OT511
LESSON 6 OF 24
Old Testament Theology 1 Richard E. Averbeck, Ph.D. Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois
The Curses - Genesis 3:14-24
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Richard E. Averbeck, Ph.D.:
Notes:
We have already discussed the dynamics of the fall in Genesis 3:1-13. Now we need to move onto the curses in Genesis 3:14-24. Now the consequences of the fall were not only the immediate and organic consequences of Genesis 3:1-13. There they did not have to be told anything. They just naturally responded to their shame and wanting to hide. The scrambling they did there was the way they responded. They were trying to handle their fallenness and they didn’t know what to do with it. These were just immediate and organic, natural responses to the dynamics of the fallenness in them. But the consequences of the fall also include the delayed and divinely imposed consequences. And that is what God’s curses are all about. Now it is important to note that the curses that God expresses here are directly upon the serpent and the ground, not directly upon the man and the woman as they are stated. And this contrasts with chapter 4 which is within the same generations section of Genesis chapter 2 through chapter 4, where we have the curse upon Cain. And in that context, the curse is stated directly upon Cain. This contrasts with what we have here in chapter 3. So in chapter 4:11: “Now you are cursed,” God says to Cain, “from the ground you are cursed Cain, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you; you will be a vagrant and wanderer on the earth.” It is important to realize that we have here this curse. And again, it is related to the ground like it is here in chapter 3, but the curse is stated directly upon Cain. Now in chapter 3, we have the curse really upon the circumstances or the situation of the woman and the man. And we need to walk through the dynamics of God’s curses there in section chapter 3:14-16 and then beyond that. What we would like to do is think of this in terms of “paradise lost” in contrast to chapter 3:1-13 where you have the fall as basically “messing up the nest.” Here we have
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an end result being that they lose the paradise. They no longer have access to the garden. Let’s walk through this section quickly and then come back and talk about some of the very important principles that we find here.
First you have the curse upon the serpent in Genesis 3:14-16: So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the livestock, and above all the wild animals; you will crawl on your belly, and you will eat dust all the days of your life; and I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
Then He turns to the woman and doesn’t say, “Cursed is the woman,” but He gives words with regard to the woman. “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” (Genesis 3:16). So that is the section that has to do with the serpent and the words also stated to the woman. Second, we also have later on in 3:17-19, we have the curse upon the ground. And that is a curse directly upon the ground, but with words that affect the man in light of that curse upon the ground. Genesis 3:17: “To Adam He said, ‘Because you listened to your wife, and ate from the tree which I commanded you, [saying], “You must not eat of it;” cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil.”’ Now the word for pain here is the same word that is used for the pain of the woman in childbirth in Genesis 3:16. So both the man and the woman have an experience—having a continual experience—of pain as a result of the fall and God’s cursing upon them because of their fallen choices. “Through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you; and you will eat the plants of the field; 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 shall return.” The ground at the beginning of this section is what they are going to turn back into. They were created out of the dust the man was in chapter 2:7, and they are going to return to dust.
Third, the last section, is in chapter 3, the end of verse 19 really: “For you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Now the man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever.”
