1 Timothy 2:15

[inhistime]

I took the phrase 'Adam wasn't cursed either' as a reference to what others have said being that he wasn't.

You are joking again but now about 'After all, she is easily deceived'?

Well, I'm kind of joking about Eve being easily deceived, after all, several times in God's word she is defined as being easily deceived by God himself. So in actuality it is true. She was "easily deceived". But truthfully, if Eve is easily deceived then wouldn't God have given her simple instructions as to what was to happen as a result of their sin? Why would it be simple to the serpent and to Adam and not to Eve?

Which verse are you referring to that says that Eve was easily deceived?

[inhistime]

Biblicist said:

I don't think this idea is accurate. Adam and Eve were told to be fruitful and multiply before the fall. There is no place in God's word that says how many children she actually did have, let alone how many she should have had if there had not been a fall.

Yes there is. God said in Genesis 3:16:

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception;

The word is "conception" and is the Hebrew word hay-rone' and it means pregnancy or conception. It does not mean the act of giving birth. God told the woman that he would greatly increased her ability to conceive. How many children would she have had before sin? I don't know but I do know that after sin, her conception was GREATLY increased.

The words actually are, its-tsaw-bone' ~ pain, labour, hardship, sorrow, toil & eh'-tseb ~ basically the same defination.

There are two completely differently words used in the sentence. When God said that he would greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, the "sorrow" is the same word as used for Adam. The word for "pain" that she would experience in childbirth is a different Hebrew word. Let's look at the same word used for Adam. God told Adam "In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life." God further explains what his toil is in verse 19 where he says "By the sweat of your face" Toil means by the sweat of your face which means hard work. So Eve is told that he would greatly increase her hard work. How did he do that? By greatly increasing her conception. For those of us who have had children, we know that the real labor starts after the child is born. Raising children is a hard work especially when you have a household full of little kids running around. One isn't too bad, but one a year for hundreds of years would be REAL toil! Eve certainly could have produced a child a year at least since her conception was made to be like ours. That is a lot of work! But as I said before, it wasn't a curse because children are God's blessing to us.

Adam and Eve were the only two on the planet. They were bound to have hundreds of children in their lifetime since they both lived over 800 years. They were to fill the earth, not really another way to do that. . .

Yup, Eve would have been the one and only person on the earth to have had this kind of greatly increased conception. Yikes!

The rest of it? Well, it's pretty clear to me. They want to have rule over each other. Naturally that is not the way God wanted relationships to be, but because of sin, that is the way it is. Warped because of The Deceiver.

Well I hope that you aren't speaking for yourself, but for me - I have no desire to rule over my husband. In fact as I researched for my DVD project "Women in Ministry Silenced or Set Free?" I asked women if they desired to rule their husbands. Most just rolled their eyes and said "NO!" In one bible study I attended where most of the women were chinese, the male study leader used this explanation of the passage and all the chinese women were amazed. They all said that they have no desire to rule over their husbands. So now we have a problem. If we look at the world as a whole, we do not see women striving to rule over their husbands. In fact we see the opposite. We see women in the third world in a subservient position not railing or fighting their men but silently taking their perceived place. Is God a false prophet? He prophesied that something would happen. Yet women as a whole are not fighting their husbands for rule. But if we understand this prophecy as a desire for the man, a wanting to be with him, a wanting to be loved by him at all costs, this we do see throughout the world. While a man will give love to get sex, a woman will give sex to get love. She desires him and that prophecy is true. Let's just allow God to say what he means and not take a male bias to the passage. Let's look at what God prophesied and know that what he said is true.

[inhistime]

Adam was not cursed either. . . To Adam he said, "Cursed is the ground; thanks to you"

One question, are you guys translating this passage from the Original Greek/Hebrew? OR are you using current English translations of God's word?

Have a close look at the verse you just quoted and see what you are missing. To Adam he (God) said, "Cursed is...." cursed is what? Cursed is Adam? No. Cursed is....the ground. Do you see the difference between cursing the ground and cursing Adam. God didn't say cursed is the ground because of Eve's sin. He said cursed is the ground because of Adam. When we add to God's inspired words we change the entire meaning. God did not curse Adam and he did not curse Eve.

I am not sure what you are arguing here?

