Genesis 3:16 - Meaning and Application

Here is the sentence passed on the woman for her sin. She is condemned to two things: sorrow and submission. These are fitting punishments for a sin in which she had pleased both her desire and her pride.

First, she is placed under sorrow. Only one part of that sorrow is named here, the pain of bearing children, but it includes all the fears, pains, and griefs that this tender part of humanity is most open to, along with the common troubles of life. Sin brought sorrow into the world. It made the world a place of tears, filled our days with trouble, and opened up deep grief in our hearts. If we had never known guilt, we would never have known grief.

The pains of childbirth, which are a byword for great pain even in Scripture, are the result of sin. Every ache and cry of a woman in labor speaks loudly of sin’s awful effects. This is what comes of eating forbidden fruit. The sorrows are said to be greatly increased, and that is true of all the sorrows of this life. Human life is full of many kinds of trouble, often coming again and again, like clouds returning after rain. It is no surprise that our sorrows are multiplied when our sins are too, because both are countless evils.

The pains of childbearing are multiplied because they include more than the labor itself. There are the discomforts before birth, the pain from conception onward, and the weariness and stress of nursing afterward. And even after all that, if the children grow up wicked or foolish, they become an even greater burden to the mother. So sorrow multiplies, and as soon as one grief ends, another takes its place in this world.

It is God who multiplies our sorrows: “I will do it.” As a righteous Judge, he does this, and that should quiet us under every affliction. No matter how many sorrows we have, we deserve them all, and more. Yet God also does this as a loving Father, using pain to humble us for sin and loosen our grip on the world. The good we receive through sorrow, and the comfort God gives in it, will more than make up for however greatly our sorrows are increased.

Second, she is placed in a position of submission. The whole female sex, which was equal with man in creation, is now made subject because of sin, and is forbidden to seize authority for itself (1 Timothy 2:11-12). In particular, the wife is placed under her husband’s rule and is not fully at her own disposal. We see an example of this in the law about vows, where the husband could cancel his wife’s vows if he chose to do so (Numbers 30:6-8).

This sentence is the same in substance as the command, “Wives, be subject to your own husbands.” But sin has turned that duty into a punishment, when by itself it would not have been so. If man had not sinned, he would always have ruled with wisdom and love. If woman had not sinned, she would always have obeyed with humility and gentleness. Then this order would not have felt hard. It is our own sin and foolishness that make the yoke heavy.

If Eve had not first eaten the forbidden fruit and then led her husband into sin, she would never have had reason to complain of being under his authority. So she should not complain of it, even if it is at times hard. What should be complained of is the sin that made it painful. Wives who not only despise and disobey their husbands, but also try to rule over them, are not thinking carefully. They are breaking God’s law and resisting God’s sentence.

Yet mercy is mixed with judgment in this sentence. The woman will have sorrow, but it will be in bearing children, and that sorrow will be forgotten when the child is born, as Jesus later said about the joy after pain (John 16:21). She will be subject, but to her own husband, who loves her, not to a stranger or an enemy. This was not a curse meant to ruin her, but a discipline meant to bring her to repentance. It was also a kindness that enmity was not put between the man and the woman, as there was between the serpent and the woman.