Kejadian 3:16

3:16 To the woman he said,

“I will greatly increase ¹  your labor pains; ² 

with pain you will give birth to children.

You will want to control your husband, ³ 

but he will dominate ⁴  you.”

Ulangan 5:21

5:21 You must not desire ⁵  another man’s ⁶  wife, nor should you crave his ⁷  house, his field, his male and female servants, his ox, his donkey, or anything else he owns.” ⁸ 

Ulangan 21:11

21:11 if you should see among them ⁹  an attractive woman whom you wish to take as a wife,

Kidung Agung 7:10

Poetic Refrain: Mutual Possession

The Beloved about Her Lover:

7:10 I am my beloved’s,

and he desires me! ¹⁰ 

Yehezkiel 24:16

24:16 “Son of man, realize that I am about to take the delight of your eyes away from you with a jolt, ¹¹  but you must not mourn or weep or shed tears.

Yehezkiel 24:1

The Boiling Pot

24:1 The word of the Lord came to me in the ninth year, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month ¹² :

Titus 1:3

1:3 But now in his own time ¹³  he has made his message evident through the preaching I was entrusted with according to the command of God our Savior.

[3:16]  ¹ tn The imperfect verb form is emphasized and intensified by the infinitive absolute from the same verb.

[3:16]  ² tn Heb “your pain and your conception,” suggesting to some interpreters that having a lot of children was a result of the judgment (probably to make up for the loss through death). But the next clause shows that the pain is associated with conception and childbirth. The two words form a hendiadys (where two words are joined to express one idea, like “good and angry” in English), the second explaining the first. “Conception,” if the correct meaning of the noun, must be figurative here since there is no pain in conception; it is a synecdoche, representing the entire process of childbirth and child rearing from the very start. However, recent etymological research suggests the noun is derived from a root הרר (hrr), not הרה (hrh), and means “trembling, pain” (see D. Tsumura, “A Note on הרוֹן (Gen 3,16),” Bib 75 [1994]: 398-400). In this case “pain and trembling” refers to the physical effects of childbirth. The word עִצְּבוֹן (’itsÿvon, “pain”), an abstract noun related to the verb (עָצַב, ’atsav), includes more than physical pain. It is emotional distress as well as physical pain. The same word is used in v. 17 for the man’s painful toil in the field.

[3:16]  ³ tn Heb “and toward your husband [will be] your desire.” The nominal sentence does not have a verb; a future verb must be supplied, because the focus of the oracle is on the future struggle. The precise meaning of the noun תְּשׁוּקָה (tÿshuqah, “desire”) is debated. Many interpreters conclude that it refers to sexual desire here, because the subject of the passage is the relationship between a wife and her husband, and because the word is used in a romantic sense in Song 7:11 HT (7:10 ET). However, this interpretation makes little sense in Gen 3:16. First, it does not fit well with the assertion “he will dominate you.” Second, it implies that sexual desire was not part of the original creation, even though the man and the woman were told to multiply. And third, it ignores the usage of the word in Gen 4:7 where it refers to sin’s desire to control and dominate Cain. (Even in Song of Songs it carries the basic idea of “control,” for it describes the young man’s desire to “have his way sexually” with the young woman.) In Gen 3:16 the Lord announces a struggle, a conflict between the man and the woman. She will desire to control him, but he will dominate her instead. This interpretation also fits the tone of the passage, which is a judgment oracle. See further Susan T. Foh, “What is the Woman’s Desire?” WTJ 37 (1975): 376-83.

[3:16]  ⁴ tn The Hebrew verb מָשַׁל (mashal) means “to rule over,” but in a way that emphasizes powerful control, domination, or mastery. This also is part of the baser human nature. The translation assumes the imperfect verb form has an objective/indicative sense here. Another option is to understand it as having a modal, desiderative nuance, “but he will want to dominate you.” In this case, the Lord simply announces the struggle without indicating who will emerge victorious.

[3:16]  sn This passage is a judgment oracle. It announces that conflict between man and woman will become the norm in human society. It does not depict the NT ideal, where the husband sacrificially loves his wife, as Christ loved the church, and where the wife recognizes the husband’s loving leadership in the family and voluntarily submits to it. Sin produces a conflict or power struggle between the man and the woman, but in Christ man and woman call a truce and live harmoniously (Eph 5:18-32).

[5:21]  ⁵ tn The Hebrew verb used here (חָמַד, khamad) is different from the one translated “crave” (אָוַה, ’avah) in the next line. The former has sexual overtones (“lust” or the like; cf. Song of Sol 2:3) whereas the latter has more the idea of a desire or craving for material things.

[5:21]  ⁶ tn Heb “your neighbor’s.” See note on the term “fellow man” in v. 19.

[5:21]  ⁷ tn Heb “your neighbor’s.” The pronoun is used in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[5:21]  ⁸ tn Heb “or anything that is your neighbor’s.”

[21:11]  ⁹ tn Heb “the prisoners.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy.

[7:10]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “his desire is for me” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV).

[24:16]  ¹¹ tn Heb “a strike.”

[24:1]  ¹² tn The date of this oracle was January 15, 588 b.c.

[1:3]  ¹³ tn The Greek text emphasizes the contrast between vv. 2b and 3a: God promised this long ago but now has revealed it in his own time.