I am arguing that the ground is cursed. Please show me from the passage how you interpret this to mean that the man was cursed. Now the REAL question is not that the ground was cursed (and Adam was not!) but WHY was the ground cursed? What do you think?

[firehill]

The inspired words are always the original languages. I was referring of course to the Greek but giving the English interpretation so that we all could be edified. The Greek uses the term gune which translates into English as "a woman" as all translations render it. It can be specific or general so we have to look at the context to see which it is. If it is generic "a woman" can mean "any woman" or "all women". The other option is "a woman" as in a specific woman. Now if we follow the grammar through we will come down to verse 15. Verse 15 says "she" and "they". "She" is singular feminine. Following the rules of grammar there can be no "she" unless there is an original noun to attach the "she" too. The only singular feminine word in the passage is "a woman" so we attach "she" to "a woman". Then Paul says "they". This is not grammatically women because it is generic human beings so it can be a man and a women. It would be improper grammar for Paul to say "she" and "they" if "she" = "they". Instead he must say "she will be saved if she..." or "they will be saved if they..." But you cannot have "she" and "they" properly in the sentence unless "she" and "they" are not the same. The only possible solution from the grammar is that "she" refers to "a woman" and "they" refers to "a woman" and "a man". Now throughout scripture whenever a woman and a man are in some kind of relationship it should always be interpreted as husband and wife. This is easy to understand because in the time of Jesus men did not converse with women publicly. If a woman was teaching a single man he would have had to be her husband. Once one understands this it is very understandable why Paul changes back and forth with the singular and the plural. If we do not place "a woman" as a specific woman, there is no explanation for "she" and "they". This is why this verse has been considered a difficult verse for several thousand years. Because of our human tradition that for thousands of years has said that women are inferior to men (recently modified to be that women are equal to men in essence but not in role), we have naturally understood the passage to be talking about women because our tradition has given us a presupposition that forced this interpretation of the passage.

I'm sure Paul knew his grammar!

Excellent post with fine details!

[Floatingaxe]

Biblicist said:

I don't think this idea is accurate. Adam and Eve were told to be fruitful and multiply before the fall. There is no place in God's word that says how many children she actually did have, let alone how many she should have had if there had not been a fall.

Yes there is. God said in Genesis 3:16:

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception;

The word is "conception" and is the Hebrew word hay-rone' and it means pregnancy or conception. It does not mean the act of giving birth. God told the woman that he would greatly increased her ability to conceive. How many children would she have had before sin? I don't know but I do know that after sin, her conception was GREATLY increased.

The words actually are, its-tsaw-bone' ~ pain, labour, hardship, sorrow, toil & eh'-tseb ~ basically the same defination.

There are two completely differently words used in the sentence. When God said that he would greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, the "sorrow" is the same word as used for Adam. The word for "pain" that she would experience in childbirth is a different Hebrew word. Let's look at the same word used for Adam. God told Adam "In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life." God further explains what his toil is in verse 19 where he says "By the sweat of your face" Toil means by the sweat of your face which means hard work. So Eve is told that he would greatly increase her hard work. How did he do that? By greatly increasing her conception. For those of us who have had children, we know that the real labor starts after the child is born. Raising children is a hard work especially when you have a household full of little kids running around. One isn't too bad, but one a year for hundreds of years would be REAL toil! Eve certainly could have produced a child a year at least since her conception was made to be like ours. That is a lot of work! But as I said before, it wasn't a curse because children are God's blessing to us.

Adam and Eve were the only two on the planet. They were bound to have hundreds of children in their lifetime since they both lived over 800 years. They were to fill the earth, not really another way to do that. . .

Yup, Eve would have been the one and only person on the earth to have had this kind of greatly increased conception. Yikes!

The rest of it? Well, it's pretty clear to me. They want to have rule over each other. Naturally that is not the way God wanted relationships to be, but because of sin, that is the way it is. Warped because of The Deceiver.

