Thanks for your comments. I heartily agree! I have yet to have anyone point out for me where any majority of women are trying to “rule” men. This interpretation just makes God out to be a false prophet so I wonder how so many have been fed this interpretation have swallowed it hook line and sinker.

I’ve never understood how the idea that women will “desire to rule” men has any staying power. I’m a survivor of eight years of Christian schools and a graduate-escapee of one of the strictest Christian universities in the nation, and I’ve never seen or heard of a woman trying to rule a man. I’ve known of plenty of women who have sacrificed everything they were to win a man’s love… and fail. I’ve known of women who have stayed in abusive relationships and tried to be perfect in order to win a man’s love. I’ve known women who have married unbelievers because they wanted a man who would love them. I’ve heard women who have chosen to idolize their husbands because their churches have taught them to do so. But rule? The closest I can think of for a woman trying to rule a man is one who tries to save a man from his own mistakes/sins/whatever, and even then that’s a desire for love and acceptance and not an open attempt to rule anyone.

“The man” who has become like us keys in on the one whom God said would be tempted to eat from the tree of life. God is specifically talking about the man here, but because the woman also ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, obviously she too would have been like God in knowing good and evil. However, she wasn’t the problem one. Adam was the one who sinned with knowledge and by his own choice without his being deceived. He was the one in rebellion and was charged with bringing sin into the world. Although we can assume that Adam and Eve were both knowing good and evil because Eve also ate the fruit, we cannot assume from scripture that God also kicked out Eve from the garden. God tells us only that Adam was kicked out of the garden. Unfortunately the TNIV takes the literal Hebrew and puts their interpretation into the text. Instead of saying “the man” as most translations render this verse, they assume God means both Adam and Eve because we do know that both of them left the garden. The assumption is that God kicked them both out of the garden but the text doesn’t say that. A much better answer is the prophecy that God gives to Eve that she would desire her husband and obviously her desiring him would cause her to want to be with him. It is also understandable that his sinful rule over her would not have allowed her to stay in the garden. He wasn’t leaving alone!

So to summarize, the Hebrew for Genesis 3:22 is not plural but is accurately translated as “the man” and God’s mentioning Adam becoming like him in knowing good and evil cannot be used to say that the woman did not also know good and evil. The emphasis on this verse is the rebellious man.

The same phrase “the man” is also used to describe who “has become like us, knowing good and evil”. Can it be argued that if only Adam was driven out, then only Adam had become like God, knowing good and evil? I noticed also that the TNIV says God drove THEM out, but I don’t know the Hebrew.

Molly: Your comments were well said. Women understand our ability to take abuse and mistreatment and keep coming back for what we hope will eventually be emotional love shown in the way we need to receive it. It is so rewarding for me to see so many men refusing to continue the tradition of male domination and who are now coming alongside women and treating them with respect and who have a willingness to hear what women have to say and to teach them. In the past if men would have been more willing to listen to women, they would not have so easily attributed to God a prophecy about women’s desire to rule men. That is a false prophecy that God did not originate. Instead God prophesied about women’s future and their ability to love the man despite being treated as a creature to be ruled over. Oh that God would allow the time to come quickly when every member of the body of Christ will be treated with dignity and respect and honored for their gifts and placement in the body no matter what their gender happens to be.

This is SO well supported through a quick look through history—it is RARE for women to revolt, even against the most horrific forms of domination (female circumcision, burqa wearing, etc). It is, however, NORMATIVE for women to continue to desire a relationship with men, even when it comes with a burqa or mutilation.

(This is not, of course, to say that *all* men secretly want all women in burqas, or to come across as man-hating in any way, becuase the male gender certainly got his share of the sad consequences of the Fall, and *both* genders are certainly in need of a New Creation)…

The thing that really bothers me about every interpretation that I have seen thus far is that they all interpret these things as God cursing the man and woman. However, this is not the case. God curses the serpent in Gen 3:14 and the ground because of Adam’s rebellion in Gen 3:17. Otherwise, He merely says that He will increase Eve’s pain in childbirth and prophecies about Adam’s toil, Eve’s desire for her husband and Adam’s rule over her. Given that Eve had not yet had any children and din’t know the pain of childbirth, its hard to imagine that this is what God is speaking of. Perhaps what is meant is in reference to the heart and emotional anguish she would experience with the sin of her children — her first son was a murderer. After all, it is the mother who bears the children from her very own womb, breast feeds them and mothers them and so has a closer connection.

Your article is very well written, immediately engaging and a powerful argument.