Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 39:4 (Autumn 2025)
Article: Two Ways Of Translating And Interpreting Genesis 3:16a, One Older And One Newer: Does It Matter?
Author: Joy Elasky Fleming

PP 39:4 (Autumn 2025) p. 17

Two Ways Of Translating And Interpreting Genesis 3:16a, One Older And One Newer: Does It Matter?

Joy Elasky Fleming

Joy Fleming is cofounder of the Tru316 Foundation (Tru316.com) which is the home of The Eden Podcast. She is a former Old Testament Professor at the Faculté de Théologie Évangélique de Bangui in the Central African Republic and is a licensed psychologist practicing in Minnesota. She holds a PhD in Old Testament Theology from the University of Strasbourg, France, and a PsyD in Counseling Psychology from the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is married and has two children and four grandchildren.

English versions of Gen 3:16 present two starkly different translations of God’s first words to the woman in the Garden of Eden. In 1611, the Authorized Version (AV or KJV) was released under King James in England. The translation of Gen 3:16a showed that God promised to take action in two ways, one negative and one positive. The result would be “sorrow and conception.” In 1952, the Revised Standard Version (RSV) was published by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Its translation presented God as taking action not in these two ways but in just one very negative way by inflicting the woman in Eden with “pain in childbearing.”

The KJV rendered Gen 3:16a as follows: “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception . . . .”

The RSV replaced the two nouns with a single idea as follows: “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing . . . .”

In Gen 3:16a in Hebrew, God tells the woman that action will be taken in two ways. Two nouns are joined by a conjunction. These Hebrew nouns, and the word patterns of which they are part, do not refer to the act of childbearing. God did not punish Eve and her daughters with physical pain related to the last moments of pregnancy. The theological implications of realizing this are important. They affect our understanding of God, woman, man, the world, and relationships. The ways related NT passages are translated and interpreted are profoundly affected as well.

God’s opening Hebrew words in Gen 3:16 can be translated in English as follows: “I will greatly multiply your sorrowful-toil and your conception.”

Here is a transliteration and translation of God’s first four Hebrew words (Gen 3:16a):