The Evangelical Universalist Forum

In Genesis 3 is the translation of v16 accurate?

In Genesis 3 we have “The Fall” and from v16 onwards we have what the consequences of the fall are to be. As I read the consequences, they are mostly not things that God does to mankind, but read more like a by-product of the fall. One exception is v16 where it reads (in the NIV):

If we look at what was said to Adam, its not explicitly God making the ground cursed. Here it is:

So my question is this - is there room in the translation of v16 to make it read as the rest of the passage does so that the extra pain in child-birth is more like a by-product than a direct-from-God action?

I’m asking as I have been looking at the idea that God is angry at mankind because of sin - a requirement for penal substitution, but I don’t see anger immediately after the fall - except maybe in verse 16 where it looks like God is inflicting pain on Eve/women. This doesn’t sit easily with the rest of the passage or my view of God.

This question has been asked over at SE.Christianity - I’m hoping you will have some insight into this.

Thanks,

Mike

I don’t see any other way of translating it. Most modern translations have “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception” or something similar. So too, in the Septuagint.

Thank you for looking at it, Paidion, much appreciated.

I was hoping to hear of a good reason to remove the "I will … " from the verse.

Interestingly, over at SE.Christianity there is an answer that suggests the verse is not talking about the pains of child birth specifically, but the pains involved in being a mother now that death has entered the world.

Thanks again,

Mike

Mike, there is much ascribed to God in the Old Testament that we do not wish to believe about Him, but there’s no way to obliterate it. Supposedly, God gave laws to stone adulteresses and rebellious children, and to cut off any woman’s hand, showing no mercy, if she tries to assist her husband when he is losing a fight by grabbing the genitals of his assailer. (Deut 25:11)

Jesus NEVER described his Father that way, but rather stated that He is kind to both ungrateful people and to evil people (Luke 6:35) and also causes his sun to shine and his rain to fall upon both the righteous and the unrighteous. (Matt 5:45) As Christians, we need to follow the teachings of Christ, and (in my opinion) disregard the violent commands in the Old Testament that God supposedly gave.

Perhaps it is also noteworthy that, generally, for all the fire-breathing warnings about breaking commandments, we sure don’t have anything in the records of those warnings being carried out. I think John 8 reveals God’s attitude of grace and mercy, tempered with warning.

I do think that the Israelites got it wrong a LOT of the time - “God said do this atrocity, and that atrocity” etc. - but what they thought is faithfully recorded in Scripture. My basis for that opinion is what has been written elsewhere on this and other threads - that we understand the O.T. in light of the perfect revelation of God in His Son.

“We regard the Scriptures as the records of God’s successive revelations to mankind, and particularly of the last and most perfect revelation of his will by Jesus Christ. Whatever doctrines seem to us to be clearly taught in the Scriptures; we receive without reserve or exception. We do not, however, attach equal importance to all the books in this collection. Our religion, we believe, lies chiefly in the New Testament. The dispensation of Moses, compared with that of Jesus, we consider as adapted to the childhood of the human race, a preparation for a nobler system, and chiefly useful now as serving to confirm and illustrate the Christian Scriptures. Jesus Christ is the only master of Christians, and whatever he taught, either during his personal ministry, or by his inspired Apostles, we regard as of divine authority, and profess to make the rule of our lives.” - W.E. Channing

This is pretty good! :smiley:

Thanks guys.

I am with you on this - Jesus certainly showed us a different God than the one we see in the OT and for that reason I don’t accept some of what I read in the OT. As EU-ists we do have to read the Bible and filter the words into their actual meaning.

I have a question that I’ve never had a satisfactory answer to, and I wonder if it has something to do with this topic. John 1: 17 says:

Why was it necessary for Jesus to bring truth? Is it because man kind had gotten the wrong idea about God in the way they talked about His wrath and Jesus corrected that? What do you guys think?

Thanks again,

Mike

The Johannine prologue, whatever else is concluded about its Christology (related to Patrology, with maybe some Pneumatology in there, too, hard to tell), is about the utter categorical and qualitative superiority of Christ to any other servant of God.