And the idea is that he would live forever in this fallen, corrupt
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condition. That would be a disaster. “Therefore the Lord God sent him out from the Garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.” So He drove the man out and at the east of the Garden of Eden, He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the Tree of Life. This, then, is the basic moments that we have here: we have the curse upon the serpent, upon the ground; and then the description of the fallen situation in verses 3:20-24, its overall results. Now let’s return to the beginning of the notes on this particular section of Genesis: “The Dynamics of God’s curses”—the fall as paradise lost. The curse upon the serpent, or the words to the serpent—this refers initially to a literal serpent, because it says in 3:14: “Because you have done this, you are cursed above all the livestock and all the wild animals; you will crawl on your belly, and you will eat dust all the days of your life.” So there is a connection here to a literal serpent in the context. Then as we move on, we see a development from there to “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will crush his heel.” The same verb is used there. The NIV translates crush first and then strike second in terms of what the serpent will do—strike at the heel of the seed of the woman. But the same verb is used both times. The difference is in what is crushed or struck at or bruised or however you translate the verb. You need to translate the verb the same way in both cases. But the fact is that the crushing or whatever happens to the head is fatal but not the heel. So that is the distinction that is actually being made in the context here. We are going to say a lot more about this particular passage later. But there are a few important observations to be made here now. The battle between the seeds here really sets up the words to the woman. It is natural to move to the woman bearing children from here because we are talking about the battle between the seeds of the woman and the seed of the serpent. Her listening to the serpent now turns back on her in the ongoing pain of bearing the seed and constant battle between her seed and the seed of the serpent. So we have this in 3:16, the first part of it—pain in childbirth. To the woman He said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing, with pain you will give birth to children.” So there is a real emphasis upon the significance of the woman here in bearing children. Of course this is connected with the original mandate to multiply and fill the earth. So this starts way back in Genesis 1 and is a very significant part of the woman, the wife, from a biblical point of view. That is picked up in the passage in the New Testament that is much discussed these days in terms of the relationship between men and women in the church. That is in I Timothy 2. Let’s look at that for a moment. It is in the context of talking about how men should conduct themselves in the church, how they should pray. And then it moves on and talks specifically about women. I Timothy 2:9 and we will read through I Timothy 2:15: Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper Transcript - OT511 Old Testament Theology 1 © 2015 Christian University GlobalNet. All rights reserved.
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clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly garments. Bur rather by means of good works as its proper for women making a claim to godliness. [Of course it is who you are and how you act that is pivotal here and that’s truth for men and for women]. A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness [now here is where we get into a lot of debate in the church about the relationship between man and woman in the context of the ministry]. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint. Now the apostle Paul is talking about the context here in the church, and he is dealing with one of the issues of that particular day in terms of the woman in the church in relation to man in the church and the leadership of the church, because chapter 3 then develops the whole issue of overseer, elder, deacon, and so on. Now in this particular case it is interesting that he uses actually the Genesis 2 and 3 accounts to make his points with regard to the importance of the woman being in submission in regard to authority. It was Adam who was first created, not Eve. That is from Genesis chapter 2. And it was not Adam who was deceived but the woman who was deceived. That is not a complement to the man. Man walked right straight into it, face-to-face, knowing exactly what he was doing. And they fell into transgression. But the woman will be preserved through bearing children. This is the woman’s advantage, and this comes from the beginning of the Bible and on through. But now what he is saying is that with that advantage of the woman—who is going to be bearing children and therefore have a closeness to the children—there will be a struggle and pain that comes with that. In I Timothy 2:15 this is the way a woman is provided for. She has real hope in having children; therefore provision when she grows old. It refers to the natural order of the son taking care of his mother. Childbearing is her advantage. Men simply cannot do this. And so one of the man things that is developed here in Genesis as well as the I Timothy passage is this focus upon this essential part of the woman that makes her unique. And so in this context, the question becomes then: How do we handle some of the issues that come with the issue of childbearing and then the next part of the verse about which there is even, I would say, more discussion and a lot of debate? And that is, the second part of the verse where it says, “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
Now the first part of the verse says she is going to have problems Transcript - OT511 Old Testament Theology 1 © 2015 Christian University GlobalNet. All rights reserved.
