While it is true that God says to Eve ‘I will multiply your pains in childbearing; with painful labour you will bring forth children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you’, one must remember that extracting a verse from its context can be dangerous.

There are those who read this verse as objectively true. Childbirth is painful; women look for intimacy more than men; men are superior to women. This writer is not one of them.

The passage occurs immediately after the expulsion from Eden. God curses the serpent with separation from other species for beguiling the woman, adding mutual hostility for good measure. Then comes the statement to Eve, and finally Adam is addressed, “Because you listened to your wife and ate the fruit… The ground is cursed …By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food.

There are two biblical parallels. God challenges Cain later in almost identical language “sin waits at the door; its desire towards you, but you can rule over it.” The passages mirror each other – Eve’s desire is positive, sin’s negative. Dominating is negative when over Eve, but positive when over sin. And we see another mirror image from before leaving the garden: In Eden Eve’s will dominated and food had been easily obtained. Now we have the reverse: an exercise in irony and dislocation from the perfect.

The statements to Adam, Eve and the serpent must be read within this context of warning that life will never be easy, never be perfect; there will always be temptations, we must work hard to make the best of it.

This verse has been used to justify keeping women subservient to men, overlooking the texts where men and women are created equally. Its misuse compounds the problem of living in an imperfect dislocated world and hides the achievable resolution.

written for and published in Progressive Judaism section of London Jewish News February 2018