Summary of passage: God curses the serpent for his beguilement of Adam and Eve to crawl on his belly and eat dust and God put enmity between the serpent and man for all time. Literally, this is humans not liking snakes (especially women). Figuratively, this is humans not trusting Satan and having an inborn wariness of him.
God punished woman by greatly increasing her pains in childbirth; woman will desire her husband who will rule over her.
God punished Adam by cursing the ground so painful toil is now required to eat of it. The ground will produce thorns and thistles. And now death is introduced since “for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
Adam names Eve and God makes them clothes and banishes them from the Garden of Eden so that he won’t be able to eat from the tree of life. He places cherubim and a flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life.
Questions:
13a) “Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the 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.”
b) “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
c) “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of 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.”
14a) The serpent is Satan and her offspring will be Jesus. Jesus will ultimately defeat Satan (crush his head) even though Satan will wound Jesus (strike his heel). “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Romans 16:20)
b) With garments of skin
15a) Everyone dies. We are all sinners through Adam. Jesus was sent to redeem his people, bring grace, and offer justification through his death so that we may have eternal life.
We were born sinners. But Jesus can redeem us. The results and consequences for us today are we have a choice: to choose or reject Jesus. Choose Jesus=life. Reject Jesus=death.
b) Jesus.
Conclusions: We see here that God never abandoned us, even when we sinned. He always had Jesus planned to save us. It’s hard to comprehend: why would God create us if He knew we would Fall? Only God can answer that. He must think we are worthy in some way. Sometimes I wish I believed but a piece of that worthiness.
I had never thought of us being born with a wariness to Satan before. So we’re born with a natural rebelliousness towards God but a natural distrust of Satan. Again, we must choose. Naturally, we gravitate towards serving ourselves (like children). But we learn to choose and no choice in life is more important. The outcome of our life depends upon this choice.
Just a short comment on what I’ve heard in the past regarding God’s judgment on us women due to Eve’s transgression. Not only is there physical pain during childbirth, but for many years pregnancy and childbirth were leading causes of death in women or their newborn. So one could see the sorrow and anguish from this type of pain and not just the physical pain associated with birthing which is temporary and then turns into joy when one sees their little one! Also the “desire” for your husband in Gen 2:16 is apparently an abnormal desire to dominate and run their husband’s life, but in turn for many centuries instead of the wife being co-equal with husband society made women subservient with few rights or privileges. Many men became harsh, overbearing, insensitive, and domineering as the judgment predicted in the “he will rule over you.”
Hi guys — Made a typo boo-boo on my comment above as it should have been Gen 3:16 instead of what I typed(Gen 2:16)!! Sorry if several of you were scrambling around God’s Word thinking I lost it with God’s judgment on women and looking at another chapter. Again my apologies. A to Z has an excellent blog and study comments and I would do nothing to mess it up!
Great insight!! Thank you for your wonderful words of wisdom! !
Just came across your site. I enjoyed comparing your comments and insight to what I wrote down in my lesson. Our group time is so short that it seems we never get in depth into the questions. I liked getting your deeper perspective. I’ll be following you blog as I do my daily lessons!