly in the
abstract, or, like the political ends usually contended for by factions,
of little private importance to any but the leaders; it comes home to
the person and hearth of every male head of a family, and of every one
who looks forwards to being so. The clodhopper exercises, or is to
exercise, his share of the power equally with the highest nobleman. And
the case is that in which the desire of power is the strongest: for
every one who desires power, desires it most over those who are nearest
to him, with whom his life is passed, with whom he has most concerns in
common, and in whom any independence of his authority is oftenest likely
to interfere with his individual preferences. It, in the other cases
specified, powers manifestly grounded only on force, and having so much
less to support them, are so slowly and with so much difficulty got rid
of, much more it be so with this, even if it rests on no better
foundation than those. We must consider, too, that the possessors of the
power have facilities in this case, greater than in any other, to
prevent any uprising against it. Every one of the subjects lives under
the very eye, and almost, it may be said, in the hands, of one of the
masters – in closer intimacy with him than with any of her
fellow-subjects; with no means of combining against him, no power of
even locally overmastering him, and, on the other hand, with the
strongest motives for seeking his favor and avoiding to give him
offence. In struggles for political emancipation, everybody knows how
often its champions are bought off by bribes, or daunted by terrors. In
the case of women, each individual of the subject-class is in a chronic
state of bribery and intimidation combined.[25]
The
subject feels compelled to please the master, especially if she fears
violence, and this has been true of women ever since their subjection to
men began. Male violence against women is accepted in all societies in
which women are excluded from lawmaking, but female violence against men
is not equally tolerated.[26]
As a result, few women have complained about the subjection openly.
Most have accepted the rule, for “it is a political law of nature that
those who are under any power of ancient origin, never begin by
complaining of the power itself, but only of its oppressive exercise.”[27]
As women obtained the right to vote in the twentieth century, and the
opportunity to change laws, they made male violence against themselves
illegal and eventually felt safe enough to begin to challenge the rule
itself, such as the false interpretation of Genesis 3:16 – the
foundation of the twofold subjection.
[1] Piper and Grudem, 409.
[2] Systematic Theology, 463-464.
[3] Piper and Grudem, 42.
[4] Rosalind Rosenberg, Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), 111.
[5] Ibid., 172.
[6] Piper and Grudem, 109.
[7] Ibid., 409.
[8] Ibid., 105.
[9] Systematic Theology, Footnote 20, 464.s
[10] Piper and Grudem, 346.
[11] Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato, The Ways of Reason, New Revised Edition (Jerusalem: Feldheim Publisher, 1997), 100.
[13] Tertullian, On the Apparel of Women, Book I, Ch. I.
[14] The Roman Way, 149-150.
[15] Mercedes H. Dyer, ed. Prove All Things, a response to Women in Ministry (Berrien Springs, MI: Adventists Affirm, 2000), 118.
[16] “And that after displeasing God she was immediately subjected to the man, and began to turn to her husband.” (Against Jovinianus, Book I, 27).
[17] Homilies on 1 Corinthians 11, Homily XXVI.
[18] “Genesis,” English Translation of the Greek Septuagint Bible, http://www.ecmarsh.com/lxx/Genesis/indExod.htm. (accessed June 29, 2009).
[19] “Genesis,” A New English Translation of the Septuagint Bible (Oxford University Press, 2007) http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/edition/01-gen-nets.pdf (accessed June 29, 2009).
[20] “Y hacia tu marido, tu conversión, y él te dominará.” (La Sagrada Biblia, Version de la Septuaginta al Espanol, Pbro. Guillermo Junemann Beckschaefer, http://www.synodia.org/libros/junemann/ [accessed June 29, 2009]).
[21] Rabbit Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Chumash: The Stone edition (Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah Publications, 1996), 8.
[22] John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women (New York City: Source Book Press, 1970), 8-9.
[23] Ibid., 11.
[24] Ibid., 21-23.
[25] Ibid., 18-20.
[26]
E.g. in England the old law used to condemn the wife who killed her
husband (who was legally her Lord) to be burnt on the stake (Ibid., 54).
[27] Ibid., 25.
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