Hebrew Word Study – Duplicate – Mashal – טשׁל Mem Shin Lamed

Genesis  3:16:   “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow, thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire [shall be] to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”

I was taught that Genesis 3:16 was God’s curse upon the woman.  She would experience sorrow and pain in childbirth and her desire would be for her husband.  Her desire for her husband?  Some curse, might I be afflicted, and never recover.

For one thing, the Bible does not say God cursed the woman.  He cursed the serpent and the ground, but not the woman. He was merely stating a fact about the woman. She would experience sorrow in childbirth. The word for sorrow or pain here is ‘atsab which means pain in labor and/or worrisome.  What does a woman worry about in childbirth, I don’t know, I am not a woman, but I would assume she is very worried that there might be something wrong with the child, she worries if she will be a good mother, she worries about what her child may become. If not for sin, she would not have these worries.  I mean Eve was not even pregnant so how could God multiply the pain of childbirth if she never had a child yet?  Well, the text does not say God would do it. There is no first-person pronoun.  The noun is labor, the verb is multiply.   The word multiply or great is rabah and is rendered two times.  The first rendering is as an infinitive construct but there is no preposition which is rare in the use of an infinitive construct.  The infinitive construct speaks of an action without regard to an agent or circumstance.  Yet it is followed by the same word only in the form of a noun or verb.  The form is identical for a Hiphal imperfect first person singular or a noun.  As a verb, the passage would rightly be rendered I will cause the labor of childbirth to increase.  But if it is a noun it would be rendered as the “labor will be great.”

My point is the word labor could be rendered as worry as well as physical pain and thus you could be saying: “The worry, concern, fear, and pain of the mother for the child in childbirth will be great because of sin.”  I do not believe God is causing the pain or worry in childbirth, but it is sin causing this. 

But now let’s just go to the next  part of this statement, “her desire will be for her husband.”   But we do have to continue with the rest of this sentence, “and he will rule over her.  I received a letter from one of my readers about Genesis 3:16 and about the word desire.  She was wondering if the word shepherd in Psalms 23:1, which I interpret as a consuming passion, was the same in Genesis 3:16.  No it is a different word, this word for desire is shug which is a desire for intimacy both emotionally and physically.  In other words a desire for an intimacy that is both emotional and physical. Well, I will let the psychologist expound on whether a man can desire physical intimacy without an emotional attachment while a woman may desire both emotional and physical attachment.  Not saying a man does not desire a physical and emotional attachment which may explain the strange words that follow; “and he will rule over you.” 

The word rule is mashal.  I was just doing a study on the word mashal and even spent time at the library of the University of Chicago tracing this word to its Semitic root.  However, I was looking at it in a different context.   The most common Semitic understanding of mashal is to be like something or someone, to imitate them, to tell a parable, and to rule over someone.  However, in the idea of telling a parable, the idea is again the idea of imitation or likeness. The parable is like the lesson you are trying to teach, but it is not the lesson.  It is an imitation of the lesson.  The same for the idea of rule or have dominion. This rule or dominion is an imitation of the one you are ruling over. The husband will imitate his wife.

This is not a popular subject today so I am not taking sides, I am only trying to understand the intent of this passage.  So here goes. Judaism teaches that a woman has a greater understanding of God than a man. That is because, in the matter of raising children, she will not have the time to spend in the study of Torah, so God compensates by giving her a greater ability of discernment.  

In an earlier study, I showed where the woman was to be a help meet to a man, not a help mate. God created the woman to help the man understand his relationship with God, she was meant to be a gatekeeper to understanding the emotional love and compassion of God.  I believe this is why the enemy has caused man to dominate over women and continue using this obscure rendering of mashal which is to rule and have dominion rather than the root idea of imitating or bearing a likeness in one’s leadership role.

A woman will have a desire for her husband and the man will have such a desire for God, he will follow a woman’s lead in her love for his family and seek to be like that in his love for God.  I read in Jewish literature where a child learns the Torah from his parents and when he gets married his wife teaches him how to apply that knowledge.  A man may have a leadership role, but that is all it is a role, he is no greater or lesser than a woman. The woman’s role is to guide and teach her husband to understand love and compassion through her demonstration of the love and compassion. It goes full circle for he will then mashal or imitate his wife in his desire for his family.

I once worked in a halfway house.  I was counseling a young convert who was a former drug addict.  I asked him who led him to the Lord and how did he overcome his addiction.  He said he had a Christian wife who would constantly kneel by their bed and pray to God for her husband’s salvation. Sometimes she would be very loud and vocal in her prayers, pleading to God to save her husband.  One day the husband, this young man, came home, high on drugs.  He heard his wife pleading again to God for his salvation and it made him angry. He went into the room, grabbed his wife, and hit her with all his might in the stomach.  She fell to the floor in agony and as she lay on the floor in crying pain, she called out to God to forgive and save him.  The young man ran out of the room fell on his knees and gave his life to God.  He said that anytime he came close to taking the drugs again all he could see was his wife on the floor pleading with God to forgive and save him.  He never took drugs again and from that time he was mashal – imitating his wife.

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