Here’s a social media post I’m sharing on the Tru316.com blog with the permission of the author, Bethany Soflin. Thanks, Bethany!
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I sent the author a picture of me with this book that I found profoundly helpful, and they posted it, so I guess I’ll share it!
If you’ve ever wondered what the deal is with what God said to Eve when many of our prominent English Bible translations vary so much with the words and meaning of Genesis 3:16b, you might enjoy this book. Here are just a few examples:
“Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.” (NIV)
“And you will desire to control your husband,
but he will rule over you.” (NLT)
“Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,
but he shall rule over you.” (ESV)
Sometimes it seems like we don’t have an accurate comprehension of what God was saying to Eve, but what translators can agree on is one thing: it was bad!
Also, have you ever wondered why God seemed to stutter in Genesis 3:16a?
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.”
Don’t both those lines mean basically the same thing? Was God just really, really cursing childbirth? Are women “doubly” cursed somehow? As someone who has pondered these questions since I was a child, it was helpful to take a deeper look into the Hebrew words and Hebrew literary style.
This book is accessible, under 100 pages without the study guide portion, and written because someone did doctoral research on Genesis 2-3. This is not just an opinion piece, which I appreciated, but it is very easy to understand.
Thanks to this read, I have a LOT more clarity on the Genesis narrative, and I believe this is helpful because in the church we tend to have many different doctrines based on Genesis 2 and 3. I’ve heard things such as: all women are trying to usurp power that is not rightfully theirs because Eve, the first woman, took initiative by giving Adam the fruit. I’ve heard that God cursed women by giving them painful childbirth, and I’ve heard that what Eve did was worse than what Adam did because God punished the woman more severely than Adam, and so on. These are all interesting theories, but I encourage anyone interested in this topic to give this book a read!”
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Thanks Bethany!
Time to get your own copy? Click HERE!
Want to send a copy to another! Click HERE!
Bruce C. E. Fleming
Founder of the Tru316 Project
Speaker on The Eden Podcast
Author of The Book of Eden, Genesis 2-3
