Pain And Toil

In pain you shall bring forth children…Genesis 3:16

There has been much debate over this passage in Genesis 3, verse 16: To the woman He said: I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception in pain you shall bring forth children. 

And to the man God said, cursed in the ground for your sake in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life, verse 17

The Hebrew word translated pain in verse 16 and toil in verse 17 is the same word. It is the Hebrew word, issabon, OT6093, which is translated “sorrow” in the King James Version. Verse 16 in the KJV: unto the woman He said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and their conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children…

Givin what Adam and Eve had just done, the KJV makes perfect sense. By their disobedience, they have brought a curse upon the earth. It would follow that conceiving and birthing children in this new fallen world would bring them great sorrow and much hard work. Instead of just picking ripe fruit from any tree, except one, they now had to toil in great sorrow to eat from it.

Perhaps this understanding gives clarity to what God actually cursed: the serpent and the earth; and not Adam nor Eve. Perhaps Eve was not cursed with painful childbirth nor Adam with hard work. But the reality of raising children in a fallen world. Something all parents can relate to. Raising children today is both painful and hard work. A job that seems to never be completed.