The idea that the curse will make both tilling the earth and the raising of children toilsome makes a whole lot more sense as a parallel of the preceding commission: 1) be fruitful and multiply 2) steward the earth. You’ve made your two jobs a whole lot harder for yourself but they are both the joint responsibility of the couple, not one and one.
This is interesting. There are some interesting parallels between the land and the humans, especially in production, e.g. the land itself produces vegetation, at God's command (as opposed to God creating vegetation directly, which is what we might expect). I've thought about gendered work as a result of the Fall. The man and woman are given these commands together, but then after the Fall, God speaks to them separately. They aren't spoken to separately before.
I'm more sympathetic than you are to the idea of gendered work, and I have friends who are more in favor of it than I am. To leave space for the idea that "it is good to have sex-separated spaces for work," I would point out that clothing is also a result of the Fall, as are laws against various kinds of violence. It could be argued that it's not bad in itself but rather a good way to cope with the bad effects of the Fall. But that's a separate conversation.
I had originally connected "till and keep" with "cursed is the ground because of you" but your connection with "steward the earth" (have dominion) is a good connection. I had connected "have dominion" with "he shall rule over you," which Augustine sees as the origin of all human domination, including slavery and other things that aren't sex-specific.
Yes, but/and I don't think pragmatically gendered work contravenes shared responsibility. And perhaps the jobs being more difficult makes them more consuming and so more likely to require division of labor. Or maybe what had been a pragmatic division before but that was untoilsome (e.g. hard to till the earth in your third trimester) will now be the/a main source of your emotional pain.
If it's true that "I will greatly increase your toil in childbearing/conceptions" uses language that isn't female-specific but is directed to the woman, what does that mean for what the toil consists of and why it is laid at the feet of Eve, when she was always going to be the mother of all the living, but was originally jointly tasked with being fruitful, along with her husband, as well as tilling the earth.
That makes sense. There is an important distinction between "you do this and I'll do that, both working toward our shared goal" versus "you do this toward your goal, and I'll do this toward my goal, and we will coexist but with an absolute separation."
The other day I talked to my OT professor about the language, since he knows Hebrew much better than I do, and he said the word for "bring forth children" (yalad, from my point 3.5) is clearly referring to bearing children as women do. The same word with a different grammatical form, or a different but related word, or something like that is used wrt men. That's why it showed up in the concordance as the same word, but he says that the way it is here can only refer to women delivering their children.
I ran him through the argument and he disagreed with Provan. The passage definitely refers to the actual pain of delivering a baby, but it's not limited to that, it's also broader.
So, I don't know. I'm not in a place where I can adjudicate between different readings of the Hebrew, and it's really frustrating not to be reasonably proficient in the language.
I feel there can (qualified for whatever the grammar truly is) be an additional interpretation. E.g. an adjective could be feminine in a Romance language but still refer to the generalized concept. But when it is gendered we understand it to include gender-specific things as well. I.e. we can say women 'parent' or 'have kids' and that means something different than when we say it of men but it doesn't mean, well men hang out with kids when they're older, but once the placenta is delivered, yup, mothering is over.'
So it feels to me like the whole point can still stand, but with the qualification that it is truly being addressed to Eve (which we knew anyway) and with a cognizance of what children mean to her, i.e. the mother.
Interestingly, older translations also seem to justify Provan. The Douay has "I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children..."
The King James: "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children..."
The Septuagint seems to support this line of interpretation, particularly in that it uses the same word (lupe, grief (however, can also mean pain)) for both Adam and Eve.
On the other hand, the ESV (the most recent Protestant translation to gain widespread usage) agrees with the NAB and RSV/CE for Eve: "I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children..."; however, it also uses "pain" for Adam: "in pain you shall eat of it..."
The Tanakh (modern translation by the Jewish Publication Society, appears to be widely accepted) is similar, but also has the distinction between Eve and Adam: "I will make most severe your pangs in childbearing; in pain shall you bear children," and then "By toil shall you eat of it..."
With no knowledge of Hebrew myself but some experience with translation generally, my gut feeling is that there's a textual variant here, which is particularly suggested by the newer translations having the different reading. (Even without that, for the newer Roman Catholic translations there's also the possibility of having tried to follow the Vulgate more closely; the Vulgate differentiates Eve/Adam with dolor/labor. Although on that hypothesis the RSV/CE word choice seems a little odd because dolor is generally "sorrow" rather than "pain".)
I suspect - translation issues aside - that I wouldn't quite agree with Provan's final conclusion on the theology of the curse(s) but that's a guess from the brief quotations offered. Mackie's class (suggesting a parallelism between the curse on Eve and the one on Adam) is, I think, on the right track - and actually the interpretation I've heard taught. But then I grew up with the King James Version where the translation prompts the parallel - and the Reformed tradition, particularly the Westminster, has always insisted on "Adam's sin", at least formally, following NT examples, though in practice I'm sure blaming Eve has crept (back?) in.