Well I hope that you aren't speaking for yourself, but for me - I have no desire to rule over my husband. In fact as I researched for my DVD project "Women in Ministry Silenced or Set Free?" I asked women if they desired to rule their husbands. Most just rolled their eyes and said "NO!" In one bible study I attended where most of the women were chinese, the male study leader used this explanation of the passage and all the chinese women were amazed. They all said that they have no desire to rule over their husbands. So now we have a problem. If we look at the world as a whole, we do not see women striving to rule over their husbands. In fact we see the opposite. We see women in the third world in a subservient position not railing or fighting their men but silently taking their perceived place. Is God a false prophet? He prophesied that something would happen. Yet women as a whole are not fighting their husbands for rule. But if we understand this prophecy as a desire for the man, a wanting to be with him, a wanting to be loved by him at all costs, this we do see throughout the world. While a man will give love to get sex, a woman will give sex to get love. She desires him and that prophecy is true. Let's just allow God to say what he means and not take a male bias to the passage. Let's look at what God prophesied and know that what he said is true.

Oh finally! I love you, inhistime!

[firehill]

I took the phrase 'Adam wasn't cursed either' as a reference to what others have said being that he wasn't.

You are joking again but now about 'After all, she is easily deceived'?

Well, I'm kind of joking about Eve being easily deceived, after all, several times in God's word she is defined as being easily deceived by God himself. So in actuality it is true. She was "easily deceived".

I was wondering too what verse your are refering too? I've never seen such a thing said in the bible, let alone by God himself. Where did God say this?

But truthfully, if Eve is easily deceived then wouldn't God have given her simple instructions as to what was to happen as a result of their sin? Why would it be simple to the serpent and to Adam and not to Eve?

Do you know why Adam wasn't deceived?

[inhistime]

Biblicist said:

I don't think this idea is accurate. Adam and Eve were told to be fruitful and multiply before the fall. There is no place in God's word that says how many children she actually did have, let alone how many she should have had if there had not been a fall.

Yes there is. God said in Genesis 3:16:

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception;

The word is "conception" and is the Hebrew word hay-rone' and it means pregnancy or conception. It does not mean the act of giving birth. God told the woman that he would greatly increased her ability to conceive. How many children would she have had before sin? I don't know but I do know that after sin, her conception was GREATLY increased.

The words actually are, its-tsaw-bone' ~ pain, labour, hardship, sorrow, toil & eh'-tseb ~ basically the same defination.

There are two completely differently words used in the sentence. When God said that he would greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, the "sorrow" is the same word as used for Adam. The word for "pain" that she would experience in childbirth is a different Hebrew word. Let's look at the same word used for Adam. God told Adam "In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life." God further explains what his toil is in verse 19 where he says "By the sweat of your face" Toil means by the sweat of your face which means hard work. So Eve is told that he would greatly increase her hard work. How did he do that? By greatly increasing her conception. For those of us who have had children, we know that the real labor starts after the child is born. Raising children is a hard work especially when you have a household full of little kids running around. One isn't too bad, but one a year for hundreds of years would be REAL toil! Eve certainly could have produced a child a year at least since her conception was made to be like ours. That is a lot of work! But as I said before, it wasn't a curse because children are God's blessing to us.

Adam and Eve were the only two on the planet. They were bound to have hundreds of children in their lifetime since they both lived over 800 years. They were to fill the earth, not really another way to do that. . .

Yup, Eve would have been the one and only person on the earth to have had this kind of greatly increased conception. Yikes!

The rest of it? Well, it's pretty clear to me. They want to have rule over each other. Naturally that is not the way God wanted relationships to be, but because of sin, that is the way it is. Warped because of The Deceiver.

Well I hope that you aren't speaking for yourself, but for me - I have no desire to rule over my husband. In fact as I researched for my DVD project "Women in Ministry Silenced or Set Free?" I asked women if they desired to rule their husbands. Most just rolled their eyes and said "NO!" In one bible study I attended where most of the women were chinese, the male study leader used this explanation of the passage and all the chinese women were amazed. They all said that they have no desire to rule over their husbands. So now we have a problem. If we look at the world as a whole, we do not see women striving to rule over their husbands. In fact we see the opposite. We see women in the third world in a subservient position not railing or fighting their men but silently taking their perceived place. Is God a false prophet? He prophesied that something would happen. Yet women as a whole are not fighting their husbands for rule. But if we understand this prophecy as a desire for the man, a wanting to be with him, a wanting to be loved by him at all costs, this we do see throughout the world. While a man will give love to get sex, a woman will give sex to get love. She desires him and that prophecy is true. Let's just allow God to say what he means and not take a male bias to the passage. Let's look at what God prophesied and know that what he said is true.

Oh finally! I love you, inhistime!

