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May 29, 2025 |
| Your Desire Will Be For Your Husband | ||
The phrase from Genesis 3:16, "Your desire will be for your husband" will be a source of trouble until judgment day. Feminists and those with an egalitarian bent despise it. I think most pastors do understand it but very few will teach the truth of it, for fear of their congregation. Instead they teach something wrong or a watered-down version of it.
The purpose of this study is to determine what God means by this phrase?
Most people misinterpret what God means by, "Your Desire Will Be For Your Husband" because they believe it expresses a complete thought. We'll see that isn't correct. Here is the rest of that thought.
Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.
There are three common attacks on this verse:
Trim it down - Trimming any verse removes information about how to understand it and makes it possible to understand it in in many ways. This is usually referred to as taking it out of its context.
Change the meaning of "desire" - the Hebrew word that is translated as "desire" can refer to many kinds of desires, but one of those is unwelcome. Some people will choose one particular meaning of desire to avoid the unwelcome meaning.
Find equality - People with an egalitarian inclination are determined that "every bad thing said about a women must be matched by a bad thing said about a man. In their thinking that is balanced.
Sometimes people have trimmed this verse down to "Your desire will be for your husband" because they can't comprehend the verse as a whole. They just aren't good at comprehension. But other people have trimmed it down because they didn't like what they saw in the full verse and are certain that can't be right.
By trimming it down and thereby by ignoring the context of the verse, the chapter, and the entire Bible, conflicting information is removed and it's possible to interpret the verse in many ways
Having done this, the usual interpretation is that "Your desire will be for your husband" is only saying a woman will want a man.
Most people misinterpret the phrase, "Your Desire Will Be For Your Husband" to refer to a desire for one particular thing. God means many things by the word "desire", all at the same time. He's that kind of God.
We'll see that he is referring to a love desire, a sexual desire, a desire for protection, and a desire to have the authority that a man has. We'll dig into that shortly.
Some people recognize the truth that God is also talking about a woman coveting a man's authority. Faced with that, some people want to soften that blow and the common way is based on the idea that "every bad thing said about a women must be matched by a bad thing said about a man." In their thinking, that is balanced.
They do that by interpreting the second clause, "he will rule over you", as meaning "he will want to be a tyrant." That way you have women wanting a man's authority and men wanting to be tyrants. Therefore God is saying they are equally wrong and what they need is to find the balance where each person is equal.
This idea that men and women are equal is not in any way Biblical, though it has been around for a long time. There is a widespread quote about why God chose to use Adam's rib. Matthew Henry (1662-1714) had a version of it in his commentary. Before that, Matthew Poole (1624-1679) said something similar in his commentary. David Schaff (in vol. V of History of the Christian Church, p. 634) states that,
In the second book, [Peter] Lombard [d. 1164] makes the famous statement which he quotes from Augustine (354-430), and which has often been falsely ascribed to Matthew Henry, that the woman was not taken from Adam's head, as if she were to rule over him or from his feet as if she were to be his slave, but from his side that she might be his consort.
Neither the Lombard nor Augustine references have been found.
The Bible is clear that the woman is spiritually equal to the man, but her role in life is secondary to the man.
But I want you to know that the head of every man is the Messiah, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of the Messiah is God. (1 Corinthians 11:3)
We got as far as having both parts of the thought that God is expressing to Eve.
Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.
Without some thought, it's easy to easy to see how these two clauses could appear to be talking about different things. The first part seems to be about her desire and the second part is about his rule. Is it possible they are talking about the same thing?
If we look at the chapter context, the answer is obviously yes. This chapter can be summarized as "Satan uses Eve's desire to be in authority, to cause her to sin and then trick Adam into sinning." Authority is what the story is about. God's words should be the authority, but Eve isn't happy being the helper to Adam.
Seen in that light, Genesis 3:16 is saying that Eve will desire the control of her husband, but he must control her.
Some call this verse a curse, but the Bible doesn't say that. Only God's words to the snake are referred to as a curse. This verse is actually a blessing to us from God that we can use to understand society. If everyone would accept these words, society would be fixed. This verse is not a curse on Eve. It's really just a statement of fact. This is how things are going to be now. A tension will exist between man and woman until the original sin is undone. Eve will desire to control her husband and he will need to assert his authority over her.
YouTube is full of psychologists and counselors talking about marriage problems. The number one problem … and the foundation for many other problems is that the woman wants to control her husband. She can be ruthless about this, employing a whole bag of tricks to ridicule, belittle, and emasculate him so that she can command him, so she can "rule over him". Our society has raised men with the un-Biblical message of equality. Now these experts are teaching men how to be men and resist what the woman will do, by her nature.
One of the videos on this topic is, "How is a woman's desire for her husband a curse (Genesis 3:16)?" by Grace Digital Network. It gets most things correct.
It is incorrect in thinking this is a curse. It understands the tension between the two but it accepts that it exists because Adam and Eve changed due to God's curse. Eve, and all women, will begin to try to control their husbands, and Adam, and all men will try to be tyrants over their wives.
Instead, Eve, from the beginning, was unhappy being the helper to Adam. When she saw an opportunity to change that, to become the one in control, she jumped at it. Many pastors try to change the word "helper" into something else. The only thing we learn from that is what is inside of them. Satan could see this characteristic in Eve, but these pastors cannot.
Also, no rational man wants to be a tyrant over his wife. He wants to love her and care for her. He wants a well-run household. His failing in the garden was that he didn't exercise sufficient control over Eve. Instead of exercising his authority, he wanted to take the easy way and avoid conflict.
We can verify the understanding of this verse by looking at the Hebrew, which says:
For your husband your desire, …
It is a strange clause because it has no verb. Translations usually add the words "will be" or "shall be." That future tense is used to give credence to the idea that there was a change.
The word "for" is also a problem. The Hebrew word can be translated many ways including as "against." I believe God is indicating that woman will always have a range of desires relating to their husbands.
I put all of this information together and came up with this version of what God is saying to Eve.
You have many desires for your husband, including the desire to control him, but he is the head over you.