So God gives the Torah through Moses, and that’s important, but grace and truth are more important in a whole other category. Grace, which just transliterates {charis} (and its cognates sometimes) into English, essentially means freely given joy; and the Hebrew notion of truth involves foundational reliability, like a pail that can be trusted to hold water. Even if the verb translated “came” isn’t a divine passive, and God gave grace and truth through Jesus Christ (but the word {egeneto} is a form that can be translated “grace and truth became came into existence as what they are] through Jesus Christ”), essentially that’s like saying, sure Moses gave the law from God, that’s super-important, but joy and reality themselves come through King Jesus!

Relatedly, the same verb {egeneto} is used back in 1:3 of the prologue, to talk about how {panta} all came to be through him (evidently the Word) and apart from him, or from Him rather, not even one thing came to be. (Depending on the punctuation that would be either “not even one thing came to be which has come to be. In Him was life…” or, as MacDonald used to point out, “not even one thing came to be. That which has come to be in Him was life,” stressing the idea that He makes all created things but that the eternal divine action (in a second Perfect Active form of the verb) of life happens in Him. This was evidently how the verse was read prior to the Nicean debates, and while trinitarians could read it either way they stopped doing so because the Arians though the latter way counted in their favor somehow.)

Also relatedly, GosJohn reports Jesus saying that He Himself is the Truth and the Life. So truth doesn’t only become existent through Him, He actually is foundational truth. Which goes back to the idea in the prologue of Him being the Logos, a connotation of foundational reality (not merely a word), translating into Greek the Memra (with similar connotations in Aramaic of word and foundation and foundational reality) with which the Targum authors used to replace references to the name(s) of God Most High in the intertestamental period when commenting on the Hebrew scriptures, such as in Gen 1:1, “in the beginning the Memra of God…”

Anyway, the point is that the Evangelist is talking in the Prologue about something rather more fundamental than Jesus telling the truth about God, although that idea’s included of course. :slight_smile:

Back to the OP:

In my NIV super-literal I see: to the-woman he-said to-increase I-will-increase pain-of-you and-childbearing-of-you in-pain you-will-bear children

This incidentally suggests that she was already going to bear children in pain (and desire her husband) but God increases this.

Green’s super-literal reads, “greatly i-will-increase your-sorrow and-your-conception in-sorrow you-shall-bear sons”

Werner’s super-literal ARTB, which as usual is quite interestingly eclectic (he translates the famous prophecy as “she will tromp your head and tromp you with her heel” (!!)), reads, “I multiply multiply your toil and and your grief in your conceiving and begetting sons.” (He signifies the double word as ||multiply||. For an evidently free online access to his text you can apparently go to ancientrootsbible.com. I qualify that, because when I went to check the address may have lapsed. I think I typed it accurately…? His translation schemes are… hmm… sometimes problematic, and Lord his ego seems to know no bounds sometimes! But he’s a fun and curious counterpart, and I’ve picked up a couple of new bits sometimes I was able to confirm elsewhere.)

So my question is this - is there room in the translation of v16 to make it read as the rest of the passage does so that the extra pain in child-birth is more like a by-product than a direct-from-God action?

It may be significant to consider that these OT writers attributed everything to the Will of God so some things which belong to Satan they may have attributed to God and some things which were in fact a by-product of sin , they wrote from their understanding which was in their mind God’s Will, thus “I will do this or that.” Its simply a possibility in my opinion that this was their style of writing.

When we read the OT I think we often fail to understand the context of its primitiveness. We can talk about the revelation Jesus gave, forgetting that He gave the Holy Spirit to enable the manifestation of a higher revelation in us, and through us into this world of chaos and futility.

“The Holy Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified.”

Jesus taught that if He did not “go away” the Holy Spirit could not come and thst until the Holy Spirit could come His work was greatly constrained.

Also, if we look at the world that was before the flood we see that the whole earth had descended into depravity and violence of an extreme nature.We know that God loves the world, but His experiment with stewardship has largely been a failure. So God starts over with Noah. A new steward. A righteous family.

But without the Holy Spirit in the earth man continues to tend towards evil. So God creates the Lampstand(Israel) from the loins of Abraham, and institutes among them a just, but fairly stringent law because they will still tend towards evil, and even with the law- they do gravitate towards evil, over and over.

