Apples to Oranges

“Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” (Genesis 3:16)

I have read or listened to the Genesis account thousands of times in my lifetime. I thought I knew it all by heart, really. I am always amazed by how far I have to go, how much I have to learn, and how one passage of scripture can not be fully and completely realized in any period of time. Even when we think we have things down pat-here comes something else to ponder. I do think these are good signs though.
First, that we realize we are still able to learn new things from Scripture.
Second, because we realize we still need to learn new things from Scripture.
Third, we reinforce things already learned by continuing to go over Scripture.
Finally, we are put into a teachable frame of mind.

When rereading Chapter 3 of Genesis, recounting the Fall of Man, I was surprised at verse 16. I made a chart of all the punishments for each of those involved (the serpent, Eve, Adam, the devil) and what that meant to us. (On a side note: I bet Eve thought she was getting out of it when God spoke to the serpent first. She soon found out, though.)
One of the punishments on Eve, though clearly written in Scripture, is left out of all conversation pertaining to it. The latter half of verse 16, “…and thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee” is never mentioned as a punishment of sin OR used in the context of a command for submission. I am not sure why but it should be.
Surely, Eve was in submission to Adam before the fall of man, but it was a liberal and gentle submission. Eve was created to be Adam’s helpmate, a role in which requires one to move up and one to go down in order to bring the other up. The very title exemplifies submission. But when Eve stepped out of her proper role to give Adam that which was not good, she had already over-stepped her bounds. The Lord put her back in her place, and put her back some more. No longer would it be a perfect submission, submitting to the perfect will of a perfect man; but rather, a necessary submission to her fallen husband. A husband who may make mistakes, who may make decisions selfishly or prematurely, who may be harsh, unkind, or domineering…all these things are the result of SIN and not submission. Eve never would have had to deal with any of these things in the pre-fallen Adam. Therefore, we mustn’t despise submission and we mustn’t complain about it…we should despise SIN (which is how we got here in the first place.)
As Matthew Henry states, “Those wives who not only despise and disobey their husbands, but domineer over them, do not consider that they not only violate a divine law, but thwart a divine sentence.”
My last thought on this topic, is one that warms the soul. Notice that the punishments given to Eve are given not to break her but to chastise her. God punished by making childbirth hard, painful, and scary…but in the end we are truly blessed by the miracle of a child! IN the same way, we are told to be in complete submission to our husbands, but in doing so, we are PROTECTED and LOVED like Christ loves the church. We needn’t submit to any other husband but our own. And let’s face it, we don’t want the blame if we make a bad decision-we don’t like that kind of responsibility. Our lives are enriched by our husbands and enriched through our role of submission. This punishment was not a curse to us, but meant just to bring us low enough to see our sin and repent. The Lord is a merciful God!