Bible Strands
Genesis 3:16
To the woman He said: “I will sharply increase your pain in childbirth; in pain you will bring forth children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — God speaks directly to the woman in the immediate aftermath of the fall, positioned between the protoevangelium to the serpent (3:15) and the curse on Adam (3:17).
The words — Two distinct Hebrew roots are both rendered "pain": 'iṣṣôn (H6093, internal anguish) and 'eṣev (H6089, external suffering), paired with hērôn (H2032), the state of pregnancy itself.
The thread — Paul's household instructions in Colossians 3:18 and Titus 2:5, and the headship chain in 1 Corinthians 11:3, all engage the same relational axis this verse names.
Why it lands — It describes a broken dynamic, not issues a command; the reader is asked to hold the tension between the curse's description and the promise in 3:15 without collapsing one into the other.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
Cross-references
- Titus 2:5 to be self-controlled, pure, managers of their households, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be discredited.
- Colossians 3:18 Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
- 1 Corinthians 11:3 But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.
- 1 Corinthians 14:34 Women are to be silent in the churches. They are not permitted to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says.
- Ephesians 5:22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.
- 1 Timothy 2:15 Women, however, will be saved through childbearing, if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control.
- 1 Timothy 2:11 A woman must learn in quietness and full submissiveness.
- John 16:21 A woman has pain in childbirth because her time has come; but when she brings forth her child, she forgets her anguish because of her joy that a child has been born into the world.
- 1 Corinthians 7:4 The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife.
- Genesis 4:7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you refuse to do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires you, but you must master it.”