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with bearing children. The second part of the verse says she is going to have problems with having a man. There is going to be struggle and pain in this too for her like in bearing the child. Now you have to remember that this is in the context of God responding and judging for the willingness to rebel against Him in the fall in the earlier part of the chapter. Now there have been different views on how we should understand this word desire. In Genesis 4:7, when God is declaring to Cain that he must resist his anger and not fall further into sin, He says to him: “Sin’s desire is for you, but you must master it.” You’ve got to handle sin and not let it pounce upon you. The picture here is that sin is a crouching lion at the door of Cain’s heart and it is ready to pounce on him. It wants to take over him. But he must master this thing and not go further with it. Of course, he fails in the context, and we’ll come back to that later. He goes ahead and kills his brother. But the point is he is told by God to master it. The same term for desire is used in three places: (1) here in Genesis 3:16; (2) and then in Genesis 4:7; (3) and then also in the Song of Solomon in 7:10. And there has been some debate about whether we are to understand Genesis 3:16 in terms of Genesis 4:7 or Song of Solomon 7:10. In Genesis 4:7, the desire seems to be that sin wants to dominate. And so that would suggest, perhaps, that the woman would want to dominate the man. In the second part of the verse, we have master. And that is the same word in Genesis 3:16 as well. In fact the whole grammar of the passage in Genesis 4:7 matches almost exactly the grammar of, and the terminology and the lexicography of Genesis 3:16. So in all three places we have the same basic terminology being used especially in regard to the desire. But in Genesis 4:7 is especially close in always including even in the same context in the same toledot, or generation section, of Genesis. Now in the Song of Solomon, the expression is: the woman is talking and saying, “I belong to my lover, and his desire is for me.” Here it talks about the man’s desire for the woman in the Song of Solomon. And so some would take it to be more having to do with the sexual desire that the woman has in Genesis 3:16. The chapter 4 verses’ close parallel is particularly important here. As I mentioned, it suggests that the woman may want to dominate the man, but she will not be able to. He will still rule. That would be the general idea if we take this parallel. She is going to want to make him work well for her in her life. But the point of the judgment that God is pronouncing upon her here is that she will not be able to have the power to make that happen. She is not going to be able to manage the man the way she would like to be able to in the fallen situation. Now in thinking about that interpretation and the overall understanding of this passage, we need to recall Genesis 2:24. In the context of chapter 2, we have the man responding in 2:23, and we get a direct quote from Adam there: “The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.” So he is Transcript - OT511 Old Testament Theology 1 © 2015 Christian University GlobalNet. All rights reserved.
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very much impressed with this woman. And that’s a direct quote. And then the narrator, Moses, gives an application of that in Genesis 2:24: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” That is a response and an interpretation of 2:23 by the narrator Moses in applying the implications of 2:23. The point is, this is from a post-fall point of view that this response is being given. And so the command in 2:24 is just as much for the post-fall situation as it is for the pre-fall situation. Now this means that the call to cherish, the call to treasure the woman, continues after the fall even in spite of their fallenness. This is what we are called to—this type of relationship—leaving and cleaving, cherishing and treasuring the relationship between the man and the woman in the marriage context. So that then continues on through. And we see this coming through, for example, in Ephesians in the New Testament—how this same basic idea shows up in that particular context. In the passage we have, of course, the invocation of Christ being the context here back to the beginning of the chapter and then being “filled with the Spirit” in Ephesians 5:18 and the joy of that in Ephesians 5:19-20, “speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs”; “always giving thanks,” verse 5:20, “in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Ephesians 5:21: “And be subject to one another in the fear of Jesus Christ.” So within the context of the church, if we are “Spirit-filled,” we will be submitting to one another. And that continues. The sentence continues. There are participles here: “Wives, being subject to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is also the head of the church.” So this ties in with some of the arguments in I Timothy 2 as well with regard to the relationship between the man and the woman. It is all tied in to the context of the family relationship. He Himself being the Savior of the body: “But as the church is subject to Christ so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.” Then it goes on. Ephesians 5:25-33: Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless. So the husbands are to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself. They are one flesh. For no one has ever hated his own flesh, but nurses and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church—because we are members of His body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and shall be joined to wife [this is Genesis 2:24], and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great—[there is a great mystery in this whole relationship between a man and a woman]—but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church [and that is Transcript - OT511 Old Testament Theology 1 © 2015 Christian University GlobalNet. All rights reserved.
