seekeroftruth
Well-Known Member
Genesis 3:16 To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
When I was a child there was no such thing as abortion on demand. Birth control pills were brand new and sometimes they didn't work. My mother talked about it a lot. I'm the oldest of five and my mother often told us that she never wanted five children. I always wondered why she had so many children if she didn't want them.
Of course, now that I'm older, I now understand that even her best efforts couldn't keep her away from my dad all the time. He was after all, the head of the household, quite a hansom guy, and quite persuasive. To my mom, he was irresistible. [She use to tell him that in front of us too!] I never dreamed that desire was Biblical.
Most of the commentaries I read are written by men. Men do not have a clue what childbirth is like. The pain of childbirth, however, is only for a few hours and it's generally forgotten when we finally meet the baby. The place of submission a woman holds in the world is quite another consequence to deal with.
The blueletterbible.org site seems to have some good quotes tho.
It is difficult for women in Christian lands to realize the miseries of their hundreds of millions of sisters in pagan lands, where the lot of women is little above that of cattle.
"As a result of the fall, man no longer rules easily; he must fight from his headship. Sin has corrupted both the willing submission of the wife and the loving headship of the husband. The woman's desire is to control her husband (to usurp his divinely appointed headship), and he must master her, if he can. So the rule of love founded in paradise is replaced by struggle, tyranny and domination." (Susan T. Foh, cited in Boice)
"As a result of the fall, man no longer rules easily; he must fight from his headship. Sin has corrupted both the willing submission of the wife and the loving headship of the husband. The woman's desire is to control her husband (to usurp his divinely appointed headship), and he must master her, if he can. So the rule of love founded in paradise is replaced by struggle, tyranny and domination." (Susan T. Foh, cited in Boice)