Really?? Wow, thanks!

[OopsMartin]

You are misinterpreting "a woman" it is one Greek word ~ gunaiki [goo-nay] a woman of any age, whether a virgin, or married, or a widow, a wife, betrothed woman. It is not specific. It's a general feminine term. The same with the term "of a man" general statement. Not specific to any one person. Where did you get the information that Paul was refering to a specific woman and man? It makes no sense that he would change tenses for one verse then switch back to plural for the rest of the passage. And I believe it's simply not done unless names are involved.

It's really not as difficult as you make it out. When a person speaking in generalities changes from plural to singular, it is the change that alerts us. Paul could have continued in the plural and said that all women should learn, but he didn't. He didn't because he didn't mean that all women have to learn. Paul meant that a particular woman needs to learn and not teach until after she has learned, because she is unlearned in Scriptural issues.

Specifically, because this is an epistle written in response to an epistle he received from Timothy, we know that things are being referenced that Timothy, the reicipient, would know about. Add to this the fact that those who are deceived are never named (other than Eve as an example) and we get a gist of what is going on. Paul is telling Timothy how to correct some woman who is deceived, and do so without putting her name on everyone's lips as that might have turned her away from the Lord she barely knew, but was trying to know.

[OopsMartin]

While Gen. 3:15 is a difficult passage to interpret, what IS certain is that God is NOT cursing her OR the man. The judgment for them was determined prior. When they ate of the fruit in an act of disobedience, one by deception and one by rebellion, then the predetermined judgment of death came upon them both.

I have heard it suggested that the increase in child labor (same Hebrew word as in vs. 17 where the man will toil) is an increase in children that the woman would bear. That is an indirect blessing in that children are needed to help with the hardships of living in a cursed world. The husband ruling harshly over the woman is a warning of what to expect. Because sin has now been introduced into humans life, men would seek to rule over people instead of the rule of guardianship of the earth and creatures. This is a picture of the strong ruling over the weaker; a characteristic of sin.

I don't think this idea is accurate. Adam and Eve were told to be fruitful and multiply before the fall. There is no place in God's word that says how many children she actually did have, let alone how many she should have had if there had not been a fall.

The words actually are, its-tsaw-bone' ~ pain, labour, hardship, sorrow, toil & eh'-tseb ~ basically the same defination.

The actual translation is Unto Wife [woman] He spoke, multiply, multiply sorrow, toil, in conception, sorrow, labor to bare children [words in italics mine].

Adam and Eve were the only two on the planet. They were bound to have hundreds of children in their lifetime since they both lived over 800 years. They were to fill the earth, not really another way to do that. . .

The rest of it? Well, it's pretty clear to me. They want to have rule over each other. Naturally that is not the way God wanted relationships to be, but because of sin, that is the way it is. Warped because of The Deceiver.

God would know. And if God said, which He did, that He was going to multiply childbearing, then that means she would have more children than was originally intended before they sinned.

As for your idea that both the man and woman would seek to rule over each other, where did you get this idea. It is not written in Gen. 3:16. Such an idea may ease the personal pain of knowing that as a man influenced by sin we tend to abuse our strengths, but your idea isn't in Scripture. Just read it as it says. Women tend to reach toward their men and shower them with inordinate attention. And men tend to abuse that attention. If we will open our eyes, we see this all over the world. This is not the way that men and women should relate; it is a result of sin.

[OopsMartin]

It is not difficult to understand the words spoken to Eve, in 3:16. Things are as he said they would be. If it is simple to understand the words spoken to the serpent and to Adam then the words would be just as simple to Eve. After all, she is easily deceived. There is no need to read things into them that are not there.

It is important to silence the lie that Eve was easily deceived.

1. God made her perfect. She was not defective in intellect.

2. The serpent was the craftiest and cleverest of all creatures. This implies that the task of deception was going to be difficult.

3. Nowhere in Scripture is the word "easily" attached to the word deceived when speaking of Eve. Neither is ease of deception implied.

I have often wondered how the serpent went about deceiving her besides the tricky questions. One important aspect is that he diverted her attention to intensive egagement with him alone ignoring Adam. This is a mezmerizing trick that works even today. I think it works because it involves more than words but spiritual aspects. Evil hasn't changed much since the original serpent. We must be careful around people with charisma that speak lies.