Though, while that's a starting point, poking through the text right now has suggested to me that there's *more* than a simple parallelism simplifying to your "everything is hard" going on here, too. I'm just not quite sure what.
Jon, thanks for this. Glad to see you're still here!
Provan does point to threads of the tradition (some of them prominent, like the KJV) later in his article. I too (in my Catholic context) often hear "Adam's sin" as shorthand, but, as you say, blaming Eve is heavily present, and I know quite a number of women who have struggled with this. When I find myself in more traditional Christian circles (e.g. at our alma mater and in alumnae groups) there's often a "I'm suffering from something specifically female -- I'm going to slap Eve!" sentiment that is voiced explicitly. The speaker in the video (I think he's a pastor? I can't pull it back up right now) notes the "cups of coffee" he's had with women who are deeply relieved when they hear this explanation, and even Provan refers to the "medical doctors in the nineteenth century, as they found themselves required to become careful exegetes in order to dispute settled societal convictions about pain in childbirth—convictions that were inhibiting medical intervention to lessen that pain." I'm not able to grab the book right now, but I think Alice von Hildebrand in Privilege of Being a Woman says something similar, that women have more sensitive consciences because they've inherited the shame of Eve, in a way that men have not. If it wasn't her, it was someone else.
I heartily agree with your last line here, that "there's more than a simple parallelism simplifying to [my] 'everything is hard' going on here, too.'" I actually cut about 1,200 words out of this post... I mean, obviously there's a lot more to be said here, but I'm actively trying *not* to write a book with every post, ha. But I'll share a little of what I've been thinking (hopefully I can keep this reasonably short):
Most cultures (besides our own) separate work between men's and women's work. Some things are consistently (across cultures) men's work (e.g. smelting) and some things consistently women's work (e.g. weaving and food prep), but there are a lot of things that are consistently *gendered* but in some cultures it's men's work and other cultures it's women's work (e.g. milking the cows). (This is the fruit of last summer's binge reading on the history of gender/feminism/etc.)
If we can put ourselves into the mindset of the world being structured that way, with our everyday existence and work being gendered (which is how most humans live), then I can imagine the author of Genesis trying to convey something like "there will be toil and suffering in the women's sphere, and there will be toil and suffering in the men's sphere." So there *is* a parallel -- but at the same time, there is a distinction. Men and women *don't* experience these things in the same way, and the differences matter. Meanwhile, the suffering is intertwined; the things that are particularly hard for men are indirectly hard for women, and vice versa. I'm going to put a cork in this comment because there's a lot to think about here and my own thoughts aren't fully fleshed out.
The idea that the curse will make both tilling the earth and the raising of children toilsome makes a whole lot more sense as a parallel of the preceding commission: 1) be fruitful and multiply 2) steward the earth. You’ve made your two jobs a whole lot harder for yourself but they are both the joint responsibility of the couple, not one and one.
This is interesting. There are some interesting parallels between the land and the humans, especially in production, e.g. the land itself produces vegetation, at God's command (as opposed to God creating vegetation directly, which is what we might expect). I've thought about gendered work as a result of the Fall. The man and woman are given these commands together, but then after the Fall, God speaks to them separately. They aren't spoken to separately before.
I'm more sympathetic than you are to the idea of gendered work, and I have friends who are more in favor of it than I am. To leave space for the idea that "it is good to have sex-separated spaces for work," I would point out that clothing is also a result of the Fall, as are laws against various kinds of violence. It could be argued that it's not bad in itself but rather a good way to cope with the bad effects of the Fall. But that's a separate conversation.
I had originally connected "till and keep" with "cursed is the ground because of you" but your connection with "steward the earth" (have dominion) is a good connection. I had connected "have dominion" with "he shall rule over you," which Augustine sees as the origin of all human domination, including slavery and other things that aren't sex-specific.
Yes, but/and I don't think pragmatically gendered work contravenes shared responsibility. And perhaps the jobs being more difficult makes them more consuming and so more likely to require division of labor. Or maybe what had been a pragmatic division before but that was untoilsome (e.g. hard to till the earth in your third trimester) will now be the/a main source of your emotional pain.
If it's true that "I will greatly increase your toil in childbearing/conceptions" uses language that isn't female-specific but is directed to the woman, what does that mean for what the toil consists of and why it is laid at the feet of Eve, when she was always going to be the mother of all the living, but was originally jointly tasked with being fruitful, along with her husband, as well as tilling the earth.
That makes sense. There is an important distinction between "you do this and I'll do that, both working toward our shared goal" versus "you do this toward your goal, and I'll do this toward my goal, and we will coexist but with an absolute separation."
The other day I talked to my OT professor about the language, since he knows Hebrew much better than I do, and he said the word for "bring forth children" (yalad, from my point 3.5) is clearly referring to bearing children as women do. The same word with a different grammatical form, or a different but related word, or something like that is used wrt men. That's why it showed up in the concordance as the same word, but he says that the way it is here can only refer to women delivering their children.
I ran him through the argument and he disagreed with Provan. The passage definitely refers to the actual pain of delivering a baby, but it's not limited to that, it's also broader.
