Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
Genesis 3:16a
Sorrow in childbearing, toil in the field. One Hebrew word, two English words.
Genesis 3:16, in every translation this tool compares.
If a story gave two characters the same punishment word and your translation rendered it sorrow for one and toil for the other, you would read two different sentences. The writer wrote one.
Because the same Hebrew noun appears in the woman's sentence and in the man's sentence four verses apart, and English uses two different words for it. The parallel is the point and the translation hides it.
The King James reads sorrow in verse 16 and sorrow in verse 17, keeping the link. Several modern versions read pain for the woman and toil or painful labour for the man, breaking it.
עִצָּבוֹן itsabon · H6093
Itsabon occurs three times in the Hebrew Bible: twice here, at verses 16 and 17, and once at Genesis 5:29. The word is about painful labour in the sense of hard work, not specifically physical pain. Both sentences are about work becoming hard.
No one English word covers both the pain of childbirth and the grind of farming. Any rendering has to pick a shade, and the parallel dissolves.
When two verses in the same passage sound like different subjects, check whether they share a word. Passages are often built on repetition that translation smooths away.
Pain reads naturally for childbirth and badly for agriculture. Toil reads naturally for agriculture and coldly for childbirth. The King James kept one word for both and is more faithful to the structure than most modern versions here.
- All three occurrences: Genesis 3:16; 3:17; 5:29
- The related verb atsav, to hurt or grieve: Genesis 6:6; 1 Chronicles 4:10
