In part four of family matters I want to study how the curse for Adam and Eve's disobedience has affected the husband and wife relationship.
(16) To the woman God said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” (17) To Adam God said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. (18) It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. (19)By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:16-19)
For Eve, the first result of the curse was increased pain in childbirth. The effects of the family have even impacted my family today. My wife Cindy just gave birth to our third son Noah. All three of her pregnancies have resulted in c-sections, with this last one being a classical c-section. As a result, she now has an upside down T on her stomach. Her scars remind us of the fact that through pain our children came into the world. Because of the three c-sections and the pain involved, we are not sure if we are going to have any more children. The scars could be the determining factor. Both Cindy and I feel that having children has been the greatest blessing of our marriage. I wish we could have experienced birthing our children without the scars. However, the scars make us appreciate them even more.
After telling Eve she will have pain in childbirth, God says, “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” (Genesis 3:16) The Hebrew word for “desire,” teshugah, is used another time in the Bible, and that is in the next chapter of Genesis. God warns Cain before he kills his brother Abel, “And, if you do not do well, sin lies at the door, and its desire is for you, but you should rule over it” (Genesis 4:7)
Sins desire was to control, or capture, Cain, and indeed it did. In the same way, as a result of God’s curse, a woman can be tempted to control her husband, to contest his leadership, to run the family if she can.
Biblical history records several instances of this feminine penchant for control; Sarah’s attempt to use Hagar to “help” God fulfill His promise to Abraham (Genesis 16); Rebekah’s deceit in tricking Isaac into giving his blessing to Jacob instead of Esau (Genesis 27); Rachel and Leah’s manipulations of Jacob and Laban (Genesis 30,31); and Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab, who led her husband into idolatry, and in essence ruled Israel through him (1 Kings 16:29-34,19,21). In Revelation 2, Jezebel is again mentioned, this time as a feminine religious spirit who has gained control, and who has led astray the church in Thyatira. In the 21st century, when people are very open to spiritual matters, a book like DaVinci Code is written to promote the worship of the sacred feminine.
How did the curse affect the leadership role of the man? It is interesting to note that “painful toil” was the curse given to Adam. In our society today, think about how many men are consumed with their jobs in the “dog eat dog” marketplace. They spend so much of their strength at work, they don’t have the time and energy to effectively love and serve their wives at home. Their wives become frustrated, hurt and bitter because they now have to fulfill two roles in the family. For women, this fuels the fire for control in the family.
The “curse of painful toil” that produces a passivity and neglect of family leadership in men fits together with the desire of a woman to control like a hand in a glove. Fallen men tend to want someone else to take the responsibility for the leadership of the family, and their wives step right up to do so. Neither understands that the pattern they are following is a result of sin, and God wants to reverse that curse in Jesus Christ, restoring His divine order.
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