Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 39:4 (Autumn 2025)
Article: “To Rule” Or “To Be Like”? Genesis 3:16 In Its Ancient Near Eastern Context
Author: Elizabeth Ann R. Willett

PP 39:4 (Autumn 2025) p. 22

“To Rule” Or “To Be Like”? Genesis 3:16 In Its Ancient Near Eastern Context

Elizabeth Ann R. Willett

Libby Willett serves as a Senior Translation Consultant for SIL Global. She trains mother-tongue Bible translators in Latin America, then checks their translations. She coordinated the Huichol Old Testament Project for The Seed Co., a Wycliffe Bible Translators affiliate. Earlier, she and her husband Tom facilitated translation in the Southeastern Tepehuan language of Mexico. Libby has an MA in Linguistics from the University of North Dakota and a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Arizona. She and Tom have been associated with CBE since 1999.

This article explains the author’s translation of Gen 3:16b, “In spite of this, you will still want to be with your husband, just as he likewise will want to be with you.” It also clarifies that the typical translation, “childbearing,” in Gen 3:16a, should instead be “pregnancies.”

Mashal, “To Be Like”

The first meaning of the Hebrew term mashal in the standard Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew-English Lexicon is “represent, be like.”1 The verb occurs seven times in the OT (Job 30:19; Ps 28:1; 49:12, 20; 143:7; Isa 14:10; 46:5),2 and there are many OT occurrences of the similar derived nouns meaning “proverb,” “parable,” or “likeness.” This lexicon gives the verb’s secondary meaning as “use a proverb or speak in parables or sentences of poetry.” The word mashal has common cognates in most Semitic languages, including Arabic, Ethiopic, and Aramaic, that translate as “mirror” or “to be like.” The third lexical entry for mashal, “rule, have dominion,” does not occur in any Semitic language except Hebrew.3

Early twentieth-century scholars hypothesized the development of the meaning “to rule” from “to be like” and “to mirror, reflect.” For example, citing Semitic cognates, Paul Haupt (1858–1926) writes that two Hebrew derivatives of mashal, “to liken” and “to cause to rule,” share the primary connotation of “to shine.” For example, the similar word mamshala in