Gen 3:16 To the woman he said,
“I will greatly increase your labor pains;
with pain you will give birth to children.
You will want to control your husband,
but he will dominate you.”

NRSV –

Gen 3:16 To the woman he said,
“I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children,
yet your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.”

ESV (2011):

“Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.”

ESV (2016):

“Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,
but he shall rule over you.”

(These two editions of the ESV each have a footnote allowing for the alternative translation)

This difficult text has been interpretated in a number of ways:

• ‘You will desire sexual intimacy with your husband.’
• ‘You will desire to dominate your husband.’
• ‘You will be subject to your husband’s wishes.’

The rare word translated ‘desire’ in many translations can have both positive and negative connotations.  Some (e.g. Walton, Giles, Steinmann) interpret the present verse in the light of Song 7:10, where the word refers to sexual desire.  Others (e.g. Sailhamer, Kostenberger & Kostenberger) interpret in the light of Gen 4:7 (“sin is crouching at the door. It desires to dominate you, but you must subdue it”).

Many have noted the difficulty of interpreting this verse.  In his 2019 commentary (TOTC), Steinmann notes:

‘despite the difficulty of labour, the woman will continue to desire the love, companionship and intimacy of marriage to her husband. In recent times some have understood this desire to be a desire of the woman to dominate her husband, based on the use of the same word at 4:7. However, 4:7 contains very difficult Hebrew and is not a reliable guide to understanding this term.’

History of interpretation

Kevin Giles (What the Bible Actually Teaches on Women) claims that until about 1980 ‘all commentators’ understood this ‘desire’ to be a desire for sexual intimacy with her husband.  The idea that it refers to a ‘desire’ to control her husband, dates only as far back as 1975, in an article by Susan Foh, and repeated by the Kostenbergers (God, Marriage and Family):

‘As far as the woman’s relationship with her husband is concerned, loving harmony will be replaced by a pattern of struggle in which the woman seeks to exert control over her husband who responds by asserting his authority—often in an ungodly manner by either passively forcing her into action or actively dominating her (Gen. 3:16; cf. 4:7).’

Is this really a novel view, dating back only to the 1970s  In the light of Giles’ rather bold claim, I offer a sampling from older commentators:

Chrysostom: ‘In the beginning I created you equal in esteem to your husband, and my intention was that in everything you would share with him as an equal, and as I entrusted control of everything to your husband, so did I to you; but you abused your equality of status. Hence I subject you to your husband.’

Calvin: ‘This form of speech, “Your desire shall be for your husband,” is of the same force as if he had said that she would not be free and at her own command, but subject to her husband’s authority and dependent upon his will—as if he had said, “You shall desire nothing but what your husband wishes,” even as Genesis 4:7 reads, “Its desire shall be for you.” Thus the woman, who had recklessly exceeded her proper bounds, is brought back into line. To be sure, she was previously subject to her husband, but that was a gentle and honorable subjection; now, however, she is cast into servitude.’

Matthew Poole (about 1685) says that the expressions that ‘thy desires shall be referred or submitted to thy husband’s will and pleasure to grant or deny them, as he sees fit. Which sense is confirmed from Genesis 4:7, where the same phrase is used in the same sense.’

Matthew Henry: ‘She is here put into a state of subjection. The whole sex, which by creation was equal with man, is, for sin, made inferior, and forbidden to usurp authority, 1 Tim. 2:11, 12. The wife particularly is hereby put under the dominion of her husband, and is not sui juris—at her own disposal, of which see an instance in that law, Num. 30:6–8, where the husband is empowered, if he please, to disannul the vows made by the wife. This sentence amounts only to that command, Wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; but the entrance of sin has made that duty a punishment, which otherwise it would not have been. If man had not sinned, he would always have ruled with wisdom and love; and, if the woman had not sinned, she would always have obeyed with humility and meekness; and then the dominion would have been no grievance: but our own sin and folly make our yoke heavy. If Eve had not eaten forbidden fruit herself, and tempted her husband to eat it, she would never have complained of her subjection; therefore it ought never to be complained of, though harsh; but sin must be complained of, that made it so. 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.’

Keil & Delitzsch (1866): ‘[The woman] was punished with a desire bordering upon disease (תּשׁוּקה from שׁוּק to run, to have a violent craving for a thing), and with subjection to the man. “And he shall rule over thee.”‘

R.S. Candlish (1868): ‘She is to be subject to her husband; for such is the import of the phrase, “Unto him shall be thy desire, and he shall rule over thee” (ver. 16); it denotes the dependence of affection or of helplessness on the one hand, and the assertion of authority and power on the other.’

