Woman's punishment for disobedience/sin

[rcksthill]

Woman’s punishment for disobedience/sin

In Gensis 3: 16 we read

-“To the woman he said: " I will multiply your pains in childbearing, you shall give birth to your children in pain. Your yearning shall be for your husband, yet he will lord it over you.” The Jerusalem Bible

• And he said to the woman, " I will increase your trouble in pregnancy and your pain in giving birth. In spite of this, you will still have desire for your husband, yet you will be subject to him." Good News Bible
• Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, in sorrow thou shall bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shallrule over you." King James version.

My question is: What is this desire or yearning that women will have for their husbands, and how is the husband to rule or lord it over the woman.?

I can explain the first part of this verse quite easily to my 3 children, but have difficulty in explaining the second part.

Can any of you help?

 

[Fergal]

I would suggest that we look at the translation from the Latin Vulgate which states:

Gn:3:16: To the woman also he said: I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under thy husband’s power, and he shall have dominion over thee. (DRV) Any clearer now?

If we read on we see that God says to Adam that he is subject to work the land all the days of his life and that his farming will be rubbish!!

So don’t fret cause God has ensured that the husband will be out most of the time at work and will have very little to show for it at the end of the day!!!

Seriously though it does not mean that the husband can lord it over the wife in a brutal manner. Neither does it mean that the wife should accept a violent or abusive hand. These words should be seen in the context of unconditional love. Not cold and unattached and out of context.

St Paul shows us a little further what this means. He states that husband and wife should model the relationship between Christ and His Church. Listen to what he has to say:

***Eph:5:22-32 ***
Let women be subject to their husbands, as to the Lord: Because the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church. He is the saviour of his body. Therefore as the church is subject to Christ: so also let the wives be to their husbands in all things.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church and delivered himself up for it:
That he might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of water in the word of life:
That he might present it to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
So also ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, as also Christ doth the church:
Because we are members of him, body, of his flesh and of his bones.
For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother: and shall cleave to his wife. And they shall be two in one flesh.
This is a great sacrament: but I speak in Christ and in the church. (DRV)

The New Testament does not replace the old it simply completes it and fulfills it.

God Bless,
Fergal
Naas
Ireland

 

[Fergal]

Just found this lovely article:

The husband-wife relationship in Ephesians 5, 21-23

Pope John Paul II’s exegesis of the text

***Today we begin a more detailed analysis of the passage of the Letter to the Ephesians 5:21-23. The author, addressing husbands and wives, recommends them to be “subject to one another out of reverence for Christ” (5:21)… ***

***The mutual relations of husband and wife should flow from their common relationship with Christ. The author of the letter speaks of the “reverence for Christ” in a sense analogous to that when he speaks of the “fear of God”. In this case it is not a question of fear which is a defensive attitude before the threat of evil, but it is above all a case of respect for holiness, for the sacrum… ***

***The mystery of Christ, penetrating their hearts, engendering in them that holy “reverence for Christ” (namely, pietas). should lead them to “be subject to one another”: the mystery of Christ, that is, the mystery of the choice from eternity of each of them in Christ “to be the adoptive sons” of God. ***

***In fact we read: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord” (Eph. 5:22). In saying this, the author does not intend to say that the husband is the “lord” of the wife and that the interpersonal pact proper to marriage is a pact of the domination of the husband over the wife. ***

***Instead, he expresses a different concept; that is, that the wife can and should find in her relationship with Christ - who is the one Lord of both the spouses - the motivation of the relationship with her husband which flows from the very essence of marriage and of the family. ***

***Such a relationship, however, is not one of one-sided domination. Marriage, according to the Letter to the Ephesians, excludes that element of the pact which was a burden and at times, does not cease to be a burden on this institution. ***

***The husband and the wife are in fact “subject to one another”, and are mutually subordinated to one another. The source of this mutual subjection is to be found in Christian pietas, and it’s expression is love. ***

***The author of the letter underlines this love in a special way, in addressing himself to husbands. He writes: “You husbands love your wives…”, and by expressing himself in this way, he removes any fear that might have arisen (given the modern sensitivity) from the previous phrase: “Wives, be subject to your husbands”. ***

***Love excludes every kind of subjection whereby the wife might become a servant or a slave of the husband, an object of unilateral domination. ******Love makes the husband simultaneously subject to the wife, and thereby subject to the Lord himself, just as the wife to the husband. ***

Fergal
Naas
Ireland

 

[Annunciata]

Fergal,

That’s one of the nicest explanations I’ve heard!