I’ve been studying Genesis 3:16 passage for my Women of God series, but last night I was bombarded with more and more angles to look at that one verse, I decided it would be good to look at the whole of the punishment once again. One of the most fascinating things about the Bible (to me, at least) is the layers of symbolism that we can find within any given text. There is the literal meaning—literally Adam and Eve were punished and expelled from the garden—but there are often spiritual or prophetic meanings as well. Let’s look back at this passage with that in mind.

Most people read this punishment as something that literally happened to the first couple, but also, we assume all women receive Eve’s punishment and all men receive Adam’s. This interpretation is why I was studying the verse in the first place. It led me to some interesting finds.

Because I was focusing on verse 16, I started with word studies on sorrow and desire. The definitions I found for sorrow were exactly what I expected.[1] It was the definitions I found for desire that made me stop and think.[2] It’s not that I found some new meaning in the definition so much as the definition brought about a strange revelation. In order for something to be a punishment, it has to be a departure from what was before. When God said He was punishing Eve was painful childbirth, for it to be a punishment, it follows that without sin childbirth would not be painful (or possibly there would be no childbirth). So if part of her punishment is that her desire be to her husband, it follows that without sin her desire was to something (or someone) else… Reading the definition of desire made me really stop to think.

Desire can refer to longing or wanting both in a general sense or in a sexual context. The implication that it is a punishment for Eve’s desire to be for husband took me down the path of thinking about insecurities and the need for validation women often feel. So many people have labeled women useless or less valuable after a certain age and many insults to women reference the inability to get or keep a husband. However the implication is that desire for such a lifestyle is a punishment? I actually see two take aways from zeroing in on this oddity:

People always associate Eve’s punishment with women as a whole, but when I read Adam’s punishment it applies to both men and women. It’s not as though if a woman plants a rose it will suddenly not have thorns or that only men die. Perhaps in the days of the first couple Adam did all the gardening while Eve watched over the children, but as time went on, in particular after the flood when we know people were also consuming meat, we see women watering the flocks. Take it from someone who grew up on the farm, tending the fields is a lot of work, too much for one person. Adam’s punishment is technically applicable to women.

With that in mind, I realized that Eve’s punishment is also applicable to men. Sure, men don’t have to physically bear children, but are they not also grieved when their own offspring is lost or if their wife dies giving birth? Do they not have to survive whatever hormonal shifts occur within their wife during pregnancy? Similarly, Adam failed to lead when they were in the garden. He knew what was right but chose to do wrong. In forcing a wife to submit to her husband and giving the husband the right to rule over the house, God put pressure on men to make the right decisions. Not only is God calling them to step up and take responsibility for another person, but He also requiring them to be right in their decision making. There are verses in the Old Testament that state if a woman makes a vow but her husband doesn’t allow her to keep it, she is exempt. Meaning a woman is not punished for breaking a vow to God under the direction of her husband. This punishment frees women from certain responsibilities and places it on the man—is that not indirectly a punishment to man?

Naturally, as I started to see how each set of punishment actually applies to both men and women, I started to think of it in Spiritual terms. In the Bible, the Church is often depicted as woman—the most popular instance is as the Bride of Christ. In Ephesians, we’re even told that the wife represents the Church and the husband represents Christ. So let’s think of Eve as the Church and Adam as Christ.

Childbirth would then be the spreading of the gospel: planting new churches and passing the good news on to younger people. The husband ruling over the Church is of course the Messiah. While I would assume the Most High already ruled over the people before the fall, I would also imagine it was more friendly before they sinned. It is only post-sin that we see God’s wrath directed toward mankind or any sort of punishments. I imagine before the fall, Adam and Eve though lower than God, did not feel “ruled” by anyone (after all they were given dominion over the planet).

Throughout the Bible, we are referred to as plants and allusions are made to us bearing fruit. After the fall, we are cursed. It is difficult for use to grow as healthy plants bearing good fruit—we are more like thorns and thistles. Messiah has to work and cultivate us for us to bear fruit. Furthermore if sin had never happened, Messiah would not have had to die on the cross for us. Messiah is given an Earthly body which was made of dust and that body had to die and go back to dust (at least until He rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven). Messiah coming to Earth and suffering for us was a consequence of sin.