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the greatest mystery]. Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband. Now I submit to you that the context within which the woman will find it really comfortable to submit to the man is the kind of love that is called for. So in the context of Genesis 2 when we talk about the leaving and cleaving and the cherishing (which is even sighted here in Ephesians 5), when we get to that point, then we realize that what we are still called to is the kind of relationship where it would be most natural for the woman to want to rest in her husband—to find the husband being her nest within the world, providing and taking care of it, nurturing her. That’s the idea. And a man who does that well invites a woman and reaches a woman’s heart in terms of her desire to rest and to submit and to simply be cared for by man in his world. The terminology that is used in Genesis 3:16 for the idea of ruling is the term that is used actually in Genesis 1 for rule, where the great light—the sun and the moon—they rule the day and the night. They provide the context for the day and the night. It is not the terminology that is used in Genesis 1:26: “Let us make man in our image according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky.” And Genesis 1:28: “God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it and rule over it.” Those are not the words that are used here in Genesis 3:16. The woman is not really put into the category of being ruled and subdued. But rather, the man is to be the umbrella under which she functions. He provides the context for her and is the one who has the headship in the relationship. That’s very important to understand. There are a few more things that I need to say about this. When you want somebody or want something from somebody, that gives them automatically the upper hand. You remember in Genesis 2, it is the man that desires the woman. He wants her. He responds in that kind of a way. Now the woman’s desire for the man comes into prominence in this particular context. So now that puts a different kind of light on the whole thing. Before the fall, in Genesis 2, there was no need for anyone to have any kind of relationship that was over or above in any kind of way—managing someone else. Things function naturally and there was no conflict. There was no need for this kind of thing. But after the fall, by the very nature of fallenness, there needs to be an order established, a specific kind of order. And that’s really what is happening here in Genesis 3. There is a gradation in this term desire that is used. First, I think in one sense that the desire is for a man because she wants to have a seed. That’s the context. She is not going to be able to have the seed, the child (bear the child), without having the man. And so she may want a man simply for that. That would be a desire for a man. Second, another way to think of it in this context is the desire to have a man simply because she wants the relationship with a man. She wants the Transcript - OT511 Old Testament Theology 1 © 2015 Christian University GlobalNet. All rights reserved.
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cherishing, the relationship that we’ve referred to here in Genesis 2:24. The third point, and it may go even further, and that is she may actually desire to control the man because she is going to want her world to be a world that is a safe world for her, something that works well for her. It seems to me that the word desire includes all of this here. There is a gradation of feelings for and desire in the woman that shows up in this particular context and is part of the very understanding of this particular word. Now we need to remember that this is part of a judgment on the woman because of her part in the fall. She will want to have children but there will be pain in that now even along with the blessing of having a child. She will also want to have a man, but this will not be easy for her either even though it is intended to be a blessing for her. She will not have the power to make it work the way she would really like it to work. The man won’t be easy for her either just like having a baby is not easy. He will have an upper hand in a sense. And on one level I think the passage is even just reflecting this in terms of physical strength in terms of the power of the muscles of the man as opposed to the woman. And it is really much down to the nitty-gritty of the earthly situation of existing now in a world that is harsh and has to be handled. Now as far as implications as far as the church is considered, one of the issues that arises, of course, is leadership in the church. You can start with thinking about this relationship relationally in the first place, and this helps. We need to realize that the Bible does not create the man and the woman in isolation from one another. It was not good for the man to be alone. And the woman was created for the man to be his partner, to be his one flesh unit—that they function together. We are not to be thinking about individuation here in terms of the way we often talk about the individual. We are talking really about the man and the woman in relationship to one another. And that’s the way we need to understand it in the church too. The church is about relationship between one and another. And actually the leadership of the church derives from this particular concept as well, from the family concept. We will talk about that in a moment. We must admit that the oppressive patriarchalism that has been a problem in our culture and in our churches is not what God intends in the first place. This is not intended to be an oppressive sort of thing. The male leadership, or eldership principle, in I Timothy 2 and 3 does not imply that a woman cannot have spiritual influence and even teach a man in the church. Consider, for example, Priscilla and Aquila together (I Corinthians 16:19). It does mean, however, that male elders, or what we would call spiritually qualified heads of clans—elders of families who would also be elders in the church—are to have the supervisory role over teaching in the church. They are to do this as shepherds, not as kings or masters, or “lords” as I Peter 5:3 puts it. They are actually to be responsible to see that no one is frustrated with regard to use of their gifts in the service of Christ and the church. In Transcript - OT511 Old Testament Theology 1 © 2015 Christian University GlobalNet. All rights reserved.