So, I don't know. I'm not in a place where I can adjudicate between different readings of the Hebrew, and it's really frustrating not to be reasonably proficient in the language.
I feel there can (qualified for whatever the grammar truly is) be an additional interpretation. E.g. an adjective could be feminine in a Romance language but still refer to the generalized concept. But when it is gendered we understand it to include gender-specific things as well. I.e. we can say women 'parent' or 'have kids' and that means something different than when we say it of men but it doesn't mean, well men hang out with kids when they're older, but once the placenta is delivered, yup, mothering is over.'
So it feels to me like the whole point can still stand, but with the qualification that it is truly being addressed to Eve (which we knew anyway) and with a cognizance of what children mean to her, i.e. the mother.
Interestingly, older translations also seem to justify Provan. The Douay has "I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children..."
The King James: "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children..."
The Septuagint seems to support this line of interpretation, particularly in that it uses the same word (lupe, grief (however, can also mean pain)) for both Adam and Eve.
On the other hand, the ESV (the most recent Protestant translation to gain widespread usage) agrees with the NAB and RSV/CE for Eve: "I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children..."; however, it also uses "pain" for Adam: "in pain you shall eat of it..."
The Tanakh (modern translation by the Jewish Publication Society, appears to be widely accepted) is similar, but also has the distinction between Eve and Adam: "I will make most severe your pangs in childbearing; in pain shall you bear children," and then "By toil shall you eat of it..."
With no knowledge of Hebrew myself but some experience with translation generally, my gut feeling is that there's a textual variant here, which is particularly suggested by the newer translations having the different reading. (Even without that, for the newer Roman Catholic translations there's also the possibility of having tried to follow the Vulgate more closely; the Vulgate differentiates Eve/Adam with dolor/labor. Although on that hypothesis the RSV/CE word choice seems a little odd because dolor is generally "sorrow" rather than "pain".)
I suspect - translation issues aside - that I wouldn't quite agree with Provan's final conclusion on the theology of the curse(s) but that's a guess from the brief quotations offered. Mackie's class (suggesting a parallelism between the curse on Eve and the one on Adam) is, I think, on the right track - and actually the interpretation I've heard taught. But then I grew up with the King James Version where the translation prompts the parallel - and the Reformed tradition, particularly the Westminster, has always insisted on "Adam's sin", at least formally, following NT examples, though in practice I'm sure blaming Eve has crept (back?) in.
Though, while that's a starting point, poking through the text right now has suggested to me that there's *more* than a simple parallelism simplifying to your "everything is hard" going on here, too. I'm just not quite sure what.
Jon, thanks for this. Glad to see you're still here!
Provan does point to threads of the tradition (some of them prominent, like the KJV) later in his article. I too (in my Catholic context) often hear "Adam's sin" as shorthand, but, as you say, blaming Eve is heavily present, and I know quite a number of women who have struggled with this. When I find myself in more traditional Christian circles (e.g. at our alma mater and in alumnae groups) there's often a "I'm suffering from something specifically female -- I'm going to slap Eve!" sentiment that is voiced explicitly. The speaker in the video (I think he's a pastor? I can't pull it back up right now) notes the "cups of coffee" he's had with women who are deeply relieved when they hear this explanation, and even Provan refers to the "medical doctors in the nineteenth century, as they found themselves required to become careful exegetes in order to dispute settled societal convictions about pain in childbirth—convictions that were inhibiting medical intervention to lessen that pain." I'm not able to grab the book right now, but I think Alice von Hildebrand in Privilege of Being a Woman says something similar, that women have more sensitive consciences because they've inherited the shame of Eve, in a way that men have not. If it wasn't her, it was someone else.
I heartily agree with your last line here, that "there's more than a simple parallelism simplifying to [my] 'everything is hard' going on here, too.'" I actually cut about 1,200 words out of this post... I mean, obviously there's a lot more to be said here, but I'm actively trying *not* to write a book with every post, ha. But I'll share a little of what I've been thinking (hopefully I can keep this reasonably short):
Most cultures (besides our own) separate work between men's and women's work. Some things are consistently (across cultures) men's work (e.g. smelting) and some things consistently women's work (e.g. weaving and food prep), but there are a lot of things that are consistently *gendered* but in some cultures it's men's work and other cultures it's women's work (e.g. milking the cows). (This is the fruit of last summer's binge reading on the history of gender/feminism/etc.)
If we can put ourselves into the mindset of the world being structured that way, with our everyday existence and work being gendered (which is how most humans live), then I can imagine the author of Genesis trying to convey something like "there will be toil and suffering in the women's sphere, and there will be toil and suffering in the men's sphere." So there *is* a parallel -- but at the same time, there is a distinction. Men and women *don't* experience these things in the same way, and the differences matter. Meanwhile, the suffering is intertwined; the things that are particularly hard for men are indirectly hard for women, and vice versa. I'm going to put a cork in this comment because there's a lot to think about here and my own thoughts aren't fully fleshed out.