Now the intimate relationship with God is broken. In this part of the telling - we see another tally of God beginning the conversation. Not a prayer, but a sickening pronouncement of a series of judgments.
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
To the woman he said,
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
Some other rabbit holes to explore:
In the judgement pronounced over the woman (she hasn't yet been given a name), what sort of punishment is, "Your desire will be for your husband"?
The word 'desire' is referenced as [8669] t'shuwqah and the root indicates [7783] shuwq - a stretching or overflowing, or to run over.
The word 'desire' is referenced as [8669] t'shuwqah and the root indicates [7783] shuwq - a stretching or overflowing, or to run over.
Also on the topic of the woman, does 'husband' indicate that single women are not under this judgment?
One thing I note here (and see duplicated in Cain's sass-mouth with God later) is the familiarity between the people and God. There are no honorifics, no preamble - they just engage in the conversation.
ReplyDeleteMaybe this is a mode of prayer, and one we've lost over time. Jesus reintroduced this intimacy in prayer when he taught his disciples how to pray; but that was an Old Testament-style prayer - it is not a prayer in the Christian mode.