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the synagogue in the New Testament days, that had the principle of the heads of clans, that the elders would be drawn from the heads of clans for the synagogue. This same basic principle is being applied, it seems, in I Timothy 3. And so the leadership of the synagogue came immediately out of the leadership of families. The same is true in the church. So there is a natural connection between the two. In I Peter 5 in the New Testament, there is this principle that needs to be kept in mind in terms of the nature of leadership in the church. We can start, however, by looking back earlier in the same book in chapter 3 of I Peter and the background back into chapter 2. He has been talking, starting in I Peter 2:18, about servants, “Be submissive to your masters.” And then he uses actually the example of Christ that even though He was mistreated, He suffered that and He bore our sins in His body on the cross (I Peter 2:24) so that we might die to sin. And he uses the background of Isaiah 53 as “He is a suffering servant.” Well, therefore, servants should be willing to suffer like Jesus was willing to suffer and not rebel, but learn to live godly in Christ Jesus in the midst of their circumstances. He goes on in I Peter 3 and talks about the same thing with the wife. I Peter 3:1-3: “In the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that, even if any of them are disobedient to the Word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior.” And he talks about the adornment as being of the person, and of person of the heart, a gentle and quiet spirit. It talks about adorning themselves in proper ways, and even refers to Sara referring to Abraham as her “lord,” really saying, “sir” to him—this sort of thing, showing this kind of submission. And then it goes on again in I Peter 3:7: “You husbands, in the same way live with your wives with in an understanding way as with someone weaker since she is a woman.” Now he doesn’t mean weaker as a person. He just means physically weaker. “And show her honor as a fellow heir of grace of life so that your prayers will not be hindered” (I Peter 3:7). There is a difference between the way you handle a heavy medal pail, or object that carries various things, as opposed to a fine vase where you need to treat it gently so that it doesn’t break and so on. And we are to treat our wives in that way. Wives are to feel treated special, held up, really honored in that kind of a way. “So that your prayers will not be hindered” (I Peter 3:7). This gives the context that continues on, then, through to how we’re to handle ourselves as people in the church, and specifically as men. So in I Peter 5:1-6: Therefore, I exhort the elders among you as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight—not under compulsion, but voluntarily [willingly], according to the will of God; and not for sorted gain, but with eagerness; nor as yet lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving Transcript - OT511 Old Testament Theology 1 © 2015 Christian University GlobalNet. All rights reserved.
