When your conscious awareness is heart-led, you will find that a lot of moral truth lies dormant until provoked by the need of the moment. It’s a sense that, if the right question comes along, the Spirit of the Lord will teach you in that moment things that had not previously entered your awareness. The whole point is to keep you bouncing issues off your own convictions. The answers are already there; just ask. This is what John meant in 1 John 2:20 — “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things.”
Over the years, I’ve been blessed by people asking the right questions. As soon as it comes into my awareness, I realize the answer for me has always been there. Thus, I emphasize how my answer is mine, and I’m glad to share what I have in hopes that it will provoke your own internal process of querying your convictions. You really need to know your own answers.
Jack over at Sigma Frame asked a very good question. Regarding the Curse in the Garden, God says to Eve that, among other things, she would have a powerful desire for her husband but that he would rule over her. The Hebrew word for “desire” is translated variously into English, but it seems to go in two different directions: either she will have a sexual lust for him, or a lust to control him.
But that’s not how Hebrew language works. One of the biggest flaws in textual analysis and expository writing about the Bible is the failure of Western scholars to embrace the Hebrew outlook. It tends to be what we call “gestalt” thinking, that the meaning of the instance depends entirely on the broader understanding of the whole. You cannot compartmentalize or slice-n-dice anything in Hebrew Scripture. Hebrew language is inherently parabolic and symbolic by nature, and is meant to provoke your heart-led consciousness. You are supposed to weigh things against your convictions and your broader desire for peace with God.
If we check with the technical aspects of translation into English, we find this particular Hebrew word (teshuqah) shows up only three times in the whole Bible. In the other two references, it has a more obvious meaning. In Genesis 4:7, it refers to a lust for control — sin is portrayed as a beast that desires to control and devour you. In Song of Solomon 7:10, it is clearly a wholesome sexual desire of husband for wife. So which applies to that word in Genesis 3:16?
Is this a case where Eve, symbolizing all womanhood, will have a sexual desire for her man, or is this a case of her desire to control him? There is a lot hanging on this question, since it arises from a very highly debated point of theology for the entirety of Western Church History. Does this suggest something that surprises no one, in that humans are wired with a sexual desire[1] from Creation itself? Or does this imply that the Curse of the Fall will make her wish to control her man? In Hebrew thinking, both are quite true.
We cannot justify choosing one over the other. In terms of my pastoral experience, I can assure you that every woman I’ve met suffers the temptation to control the men in her life, her spouse in particular. The strength of that desire bears a strong correlation to sexual desire. While Western feminism is a notorious culprit in this, such a lust for control goes back into ancient times in all cultures. And it is flatly condemned in Scripture, so everyone in a church setting tends to give lip service to that condemnation. We know that this is a Curse of the Fall, but that it is simply the perversion of something holy. It’s very unhealthy for any woman to lack a sexual desire for masculine attention.
So my answer to Jack was that the word in Genesis 3:16 in intentionally ambiguous because it means both. Eve’s natural pure desire for Adam had been perverted in the encounter with Satan to become a desire for control. Adam’s failure is part of the gestalt here. His distraction from the fundamental task of moral guardianship encouraged Eve to exercise an authority that was not hers to wield. And her inherent weakness in moral things, being as she is wired to follow and not lead, was part of the whole downfall of both.
This is what’s behind 1 Timothy 2:8-15; 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, 14:34-35; and 1 Peter 3:1-7. The issue of hair and the Doctrine of Covering is tightly wound into this issue. Paul notes in passing that this has to with angels, implying that the whole question of moral guardianship and God’s protection and covering should not be taken lightly. It’s not simply a fashion statement; it’s an ancient tradition for a very good reason arising from the fabric of Creation itself.
Nor is this to suggest that women cannot know God’s will in the broader sense of what blesses the covenant community. Otherwise, He would have never called prophetesses. Rather, it’s a matter of knowing the general picture of what’s proper, so that exceptions can be treated as exceptions, and knowing where the boundaries are. It’s not to suggest that women cannot voice their feelings about things, or that they should expect to be ignored. Rather, it’s how women properly register their input when it is good, right and justified to do so.
It’s part of the bigger gestalt that a woman’s glory is how she promotes the reputation of her covering, whether it be a father figure of husband figure, or any other leading male in her world. It’s all part of promoting the reputation (glory) of God. It’s flatly stated in God’s Word that women and men are not interchangeable. They are wired differently, and to some degree suffer unique temptations based on perversions of what God intended when He created male and female.
So we come back to this: Women should naturally desire sex with a man. We take for granted — we should not have to discuss it — that shalom is stronger when she keeps it to the marriage bed. And no one should be surprised when women try to control men, so we should build social structures that inhibit that sinful lust. It’s part of the same social structure that keeps women from exercising hypergamy (the impulse to trade up for a “better” man), even if there’s no way to prevent that sinful desire. It’s all part of the same package.
This is my answer to the question. Do you know your own convictions?
[1] In the wider context of Hebrew culture and the Old Testament as a whole, it’s patently silly to wonder if sex itself was a sin in the first place, that it was somehow the Forbidden Fruit. Hebrew culture assumes that sex is itself quite natural and would never imagine that celibacy is somehow morally superior. Celibacy has its place, and is expected to be a difficult calling, but it is not somehow better than being married and having sex. It’s two different callings, and being married is actually the default. Celibacy is supposed to be rare. The marriage bed is regarded as a holy thing in itself. Before the Fall, Adam and Eve were supposed to have children and subdue the earth — “be fruitful and multiply.”
“Gestalt” is a vastly underused term, in my experience. Maybe it’s better that it’s not so overused, but it can help explain a lot of why things don’t work when intuition says otherwise. Some “intuition,” though, is probably another form of knowledge that’s carved out downstream from one’s experience in one’s surroundings, so in that sense a bad intuitive prediction could also partly result from a faulty gestalt.
Those two terms are related in this context. We could say intuition is the ability to jump past conscious logical steps to a useful conclusion, partly based on pattern learning. Gestalt is a word for the pattern. There’s much more to it, but this is part of the picture.
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