God the Prophet (Genesis 3)

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with Genesis 3.  In middle school I was taught that 3:15 provides us with the first promise of a savior in Scripture.  As such, followers of Jesus can accurately see Genesis 3 as perhaps the first piece of the gospel message: God promises to redeem fallen humanity via the offspring of the woman.

As great as that fact is, to focus solely on Genesis 3:15 as though that were the entirety of the point of the entire passage is to miss the complete picture.  The evangelical in me wants to keep coming back to that verse, but the follower who desires to understand Scripture to the best of my ability has t look beyond a single verse.

The prevailing view in evangelical Christianity is that prophecy is about foretelling what God will do in the future.  It’s fairly easy to see how this view was developed; when we read the prophets, the pattern is that they say something will happen, and then it happens.  And so we tend to automatically conclude that the purpose of Biblical prophecy is to foretell future events.

However, a closer study of prophecy and the role of a prophet reveals something slightly different.  Deuteronomy 18:14-22 lays out the purpose of prophecy and criteria for determining whether a prophet is a true prophet or not.  Especially Deuteronomy 18:18-19 are helpful:

I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their people, and I will put my words in his mouth.  He will tell them everything I command him.  I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name.

The references to “word” in this passage are always to God’s word; God’s word is to be understood as his Law.  Throughout OT prophetic writings, what we typically see happening is a prophet being appointed in the midst of Israel’s sin (although sometimes another nation) with a message of repentance.  What this means is that the declaration of doom often associated with prophecy is not absolute; judgement may be avoided if only the recipients would heed the message, repent, and return to the Law.  A classic example of that very thing happening is the book of Jonah and the response of Nineveh.  The prophet is then seeking to call a certain group of people back to God, back to the Law; if they fail to repent, then the pronounced judgement will fall upon them.  Prophecy should be seen as a warning, not a declaration.  Therefore, I can speak of prophecy not as foretelling, but forthtelling.

This is important to keep in mind when we look at Genesis 3:14-19.  For much of what is said in these verses, nothing changes.  However, one major shift does take place.  Genesis 3:16 reads:

To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with pain you will birth to children.  Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

Much has been said about that last phrase.  Without a doubt, the whole idea of husbands “ruling over” their wives is unsettling to most people.

The question I want to throw out is this: Are these verses the curse itself, or a description of the results of the curse? If these verses are the curse, then God is laying down as “law” that husbands are to rule over their wives.  This is where most Christians have gone with this verse.  However, if these verses are to be taken as God’s description of what will now happen as a result of the curse, then God is not telling Adam to rule over Eve in the most barbaric sense (which is what the Hebrew is describing), but making a statement about the reality that humanity faces as a result of the fall.  The implications of this nuance are enormous.

In Genesis 1 & 2 we read about the creation of human beings in God’s image.  A careful reading of the text reveals that humanity reflects God’s image as male and female together; men and women do not reflect God’s image individually, but together.  For that reason, if anything were to happen in which men and women failed to see each other as equals, the image of God is destroyed and inequality becomes reality.  If God is decreeing that husbands rule over their wives, then he decreeing inequality as the norm.  Unfortunately, Scripture continually upholds equality as the intention of God.

This is where the prophecy issue comes into play.  God is acting as his own prophet, declaring the consequences of the man and woman’s sin.  He is not adding anything that wasn’t already present.  In Genesis 3:3, the woman states quite clearly that God warned them of the consequences of disobeying.  God knew the consequences should the man and woman eat the fruit, and for their own benefit, warned them not to eat.  But they did, and so God “fleshed out” the details of what will inevitably happen.  If prophecy is foretelling, then these words become a decree in which God is actively causing something contrary to his own nature and will to happen.  Instead, his words are forthtelling in which he saying, “You messed up, now get ready for… Because those are the consequences of what you just did.”  That also means that this is not God cursing Adam and Eve; this is the curse, but God is not the one to bring it upon them – they brought it on themselves for eating the fruit.

Filed under: Bible Study, Christianity, Original Languages, Theology