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to be examples to the flock [we don’t lord it over people in the church, no one, male or female]. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfaded crown of glory. You younger men, likewise, be subject to your elders [so there is subjection of the younger men to the older elders]. And all of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another [All of you!]. God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble. Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. And he is talking here to leaders here as much as anyone else. The point is, there is a certain kind of leadership that is intended in the church. And the fact of the matter is a lot of the problems that have arisen with regard to this is because people get frustrated without not being able to use their gifts. Now sometimes people think of leadership in the church as a power sort of thing—people have power. Well leadership in the church should not be a power issue anyway. It is a servant issue. You become a shepherd that helps and feeds and cares for. It is not a power issue. So that is a misunderstanding from the beginning. But even if you are not thinking about that, if you simply want to use your gift, the elders of the church are responsible to see that no one is frustrated in the use of their gift—man or woman. Gifts are to be used. God has given them to the church for that purpose. What I mean is the kind of submission that is talked about here is simple—simply under the eldership rule in such a way that they provide a way for the gifts to be properly used in the church—gifts of both men and women. And if they are not doing that, that will frustrate people with gifts whether male or female. Now with regard for the secular world, there are no submission rules outside really of the marriage bond and the church itself, because the church is really built off of the family relationship. A woman can be as effective and aggressive as a man in such matters. You can see this even in Proverbs 31 in the “excellent woman.” She does business. She takes initiative. She is very much one who buys and sells a field even. This does not mean that she is unsubmissive to her husband at all. In fact, to frustrate her in this area would be to disrespect her. The husband in that context, in Proverbs 31, honors this woman who takes all this initiative. So a woman is free to develop all of her gifts in the church to be used and also all of her abilities in the world. This is important to understand and to think about in terms of how we do leadership in the church and how we relate to one another. Now the next thing we need to move onto is the curse upon the ground. We have here in Genesis 3:17-19: “To Adam He 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 all the days of your life.” Again, that is the same word as pain Transcript - OT511 Old Testament Theology 1 © 2015 Christian University GlobalNet. All rights reserved.
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as for the woman bearing a child in Genesis 3:16. The ground comes back at the end. “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19). This is all about the relationship to the ground. Now the immediate consequences for the man are this painful toil and the struggle to make it in the world. Now his nest, the world, becomes hard to deal with. He is originally given dominion over this. And this is still true, but now it is hard to manage, and there is painful toil associated with it. Man’s world is like a difficult situation like the woman’s. The ultimate consequences for the man and the woman is: “By the sweat of your brow you shall eat” (Genesis 3:19)—life is going to be hard—and then you will die. Death is really the big stopper here. These people are corrupt. We have all been corrupt since the fall. And some people are going to show their corruption in radical sorts of ways. Some people, through the work that God does in drawing them to Himself, will be driven to Him. Others will run away from Him. And no matter what, everybody eventually has to pay attention to God. Death is the big stopper of everybody. Everybody has to face God eventually. Now in the marriage relationship, then, the issue of the man and the woman—it’s a wonderful thing. But in our fallen condition, it is sometimes difficult to make it work. We have talked about the curse upon the serpent that affects the woman’s world and the curse upon the ground that affects the man’s world. How does this affect the relationship between the two? Basically the man is told in Genesis 2:24 to go cherish and cleave to his woman. This is what we are told to do as a result of Adam’s response to Eve. But we need to realize that it won’t work very well. That’s what we see in chapter 3. In some ways this is because of what is wrong with the man, and in some ways this is because of what is wrong with the woman both in their world. With regard to the man, what’s wrong with you man? You really want to cherish her. You were really built for that. She was built for you. You were supposed to do that. It is a natural thing. But you are also preoccupied with and troubled about the world around you. Your world intrudes, so you don’t cherish her very well. What about the woman? What’s wrong with the woman in her situation? Well she really wants to be cherished by her man. She was really built for that in Genesis 2. But she may also want to take control of the man—manage things in her own hands and so on. So she can be difficult to cherish. So the result is we have this whole set of things going on in the relationship between the man and the woman in light of the struggles that they both face in their particular worlds. Now we have the fallen situation. In Genesis 3:20-24, that we read earlier, we have what the end result of this whole thing is here. The man renames the woman. Adam named his wife Eve because she would become the mother of all the living. You can contrast that with 2:23, where Transcript - OT511 Old Testament Theology 1 © 2015 Christian University GlobalNet. All rights reserved.
