The Judgment Upon the Woman. The divine judgment upon the woman is of central concern for our study, because it deals directly with the impact of the Fall upon the husband-wife relationship. The judgment upon the woman has two aspects. The first relates to her role as a mother and the second to her role as a wife. As a mother she will still be able to bear children, but God decrees that she will suffer in childbirth: "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children" (Gen 3:16). Childbearing, which was part of the pre-Fall divine design for the filling of the earth (Gen 1:28), will now become a painful process.

As a wife, the woman will suffer in relation to her husband. "Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you" (Gen 3:16). This divine judgment represents a measure-for-measure response to Eve’s attempt to usurp her husband’s headship. The meaning of the first phrase appears to be, as Leupold puts it, "She who sought to strive apart from man and to act independently from him in the temptation, [now] finds a continual attraction for him to be her unavoidable lot."³² Feminists may try to banish a woman’s attraction for man, but it is there to stay. This is not necessarily a punitive element. The meaning of the word "desire" (Hebrew teshuqah) is illuminated by its occurrence in Song of Solomon, where the Shulamite bride joyfully exclaims, "I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me" (Song 7:10).

The second phrase, "he shall rule over you," has been the subject of numerous interpretations. Our Women in Ministry chapter acknowledges that the "word mashal [to rule] in this form in verse 16d means ‘to rule’ (and not ‘to be like’) and definitely implies subjection."³³ The meaning appears to be that as the woman sought to rule man by taking control in her own hands and leading him into temptation, now her penalty is that she will be ruled by her husband. This does not mean that God gives a license to man to exercise despotic rulership. The author rightly points out that the Hebrew word for "to rule," mashal, is used in many passages "in the sense of servant leadership, to ‘comfort, protect, care for, love.’"³⁴ The Old Testament uses mashal in a positive sense to describe God’s rulership (Is 40:10; Ps 22:28) and the future rulership of the Messiah (Mic 5:2).

When a man rules in the spirit of Christ, such rule is not harsh or domineering and "may be regarded as a blessing in preserving the harmony and union of the relationship."³⁵ But where sin prevails, then such a husband’s rulership may become a miserable domination. God ordained that man should exercise godly headship, not ungodly domination.

The phrase, "he shall rule over you," represents God’s rejection of the woman’s attempt to take on the leadership role at the time of the Fall and His summons to the woman to return to her creation submission to man. The story of the Fall shows how the woman endangered herself and her husband by her bid to dominate. God’s judgments upon the woman represent the divine remedy to maintain the intended order of the sexes as it appears in Genesis 2. The divinely intended submission of women has nothing to do with male domination and oppression of women. It is a beneficial arrangement designed to protect men and women from the destructive powers of evil.

Not all the elements of the divine judgment are punitive. God’s declaration that the woman will bear children is not punitive; only the pains of birth are punishments for the Fall. Similarly, her desire for a man is not necessarily punitive, because the same is said about man before the Fall: the man leaves his parents in order to cleave to his wife (Gen 2:24). The punitive aspects of Genesis 3:16 do not imply that all aspects of subordination must be seen as punishment.

Summing up, we can say that the wording of Genesis 3:16 does not warrant our author’s conclusion that the relationship between man and woman has been fundamentally altered by the Fall. George W. Knight cogently points out that "Genesis 3 presumes the reality of childbearing (Gen 1:28), in which the woman will now experience the effects of the Fall and sin (Gen 3:16). It presumes the reality of work (Gen 1:28; 2:15), in which the man will now experience the effect of the Fall and sin (Gen 3:17ff.). And it presumes the reality of the role relationship between wife and husband established by God’s creation order in Genesis 2:18ff., a relationship that will now experience the effects of the Fall and sin (Gen 3:16). ‘He shall rule over you’ expresses the effect of sin corrupting the relationship of husband (the head) and wife. Just as childbearing and work were established before the Fall and were corrupted by it, so this relationship existed before the Fall and was corrupted by it. Neither childbearing, nor work, nor the role relationship of wife and husband is being introduced in Genesis 3; all are previously existing realities that have been affected by the Fall."³⁶