James Murphy (Barnes’ Notes, 1873): ‘“Desire” does not refer to sexual desire in particular. (Gen. 4:7). It means, in general, turn, determination of the will. “The determination of thy will shall be yielded to thy husband, and accordingly he shall rule over thee.”’

Skinner (ICC, 1910) ‘It is not…implied that the woman’s sexual desire is stronger than the man’s; the point rather is that by the instincts of her nature she shall be bound to the hard conditions of her lot, both the ever-recurring pains of child-bearing, and subjection to the man. —while he (on his part) shall rule over thee. The idea of tyrannous exercise of power does not lie in the vb.; but it means that the woman is wholly subject to the man, and so liable to the arbitrary treatment sanctioned by the marriage customs of the East.’

H.E. Ryle (1921, in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges) ‘Doubtless, there is a reference to the never ending romance of daily life, presented by the passionate attachment of a wife to her husband, however domineering, unsympathetic, or selfish he may be. But the primary reference will be to the condition of subservience which woman occupied, and still occupies, in the East; and to the position of man, as head of the family, and carrying the responsibility, as well as the authority, of “rule.”’

Kidner (1967): ‘The phrase your desire shall be for your husband (RSV), with the reciprocating he shall rule over you, portrays a marriage relation in which control has slipped from the fully personal realm to that of instinctive urges passive and active. ‘To love and to cherish’ becomes ‘To desire and to dominate’. While even pagan marriage can rise far above this, the pull of sin is always towards it.’

Not ‘desire’, but ‘turning’?

Giles, having dismissed the view of the Kostenbergers as ‘novel’, favours the conclusion of Janson Condren, in a 2017 JETS paper.  Giles writes:

‘Until the rise of the complementarian movement all commentators took the “desire” of the woman for her husband mentioned in Gen 3:16b to be a desire for intimacy and/or a sexual relationship with her husband. The Köstenbergers adopt a post-1970s novel complementarian interpretation of this word. They take the Hebrew teshuqah (“desire”) to be speaking of a “desire to control.” They thus interpret Gen 3:16 to be teaching that following the fall the woman will “desire” to control her husband and as a consequence the husband and the wife will be caught up in a never-ending struggle. The pernicious logic of this argument is that all or most conflict in marriages arises because women will not submit to the godly rule of their husbands; they struggle against it as sinners. This novel understanding of the woman’s desire, so popular among complementarians, has had many critics and recently suffered a death blow. Janson Condren, an Australian evangelical Old Testament scholar, in a compelling journal article, shows that this argument is “fundamentally misguided.” It is his conclusion that the Hebrew word teshuqah should not be translated as “desire.” It speaks rather of “a returning to.” Genesis 3:16 is saying, despite the man’s rule over her and the pain of childbirth, the woman wants to return to her husband, seeking the perfect intimacy she enjoyed with him before the fall.’

Kaiser (Hard Sayings of the Bible) thinks that the words translated ‘desire’ and ‘will rule’ have been the subject of ‘a most amazing translation history’.  He asks,

‘Is it true that due to the Fall women naturally exhibit overpowering sexual desires for their husbands? And if this is so, did God simultaneously order husbands to exercise authority over their wives?’

According to Kaiser, in the ancient versions (including the LXX and the Vulgate) the word teshuqah, in all three instances in which it occurs in the OT, was usually translated, not as ‘desire’, but as ‘turning’.  The same applies to the church fathers (Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Epiphanius and Jerome), and also Philo.  The Latin rendering was ‘conversio and the Greek was apostrophē or epistrophē, words all meaning “a turning.”’

So how did the word ‘desire’ intrude?  Drawing on the research of Katherine C. Bushnell, this translation can be traced back to an Italian monk named Pagnino, whose translation of the OT appeared in Lyons in 1528.

‘Now except for Wycliffe’s 1380 English version and the Douay Bible of 1609, both of which were made from the Latin Vulgate, every English version from the time of Pagnino up to the present day has adopted Pagnino’s rendering for Genesis 3:16.’

But, according to Bushnell, the only place where the meaning of ‘sexual desire’ can be found is in the “Ten Curses of Eve” in the Talmud.

Beth Allison Barr (The Making of Biblical Womanhood) summarises Bushnell’s view:

‘Katharine Bushnell, a female missionary to China at the turn of the twentieth century…cautioned about the danger of patriarchy for women. Instead of “desire,” she preferred to translate the word in Genesis 3:16 as “turning.” As she translated the verse, “Thou art turning away to thy husband, and he will rule over thee.” Before the fall, both Adam and Eve submitted to God’s authority. After the fall, because of sin, women would now turn first to their husbands, and their husbands, in the place of God, would rule over them.’

