Well, I cannot tell you how critically important our study in the book of Genesis is. It seems as though the whole literate world of elite scholars is preoccupied in modern times with this matter of origins; trying to sort out how we got to where we are and why people behave the way they behave. And without an understanding of the early chapters of the book of Genesis, their quest is really hopeless and ill-fated.
We have the privilege of opening the word of God and digging in, and having a true and accurate understanding of origins; the origin of the physical world, as well as the origin of the spiritual world and the moral world. All of those elements are unfolded to us in the book of Genesis, the early chapters.
We’re in Chapter 3 of Genesis, and looking at the origin and impact of sin. Why there is evil in the world, why there is trouble in the world, is all explained right here. And in our ongoing study of this third chapter, we come now to Verse 16. And in Genesis 3:16, we find the divine curse on the woman. And I want to read it to you. It says:
“To the woman He,” being God, “…said, I will greatly multiply your pain…”
And the Hebrew text says: “…and childbirth. In pain you shall bring forth children. Yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”
I’ve lived long enough and I’ve been enough places in the world to know that the plight of women in the world is very difficult. We have it the best here in America. And still, the plight of women is very difficult. I have seen the struggles that women go through in all corners of the world.
It’s very hard being a woman. And throughout human history, it has been very hard. And in many places of the world today, it’s very little different than it has been since ancient times. In general, women are the slaves of men; men who, in general, have little interest in their personal needs, very little interest in their feelings, their emotions, their sufferings. In general, men have throughout human history used women for sexual fulfillment, for domestic duties, to tend to the children. All over the world, women have been subjugated and humiliated. And until modern times, men actually held the power of life and death over women, and still do in some tribal regions.
This harsh treatment of women, which is pretty much the general pattern of human history, was not the original design of God. Sin brought it in. And it, therefore, corrupted the original relationship between man and woman, between woman and her children, and made life very difficult. And while there is general suffering in the world that everybody goes through because of death, because of disease, because of disasters, we all have a measure of suffering because of sin. Sin has brought about death and decay and decline and disintegration. And we all understand that.
We all live with accidents and illnesses and disasters of one kind or another. There are just those general matters in a fallen world that expose us all to harm and, ultimately, to death. But in a very specific way, women have a general category of suffering. And primarily, their suffering is related to two things: It’s related to their children and their husbands.
Apart from the general suffering that all of us go through, which I just mentioned, there is a particular area of suffering that belongs only to women. And that is the perennial bearing and caring of children, the perennial dealing with husbands. It is a hard, and has been a hard and relentless and awful often sorrowful duty through most of history and even today. It isn’t that women can’t find some measure of joy in their children. They can. It isn’t that they don’t find some measure of joy in their husbands. If they are reasonably kind and thoughtful to them, they can.
But the fact of the matter is it is the unique burden for women to bear, to have to deal with children, with pregnancy, to have to deal with husbands who do not understand them nor care for them compassionately and with understanding.
In most societies throughout human history, they have been treated, women have, as second class, if that. Maybe fifth class would be better. They have in most cultures belonged to men for their own usage. Whatever the men commanded and whatever the men desired, the men have dominated them. And they can do that because by sheer force of human strength, they have power to exercise over women.
They have obviously, of course, impregnated women and, therefore, they have exposed women constantly to death. Throughout most of human history, childbearing took a woman to the brink of death. And even so today in third world countries, women go into pregnancy realizing they could die, to say nothing of losing the child they have carried in their womb for nine months. Mortality rates are still high in many places. And through human history, more babies have perished in birth than have lived.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
