God's Vision After Eden
By Dr. Nicholas J. Schaser
Adam and Eve receive a series of punishments after they eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God says to Eve, “I will increase your pain in childbirth… your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (Gen 3:16). God says to Adam, “cursed is the ground because of you…. Thorns and thistles will grow for you, even as you eat the field’s plants; by the sweat of your brow you will eat bread” (3:17-18). God punishes the woman with painful pregnancies and subordination to her husband, and punishes the man with strife and difficulty in cultivating the land. It is easy for Bible readers to think that this unfortunate state of affairs constitutes the divine will for humanity—that God wants men to “rule over” (משׁל; mashal) women as they suffer through childbirth, and that God desires that humans struggle to produce food from the ground. However, the Bible clarifies that God actually desires to nullify the curses of Genesis 3, and envisions a world in which there is no toil in farming, no pain in childbirth, and no grounds for men ruling over women.
It's possible to read theses punishments as either descriptive or prescriptive; that is, they can either (1) describe the fallen state of humanity that God longs to repair, or (2) prescribe that women must have pain in childbirth and men must toil in agricultural work. Most people understand that toil over the thorny land is merely descriptive of a broken world, so that God isn’t opposed to us utilizing farming technology to make the jobs easier. Most readers are happy to take the agricultural curses as being descriptive, but read the punishments that pertain to women as prescriptive. So, when God tells Eve (and all women after her) that the man will “rule over you” (ימשׁל בך; yimshal bakh), some readers assume that God desires that men should rule over women.
However, since the Bible shows us that God wishes to usurp the agricultural curses, we can know that God’s ultimate desire is for men and women to live in complete equality, without one partner ruling over the other. After the curses in the Garden, the flood in the days of Noah, and the scattering of humanity at Babel, God tells Abram to leave his homeland and travel to a new land “flowing with milk and honey” (e.g., Exod 3:8; Lev 20:24; Num 13:27; Deut 6:3). God doesn't promise Abram a land filled with thorns and thistles; the Lord does not want humans to keep toiling over the land, but rather to have the land itself produce milk and honey. Since God promises Abram a land that reverses the agricultural curse in Genesis 3, we can know that God’s vision for men and women is likewise a relationship of equality that usurps the curse in the Garden of Eden. Indeed, the "new creation" that Yeshua inaugurates (2 Cor 5:17) points us beyond hardship and hierarchy, to a reality in which "all are one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:28).
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