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The Curses - Genesis 3:14-24
Notes:
she is called woman, a play on word with man even in Hebrew—ish and isha. Here death has come into the situation in Genesis 3:19: “From dust you came, and to dust you shall return.” This raises the issue of the woman as the source of new life through bearing children. Her advantage is one who can actually give this kind of birth. Second, God clothes the man and the woman. He made them garments of skin. And again, contrast this with Genesis 2:25 where they are “naked and not ashamed” and then in Genesis 3:10-11 where they try to cover up and hide. God is helping them here to deal with their shame. He is giving grace to deal with the severe trouble now in their soul and in their relationship. Then we have the expulsion from Paradise—the problem with the man and the woman knowing good and evil and living forever in that condition is that would be a horrible thing. There is no death in Genesis 2; the condition is great, so living forever is no problem. There is also no death until Genesis 3 until the end. God imposes this by expelling them from access to the Tree of Life. For them to continue in this condition forever would be hell on earth, literally. God’s solution to the problem is expulsion—no access to the rejuvenating Tree of Life. Death, therefore, is indeed the big stopper of everyone. Now there is an ongoing battle then. We need to talk again about Genesis 3:15—sometimes called a proto-evangelion—a proto-gospel, “a gospel in seed form,” we might say. Forgive the pun, please, there. Even in their day, they would have understood what this was in the days of Israel when Moses was speaking to Israel. What is the reason we know that? In the first place, the serpent is not just a snake. The Israelites would have known that. They knew that snakes don’t talk as well as we do. Now we are going to walk through a discussion here that takes us into some ancient Near Eastern material a bit because in the context of ancient Israel, there is a lot of serpent texts from Egypt to Mesopotamia, and it provides imagery that helps us to understand how the ancient Israelites would have read this particular passage or heard it read to them. We are going to be taking about The Baal Epic, here which is, of course, the god Baal that we hear about a lot in the Bible, an enemy of the Lord. And we have false prophets of Baal and so on in the historical books. From about the time of Moses, we have a long epic about the god Baal and his defeating of evil to bring prosperity into the world of mankind. That’s what this epic is all about. It is from Ugarit upon on the north Lebanon, Syrian coast on the Mediterranean near Turkey. And this particular set of documents comes from around 1400 BC. And in this document, you have Baal defeating this great evil serpent. He is called Yam, and later on, Leviathan. Now this myth and various forms of it is known throughout the Ancient Near East. We see it reflected in the Hittite materials from Anatolia and Turkey from Egypt. Various forms of this are in various kinds of texts that are available to us from the Ancient Near East. And it is an important myth. It tells us about how he defeated this Leviathan and so on. Now one of the difficulties here is to understand how the Bible actually sometimes refers to ancient Near Eastern mythological texts like this. Transcript - OT511 Old Testament Theology 1 © 2015 Christian University GlobalNet. All rights reserved.
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The Curses - Genesis 3:14-24
Notes:
When Leviathan is referred to in that particular passage, it talks about how Leviathan—and I have it cited there in the Baal Epic section of the notes—“For all that you smote Leviathan the gliding serpent made an end of the serpent (and) made an end of the coiling serpent, the tyrant with seven heads.” There are two sections to this epic. There is Baal defeats Yam, the god of the sea— and he is the serpent; and then there is Baal in relationship to Mot, which means death. So Baal defeats Death as well. But Death, once Baal has defeated the serpent, Death comes and says, “Ok, you defeated the serpent, but you are not going to be able to defeat me.” So you smote Leviathan, that gliding serpent, and made an end of that coiling serpent, that tyrant with seven heads; but Mot is saying, “But you are not going to be able to defeat me.” In Isaiah 27:1, we read this “In that day the Lord will punish with His sword, His fierce, great and powerful sword, Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the coiling serpent. He will slay the monster of the sea.” So really what the Lord is saying is that: “There is going to come a day when He is going to defeat Leviathan.” And he [Isaiah] is referring to parallels in terminology. The same terms are being used in the texts. They are both Semitic languages.
We will come back and develop this further in the next lecture.
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Transcript - OT511 Old Testament Theology 1 © 2015 Christian University GlobalNet. All rights reserved.
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