Birth Rite

So He drove the man out; and at the east of the Garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.  Genesis 3:24  NASB

Drove – Human birth is painful.  Every mother knows this.  The biblical account seems to establish this painful experience as a consequence of disobedience. We read the passage in Genesis 3:16, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you shall deliver children;” and think that God deliberately made this suffering.  We ignore the fact that the word ʿiṣṣābôn (pain, in “greatly multiply your pain”) is not repeated in the second phrase “in pain you shall deliver.”  Instead, the second term (derived from the same root) is ʿeṣeb (sorrow, labor).  Meyers make a crucial point about this transition:

Gen. 3:16 represents a special case in our understanding of ʿiṣṣābôn and ʿeṣeb.  The traditional translations render both terms with words for physical pain.  Since ʿṣb II refers more to mental than physical pain, however, this traditional interpretation must be called into question. . . In the nuanced biblical lexical field of pregnancy and birth, the latter does not refer to the actual process of childbirth.  Since neither conception nor pregnancy is painful, the ʿiṣṣābôn connected  with pregnancy cannot mean “pain.”  The first part of v. 16 therefore says that God will increase the number of the woman’s pregnancies and also the amount of hard work she has to do, for in ancient agricultural society women performed a high percentage of the necessary tasks.  The second clause of v. 16 deals with the theme of “having children”: it does not necessarily refer to the process of childbirth itself . . . Thus the meaning of ʿeṣeb in this text is ambiguous: it can mean “labor” and “work” and intensify that statement of the preceding clause; it can refer to the psychological stress of family life; or it can mean both.  But it does not mean physical pain.[1]

I mentioned this previously in Today’s Word, 31 May 2016 (https://skipmoen.com/2016/05/woe-is-me/).

It might come as some relief to realize that God did not punish women with aggravated birth delivery, but that is only a subpoint of a greater insight.  The statement in Genesis 3:16 is connected to expulsion from the Garden in ways that affect all human beings.

First, we notice that there are two verses about this expulsion.  The previous verse (Gen. 3:23) states, “therefore the Lord God sent him out of the Garden.”  Here the verb is שָׁלַח (šālaḥ), “to send, to send away.”  It has no particular negative connotations.  It’s used for any action in which one party dispatches another.  But the second verse, Genesis 3:24, uses the verb גָּרַשׁ (gāraš), “cast up, drive out/away, divorce, expel, put away, thrust out, trouble,”^[2] and in this case the implication is clearly negative.  It is almost as if the narrator needed to clarify that God’s dispatch of the couple was not a friendly mission but rather a forced ejection.  Zornberg’s analysis of this oddity helps us realize that expulsion from Paradise is the true birth of being human.  And it comes with emotional and mental anguish and pain.

The fetus exists in a fully-dependent, blissful isolation from the trials and tribulations of the world.  Insulated by the mother, it does not have direct and immediate desire, concern, and frustration.  While the mother’s traumatic experiences affect the fetus, these experiences are not self-generated or self-inflicted.  The paradise of the womb shields each one of us from the subsequent reality and consequence of human choice.  And then we are born—in ʿiṣṣābôn, the mutualexperience of child and mother in the reality of self-aware decisions.  Sorrow begins within the birth canal and ends at the grave.  In this sense, we become human when we are ejected from the womb-paradise, when we are “cast out” of the Garden.  And in this sense, being human means being thrown into the world.

God did not create the man or the woman to remain in the protective environment of Paradise.  In fact, we could suggest that God’s plan to create true humanity must include expulsion.  The fetus is alive but it is not yet a fully functioning human being, a self-determining person.  What God wants are self-determining beings who voluntarily elect to follow Him, not proto-humans in incubating bliss.  What the Genesis 3 passage suggests is not that God “cursed” women with painful delivery but rather that God’s plan to produce fully human persons required ejection.  And, by the way, those who hope to return to this Paradise (now called Heaven) should also recognize that expulsion means there will never be a return to a human Paradise.  As Nicodemus asked, “Can a man go back into the womb and be born again?”  The answer is, “No.”

Topical Index:  Paradise, Garden, womb, expulsion, drove out, pain ʿiṣṣābôn, gāraš, Genesis 3:24

You might also want to review the following:

https://skipmoen.com/2012/06/once-more-into-the-breach/

and

https://skipmoen.com/2012/06/the-story-repeats-itself/

[1] C. Meyers, ʿāṣab, TDOT, Vol. XI, p. 280.  Please note that in my book Guardian Angel I incorrectly cited this as Vol. IX rather than Vol. XI, a grievous typological mistake.  See also the Today’s Word edition of 31 May 2016.

^[2] Stigers, H. G. (1999). 388 גָּרַשׁ. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 173). Chicago: Moody Press.