God created the world and one of the pillars of that is family. God institutes His most serious consequences around the sins that threaten the family because the family is the core element that sustains community and community is the foundation for civilization and the secure and peaceful cohabitation of the creature. Hence severe penalties towards adultery and homosexuality because we have already demonstrated our propensity towards destruction and degeneration over thousands of years.

In order for humans to develop normally they must be grown in the womb of innocense. Within a wholesome family. The consequences of defiling that precious womb are all around us. Dysfunction, addiction, suicide, chaos. So the law is formed with the preservation of family and community at its core, in the midst of a populace that tends towards self agrandizement- even at the cost of its children’s futures- and the individuals preferences are subject to the welfare of the whole in a wholesome way.

Who has known the mind of the Lord and who has been His counselor?

We speak as if we understand who we are and what we have been better than God does because we are naiive, heavily invested in our own survival as an interest that even supercedes(in our own minds) the purpose God intends as the destination for all creation.

Family, harmony, union, communion.

YHWH is more serious than we are. Our specious reasonings for judging His acts are superficial and uninformed concerning “olam” past and “olam” future. We speak from an environment vastly different than the one we think to understand and thus we judge the scriptures and the God of the scriptures from a smug superficial view, but if the Old Testament scriptures are that faulty and uninformed then much of what we believe and claim to verify by the New Testament is just as faulty because the writers of it do not recognize this “so-called” deficiency in those OT scriptures. Paul says these things were "recorded for our examples so that we will not fall in the same manner of disobedience.

I am all for questioning what the scriptures mean. I am all for questioning the common interpretations of them. I am all for continually delving into translation issues. But if you question the inspiration of the OT then you are building on a foundation of sand in your NT- written by men who could not understand they were attributing divine inspiration to the foibles of the lowly foolish Israelites and that ignorant guy Moses and the wacky prophets.

We do not understand how God can be so severe and at the same time define Himself as love because we do not understand love, or understand Him. Our immediate survival is not His endgame. We will all be as He is within, and we will all love as He loves, in a wonderful, beautiful, universal community- and that is the “Light that shines out of darkness”- the form emerging from chaos. Without chaos there can be no form, no re-creation, no “transformation into the image of Christ”… and YHWH is dealing with man as a whole, as well as individuals, and He will bring the whole into a perfect redemption that was shaped in chaos, injustice, betrayal and irreverence …focused on the greatest injustice of all, the crucifixion of Jesus the Beloved…the Anointed One.

“The Holy Spirit had not yet been given, for Jesus had not yet been glorified.”

“If I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto me”.

7“But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. 8“And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; 9concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; 10and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; 11and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.

  12“I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13“But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. 14“He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. 15“All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.

Wow. The two birds - Robin and Eagle(sway) have sure given it to us today.

I’m going to grab a piece of pie…

…I take it that’ll be a ‘four n twenty black birds’ pie?? :laughing: :laughing:

:laughing:

(robin)
Glad to have sparked your imagination …

Did you know that they would actually put birds in a pie, as a great joke or form of entertainment?
In medieval times, the pie crust was made thick, and baked first, forming a pot (hence the term pot pie).
Said birds would then be set inside, and a pie crust lid put put over them (with toothpicks to hold it in place),
then this wildly entertaining dish placed before the host of the party. So these birds were not actually cooked
in the pie, and interprising cooks would get quite competetive at feasts, and try to outdo other lords and ladies’ cooks.
It’s said that not only were birds baked into pies, but rabbits, frogs, dogs, dwarfs (who would pop out and recite poetry)
and at one time a whole little musical group. Not unlike, today, how we may have strippers pop out of a cake.

Presentation: When the shell is completely cold, and just before you are ready to serve, you may gently insert live birds
(or frogs, or strippers) under the crust; place the pie on a serving platter, and garnish as you wish. Serve immediately.

Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of rye,

Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened the birds began to sing,

Oh wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king?

The king was in his counting house counting out his money,

The queen was in the parlour eating bread and honey.

The maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes,

When down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose!

So then, Eaglesway, seems that you and I, have been served together in a pie!

That was very informative and fun!

π I guess what goes around comes around LOL :laughing:

33 Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! 34 For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? 35 Or who has first given to Him [m]that it might be paid back to him again? 36 For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.

Thanks for all your replies - much appreciated.

Mike