Genesis 3:16 has been changed numerous times over the years. With each change to theology, this verse has been re-written to conform to the new way of reading the Bible. The most recent change to Genesis 3:16 tells us that women desire to control men. As a result, Genesis 4:7 is connected to Genesis 3:16 in an effort to enforce the belief that women should be compared to sin that crouches at the door and desires to control humans.
Contradiction # 3: Genesis 4:7
Is the woman an enemy to be subjected or a human to be loved and honored? Grudem and Ortlund are once again at odds with each other.
Find it in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Grudem: p 409
Piper: p 409, 42
Ortlund: p 109
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.
Also Augustine
made a connection between Genesis 3:16 and 4:7, but for a different reason.
“Fret not thyself,” or compose thyself, He
says: withhold thy hand from crime; let not sin reign in your mortal body to
fulfill it in the lusts thereof, nor yield your members instruments of
unrighteousness unto sin. “For to thee shall be its turning,” so long as you do
not encourage it by giving it the rein, but bridle it by quenching its fire.
“And thou shall rule over it;” for when it is not allowed any external actings,
it yields itself to the rule of the governing mind and righteous will, and
ceases from even internal motions. There is something similar said in the same
divine book of the woman, when God questioned and judged them after their sin,
and pronounced sentence on them all,—the devil in the form of the serpent, the
woman and her husband in their own persons. For when He had said to her, “I
will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow shall thou bring
forth children,” then He added, “and thy turning shall be to thy husband, and
he shall rule over thee.” What is said to Cain about his sin, or about the
vicious concupiscence of his flesh, is here said of the woman who had sinned;
and we are to understand that the husband is to rule his wife as the soul rules
the flesh. And therefore, says the apostle, “He that loveth his wife, loveth
himself; for no man ever yet hated his own flesh.” This flesh, then, is to be
healed, because it belongs to ourselves: is not to be abandoned to destruction
as if it were alien to our nature.[11]
Augustine
was a Platonist before converting to Christianity [12]
and he used Plato’s body-soul dichotomy as the foundation for his doctrine on
how men and women should relate to each.[13]
In Augustine’s theology, the soul will be restored to its proper nature only
through its subjection to the spirit, and likewise, the body, which has become
a nature that serves the law of sin, will be restored only through subjection
to the soul. By analogy, the woman must be in subjection to the man to restore
her to her proper nature, for Augustine believed that it was only after sin entered that “we are to understand that the
husband is to rule his wife as the soul rules the flesh.”[14]
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.[15] 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.
[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] Augustine, City
of God, Book XV, Ch.
7.
[12] Augustine, Confessions,
Book VII, Ch. XX-XXI.
[13] Augustine, A Treatise on Faith and the Creed, Ch.
10, 23.
[14] City of God, Book XV, Ch 7.
[15] Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato, The Ways of Reason, New Revised Edition (Jerusalem: Feldheim
Publisher, 1997), 100.
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