Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 39:4 (Autumn 2025)
Article: Genesis 3:16 And The Character Of God
Author: Jane L. Crane

PP 39:4 (Autumn 2025) p. 12

Genesis 3:16 And The Character Of God

Jane L. Crane

Jane L. Crane is the author of Who Leads?: A Concise Look at Top Bible Scholars on the Male/Female Question (Wipf & Stock, 2024). She was the Lausanne Movement’s first Senior Associate for the Partnership of Men and Women for the Gospel, holds a Master's in Peace and Justice, and conducted two years of doctoral-level research in Oxford, England.

Loren Cunningham, cofounder of one of the world’s largest missions organizations, said Scripture never contradicts God’s character. God’s Word is “infallible,” he says, “but our interpretation is not.”1 The highly-regarded theologian I. Howard Marshall agrees with the infallibility of Scripture and also “the need for right interpretation.”2 Bruce Metzger, chair of the translation committee for the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, said no translation of the Scriptures is perfect, “as anyone who has tried to make one will readily agree.”3 The New International Version says the work of translation is never finished. “This applies to all great literature and uniquely so to the Bible.”4

As some highly esteemed scholars have argued, and as this article will explain, the current leading translations of Gen 3:16 do not agree with either the earliest known Scripture versions—considered the most accurate—or with the character of God. Such translations have sometimes led to the degrading and abuse of women, as well as the misrepresentation of God, and need revision.

Examined in light of translation issues, quirks of history, and gender bias, Gen 3:16 (and the other key verses in Genesis about women) present a different picture of women and men, and of a compassionate God, than is often taught today.

Pain From God Or Snare From The Enemy?

Some translations say in the first part of Gen 3:16 that God will increase the woman’s pain in childbirth. Such translations, however, could have been affected by the later addition of written vowels to the original, all-consonant Hebrew text.

In the early centuries after Christ, the Jews had dispersed, and different understandings arose of many Hebrew words, since their words were written all in consonants and with minimal spaces between words. To standardize the biblical text, a group of scribes called the Masoretes added interlinear vowel signs and thus fixed the meaning of ...