Ruled By Passion

אל האשה אמר הרבה ארבה עצבונך והרנך בעצב תלדי בנים ואל אישך תשוקתך והוא ימשל בך

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.”

Gen 3:16 describes woman's "punishment" of difficult child birth. And her desires would be towards her husband. The last 3 word in Hebrew  "and he will rule over you" have always been interpreted, as far as I have seen and heard, as the husband would dominate the wife. And this verse has been used throughout the generations to assert male domination. Obviously feminists and even modern thinkers find this passage discomforting. And I am sad to report my own efforts in this area are severely lacking.  

My wife and I were discussing Genesis and she flat out translated those last three words differently, the way she had always understood it. The 'he will rule" clause goes upon the word "your desire =תשוקתך" such that a woman is rules by her passions and emotions and that is her lot. 

To support her reading of this clause, she notes that the next chapter by Cain uses the exact same phrase saying that Cain can "rule over it (his desire!)" Gen 4:7 

הלוא אם תיטיב שאת ואם לא תיטיב לפתח חטאת רבץ ואליך תשוקתו ואתה תמשל בו

"But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”

Read the clause as modifying the word preceding it- "(it's) desire." So here is Cain about to commit a crime of murder, he is fuming inside and G-d tries to calm him, warn him, refocus and redirect him away from his intentions to do harm but his emotions overcome his rational thought and even God can't stop him. So instead of ruling his emotions, they ruled him and led him to ruin.

I do believe you got my main point so if you are not interested in grammar skip to last big paragraph.

Now if you want to get technical rather than just enjoy 70 faces of Torah and some homiletics off the cuff, תשוקתך is feminine so it should have said, "והיא תמשל בך" by woman and "ואתה תמשל בה" by Cain. But what then is Cain ruling over? If it is SIN, isn't חטאת also a feminine noun? If so, it should have said, "בה" by Cain regardless!! 

So it seems at this point, grammar isn't totally helpful. And to make matters grammatically worse for my point, consider the following:

Rashi says that חטאת is the name for the יצר הרע who is a masculine being out to mess us up. This accords with Reish Lakish in Sotah 3a who says that "a person does not transgress a sin unless he is invaded by a spirit of insanity". If we agree that there is some outside force, and that force is masculine, then all we have tried to prove falls apart since the masculine conjugations by Cain work out nicely with חטאת as masculine noun. This יצר הרע has HIS sights on you but you could rule over HIM, the  יצר הרע.

But let's use the same logic in another fashion. If we accept that  חטאת is indeed masculine and that it represents the evil inclination, BUT we define that inclination as internal struggles of human desires (A Talmudic source is a Midrash Tanchuma (Breishis 7) re: age when child's yetzer is empowered), we can help my case. Notice, I have equated the יצר הרע with desire (תשוקה). And if we make this essentially all about inner desire (and by extension emotion), then this masculine internal force may take a masculine grammatical roll as in "והוא ימשל" he will rule over Eve! 

Ok, so maybe your not totally buying the grammatical manipulations but I still find the homiletics very satisfying. Especially considering the reality is that people are subject to the human condition  with an inner temptations that have the ability to rule over them but God exhorts us to rule over it! In that vein, this has nothing to do with a man dominating a woman, Eve was made from the side of Adam, they were to be partners walking side by side. God made human "male and female He created them" two complimentary parts. The lesson of Eve's 'curse' was really a lesson in life. In ancient times, the life of a woman was one with difficult childbirth, necessitating reliance upon her husband to support her during pregnancy and child-rearing times. And she would be subject to her emotions. You may have witnesses this. 

That last part certainly endures to this day! And for reminding my wife of this obscure, little-known fact, a slap I did get...