Barr continues:

‘I love how historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez describes Bushnell’s interpretation as a “theological coup” that “upended Victorian understandings of womanhood.” As Du Mez explains, “For Bushnell, male authority over women contradicted God’s will and perpetuated man’s original rebellion against God.” Women thus “continued to commit the sin of Eve when they submitted to men, rather than to God.” Patriarchy, for Bushnell, was not just a result of the curse; it was embedded in the fall itself. Adam’s rebellion was claiming God’s authority for himself, and Eve’s rebellion was submitting to Adam in place of God.’

For Kaiser (Hard Sayings of the Bible), too, the literal meaning is, “You are turning away [from God!] to your husband, and [as a result] he will rule over you [take advantage of you].”  In other words,

‘the sense of Genesis 3:16 is simply this: As a result of her sin, Eve would turn away from her sole dependence on God and turn now to her husband. The results would not at all be pleasant, warned God, as he announced this curse.’

Kaiser adds that there is no sense of any command that husbands ought to rule over their wives.  The verb contains ‘a simple statement of futurity.’

Kaiser says that the rather similar text in Gen 4:17 does not imply a command, but rather is in the form of a question, ‘Will you be its master?’  And when Paul says in 1 Cor 14:34 that women must be in subjection ‘as the law says’ he is quoting from the Corinthians themselves (not stating his own view) and ‘the law’ referred to must be the Talmud and the Mishnah, for no command for women to be silent can be found in the OT.

Kaiser concludes:

‘Later on in God’s revelation, our Lord will affirm a job subordination within the marriage relationship, and the husband will be answerable to God for the well-being of his wife and family. However, Genesis 3:16 does not carry any of those meanings.’

Janson Condren (in the JETS article referenced above) considers Kaiser’s own translation of ‘turning away’ as ‘turning away [from God] to your husband, and [as a result] he will rule over you [take advantage of you]’ to be ‘less than satisfactory’.  Condren argues that there is no hint in the Hebrew word of turning away from.  For him, this is

‘best viewed as only the culminating aspect of her return for the relational harmony and naked vulnerability forfeited
by disobedience (3:1–6).’

The Lexham Research Commentary:

‘Given the limited usage of teshuqah elsewhere, its precise meaning in Gen 3:16 is uncertain. Some understand it to mean sexual desire. In this understanding, the phrase “your desire shall be for your husband” could mean that women will desire childbearing despite the pain they will experience. Others point to Gen 4:7 and note that the phrase “you must rule (mashal) over it” corresponds with “and he shall rule (mashal) over you” in Gen 3:16. They argue that the parallel use of teshuqah and mashal indicates that teshuqah in Gen 3:16 refers to a struggle for control.’

Walke & Fredriks:

‘The chiastic structure of the phrase pairs the terms “desire” and “rule over,” suggesting that her desire will be to dominate. This interpretation of an ambiguous passage is validated by the same pairing in the unambiguous context of Gen 4:7.’

Mathews:

‘The “desire” of the woman is her attempt to control her husband, but she will fail because God has ordained that the man exercise his leadership function.’

Ryken agrees that this phrase, together with the next,

‘is a prophecy about the battle of the sexes and the struggle for power in all human relationships.’

Kostenberger & Kostenberger:

‘The loving harmony that prevailed before the fall will be replaced by a pattern of struggle in which the woman will seek to exert control over her husband (interpreting “desire” as “desire for control,” cf. Gen. 4: 7), who will respond by asserting his authority. In failing to exercise his God-given leadership role, he might exhibit passivity, as he did when Satan tempted the woman in the garden and he failed to protect her. Or the man might harshly dominate his wife. In either event, following the fall the male-female relationship is mired in a perennial struggle for control.’

(God’s Design for Man and Woman)

Rivalry between the man and the woman is predicted, but not endorsed:

‘The Lord’s pronouncement predicts the future rivalry between the sexes for dominance, a rivalry resulting from the sinful condition of the man and woman. These words are not an exhortation directed to the man to dominate his wife. Hebrew law recognized the vulnerability of women and required special deference to them (Ex 22:22; Dt 25:5–10). The NT explicitly commands husbands to love and honor their wives (Eph 5:25; Col 3:19; 1 Pt 3:7), and Christian husbands and wives observe their spiritual equality (Gal 3:28) while carrying out their respective God-given roles.’

(Apologetics Study Bible)

This verse

‘indicates that there will be an ongoing struggle between the woman and the man for leadership in the marriage relationship. . . . Eve will have the sinful ‘desire’ to oppose Adam and assert leadership over him.’

(Alexander, ESV Study Bible)