When Adam and Eve fell in the garden of Eden, God mete out sentences for each party involved.
In Eve’s case, God mete out 4 sentences, but for the sake of this post, we are focusing on just one.
In Genesis 3:16. The Bible says:
“To the woman He said: “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children; Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.”
Now at first glance, a woman desiring her husband doesn’t seem like much of a punishment or curse, now does it?
Infact, it seems more like a blessing.
Which wife wouldn’t want to desire her husband?
Ofcourse there are those who argue it's a curse, but even they tend to argue in terms of a wife still physically desiring her husband time and time again despite the painful agony of childbirth.
However, a keen study of the verse reveals a common case of Bible misinterpretation.
To understand what God is really saying in Genesis 3:16, we need to consider Genesis 4:7 where God basically uses the same wording.
In Genesis 4:7 the Bible says:
“If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”
Now we can see God is basically using the same lingo,“its desire is for you” or “its desire shall be for you”, He uses in Genesis 3:16, “Your desire shall be for your husband”, only in this case the desire is not a wife for her husband but sin for Cain.
So if we interpret God’s words in Genesis 3:16 as physical desire, then Genesis 4:7 will not make any sense.
So if not physical desire, what does God mean?
Well, in both cases God is talking about rulership or dominion or control.
In other words, in the case of Genesis 3:16, God is basically saying the woman will seek to dominate or rule or control her husband while in the case of Genesis 4:7, God is warning Cain that sin seeks to dominate or rule or control him but he should rule over it or dominate it instead.
Millennia later, Paul basically uses the same language in his latter to the church at Rome.
In Romans 6:14, he says:
“For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”
So we can see that Eve’s curse has to do with the broken nature of her relationship with her husband going forward due to their sin.
Basically, women would now have this natural inclination to dominate men particularly their spouses.
This particular interpretation is supported by some Bible translations of Genesis 3:16 like the NLT which says:
Then He said to the woman, “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.”
A classic example of a woman seeking to dominate a man in the Bible is that of Jezebel with King Ahab.
Jezebel was always out to wear the pants in the home.
Sadly, this ungodly spirit of Jezebel is still rife in our generation today even among believers.
Women today are going to extreme ends to try and dominate men and if that fails, rid themselves of them altogether in the guise of independence.
However, what women call Independence today is just the spirit of Jezebel dressed up in fine clothes.
Feminism is ungodly and demonic and something a woman of God should never subscribe to.
We must see through the devil's agenda of causing a rift between the two genders (emphasis on two) in the guise of fighting for women's rights and equality.
We must understand that 'independent' and 'independence' are not vocabularies found in the Bible.
We must realize there’s a clear difference between independence and self-reliance.
A woman (even a woman of God) can seek to be self-reliant (infact Paul advocates for it in 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12) but they should never seek to be independent.
Men and women were never meant to operate as independent entities.
The Bible says male and female He created them and gave them both dominion over the earth. (see Genesis 1:26-28)
Men and women we not created to operate independent of each other or to dominate one another but to coexist and co-rule together, with the men being granted the privilege (not the right) of leadership (not lordship) by God.
Any woman who seeks to dominate her husband or men by extension, or seeks independence from men, is basically fighting the word, will and order of God.
Sadly this is something even Paul had to constantly fight against, especially in the church at Ephesus.
But the Bible is clear that it’s the women who lose out more since the men will always have the upper hand. (see Genesis 3:16)
As a woman of God, you need to fight any natural tendency to want to control men or to prove you are stronger or more capable than they are or even to operate independent of them.
The world may make it seem like a cool thing (even a worthy cause) but that doesn't change the fact that it goes against God and His word.
A woman of God cannot claim Jesus as their Lord and claim to be a feminist at the same time.
You cannot claim to submit to your heavenly Groom and seek to manipulate and control your earthly one.
It's hypocrisy.
The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 11:3:
"But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God."
Notice the pecking order.
You cannot usurp your earthly covering.
In contending with and rebelling against the male authority in your life you are contending with and rebelling against Christ.
There's no two way about it.
Your goal as a woman of God who has been redeemed from the curse of Eve is to understand your place in God’s pecking order and joyfully embrace it.
Allow God to renew your mind, mend and blossom all your relationships with any male authorities in your life whether at the office, at your place of business, at your local church, in your community and especially at home.
God bless you.
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