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 3:16b
Thy desire shall be to thy husband. Three occurrences in the whole Bible, and they do not agree.
Genesis 3:16, in every translation this tool compares.
A word that turns up three times in an entire library is not defined, it is guessed at. If two of those three appearances point one way and the third points another, every dictionary entry for it is an argument wearing a definition's clothes.
Because an entire modern argument about marriage rests on a noun that occurs three times in the Hebrew Bible, and the second occurrence is eight verses later with a very different flavour. Three occurrences is not enough evidence for the weight this word is asked to carry.
thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
Nearly all versions read desire. A minority tradition reads desire to control or contrary to, following an argument from the Genesis 4:7 parallel. The ESV moved to contrary to in 2016 and drew heavy criticism.
תְּשׁוּקָה teshuqah · H8669
Teshuqah occurs at Genesis 3:16, Genesis 4:7 and Song of Songs 7:10. At 4:7 sin's teshuqah is toward Cain and he must rule over it, using the same two words as here, which is what drives the control reading. At Song 7:10 it is plainly longing.
English desire covers longing, appetite and craving but not a bid for mastery. Whichever sense a translator picks, the other two occurrences start pulling against it.
Three occurrences is below the floor where a lexicon can report rather than argue. When a contested doctrine rests on a word this rare, that rarity is the first thing to say out loud.
Longing fits Song of Songs and the plain sense. Contrary to or a bid to control fits the Genesis 4:7 parallel and the ruling clause that follows. The parallel is genuinely close and the sample is genuinely tiny, which is why this is filed contested rather than decided.
- All three occurrences: Genesis 3:16; 4:7; Song of Songs 7:10
- The ESV 2016 revision to contrary to and the published responses to it
- Septuagint reads apostrophe, turning or recourse, at both Genesis passages
