Injustice for Dinah and Tamar (Gen 34, 38)

Mixed in with the stories of the patriarchs and their wives in Genesis, there are two interludes where the main characters are women with injustice done to them by men. Dinah's story involves rape, romance, and murder. Tamar's story features a series of bad marriages, prostitution, and a death sentence. They are vivid stories, and their main female characters present a contrast in ways of approaching life as a woman that is much more stark than the pretty/plain contrast we saw between Rachel and Leah. I think this contrast is an interesting way to look at their stories, so I'm going to write about them together.

So far, Genesis has featured many stories where women are fairly bold: speaking, acting, influencing their husbands and the action. They talk to God, and he often talks to them. Tamar fits this mold, except that she does not interact with God. But Dinah is different in every way. Dinah is Leah's last child, the only daughter born to Jacob. The meaning of her name is not given in the text, but it means "judged," which turns out to be a bit prophetic, as we will see.

Dinah
Dinah, being a girl, would not grow up to found one of the tribes of Israel, like her brothers. But you can imagine that as the baby sister, she might have been doted on. That her brothers love her fiercely and feel possessive of her becomes evident as the story unfolds.

Almost all we know about Dinah's life takes place in one tragic episode. In her story, Dinah takes only one mild action, visiting some young women who lived nearby. The rest of the developments happen to her. On her visit, a local prince, Shechem, sees her and "seized and raped her." This is described as a violent crime, not a romantic interlude. But in the next sentence Shechem "fell in love with her, and he tried to win her affection with tender words." He is completely serious and tells his father to get involved so that he can marry Dinah. How must Dinah have experienced this? I think it is extremely hard to read. Shechem's affection (*after the RAPE*) seems genuine and strong. Dinah must have initially been terrified and violated, but did she change in her feelings? We cannot know. Dinah does not contribute to the movement of the story here, she is just raped, and then pursued for marriage.

Shechem approaches Jacob and Dinah's brothers (Leah's other sons) to ask for her hand. But the wedding negotiations appear to be between Dinah's brothers, and Shechem's father rather than between Jacob and Shechem's father. Shechem begs to marry Dinah, offering anything they will ask of him. Jacob's brothers respond, "deceitfully, "says verse 13. They pretend they will allow Shechem to marry Dinah, if he and all of his clan will be circumcised. Shechem, the text says here, is a highly respected member of his family. He presents the proposal to the leaders at the town gate and they accept in basically good faith, though they do have a motive of completely mixing with Jacob's family so that "all their livestock and possessions will be ours." Maybe this was just a motivation for accepting the terms and joining with the wealthy Israelites. But either way they are as good as their word, and all the men are circumcised in preparation for the marriage.

At this vulnerable moment for the men of Shechem's town,  Simeon and Levi fall upon them and murder every man in the town. They take Dinah from Shechem's house, and return to their camp. Then the rest of Jacob's sons arrive and plunder the the town, taking all the riches and even "their little children and wives . . . as captives." Ugh.

Jacob is furious with Levi and Simeon when he finds out, mostly because of his fear of repercussions for himself and his family. He is worried that the other nearby people will join together to crush them after such horrendous behavior, which seems reasonable. They prepare to leave town, and God tells them to go to Bethel to meet with him. From his reaction, it looks like Jacob was not in on the planned massacre. He was part of the meeting where the terms were agreed on, though he did not set them. Was he in approval of the match?

We never hear Dinah's reaction to all of this. But however she felt about the marriage, the murders were probably devastating to her. If she really hated Shechem, she may have been glad to be free of him. But two considerations make me think she might not have been. First of all, he seems to really treasure her approaching the marriage. If it was genuine and not obsessive, a human response to that kind of love just might be forgiveness and acceptance? The second is that however she felt toward Shechem, after having been publicly acknowledged as a rape victim, any more marriage prospects for her must have been difficult to come by in that society. With no husband and no children, Dinah's ability to achieve honor and advancement would have been really limited. I'm sure she was taken care of within Jacob's wealthy household. But when his descendants are listed as they depart for Egypt at the end of Genesis, where her brothers are listed along with their wives, children, and in some cases grandchildren, Dinah is just Dinah.

Tamar
Tamar's injustice is different. It develops much more slowly, and though it does also involve headline-worthy sexual scandal in the end, she is the one who commits it, in order to take care of herself, where Dinah is on the receiving end, and suffers for what happens to her.

Tamar's story starts out with an honorable arranged marriage to Judah's son Er. This marriage must have been hard for Tamar considering that her husband was "wicked in the Lord's sight," so much so that "the Lord took his life." This direct judgment is pretty rare in the Bible, but it happens twice to Judah's sons, who are Tamar's husbands, in this story. When Er dies, Tamar has not yet accomplished the important work of bearing a child to be Er's heir. Therefore, his brother Onan has a legal duty to marry Tamar, so she can have a son for Er. Onan does marry Tamar, and even sleeps with her, but he wickedly "spills his seed on the ground" so she can't actually have a child. God "considered it evil for Onan to deny a child to his dead brother. So the Lord took Onan's life too." Tamar has really had a poor lot of husbands to deal with at this point.

With his two sons dead, rather than take her in to provide for her as part of his family, Judah sends Tamar back to her parents house to wait until his third son Shelah is old enough to marry her. At this point, Tamar is not doing well in life. She hasn't yet been able to have a son, because two of her husbands were too wicked to live, from God's perspective. She is now back at home and her only hope of a family to be with her for the rest of her life is in Judah's last son. She must have been apprehensive after her marriages to Judah's other sons. Would Shelah be any different? But when he reaches marriageable age, nothing happens. Judah does not look like he plans to even do his legal duty to Tamar by letting her marry him. This is when Tamar springs into action.

When she understands her circumstances, that she will likely be neglected by the father-in-law who has a duty to care for her, she takes her future into her own hands. The text gives us cinematic detail of her changing out of her widow's clothes and putting on a veil to disguise herself. Then Tamar brazenly sits by the road where she knows Judah will be, to present herself to him as a prostitute. She must know Judah, and be fairly sure that this plan will work, to be bold enough to put it into action.

It goes like clockwork. Or as if it were divinely orchestrated? Judah does not recognize Tamar, but does want to have sex with her. She gets his identification markers, apparently as a deposit for the goat he promises as payment. But really of course, she wants these rather than a goat! Judah, embarrassingly, cannot find her later to get them back. She is holding onto them until the key moment when she is found to be pregnant.

At that moment, Judah's great hypocrisy, callousness, and lack of love for his daughter in law is revealed. It's interesting that before he understands what's going on, he has a clue that could have jogged his memory and made him wonder about the timing of everything. Judah was told (it doesn't say who told him), "Tamar, your daughter-in-law, has acted like a prostitute. And now, because of this, she's pregnant!" Did the message bearer know what had happened I wonder? The details in the accusation are perfectly correct, and it's hard to know how anyone else would know about this unless Tamar wanted them to.

Judah, horribly, says "Bring her out and let her be burned!" Apparently this is his public stance on prostitution. But he changes his tune when she sends a message to him  "as they were taking her out to kill her." She has tied the knot in her plan well. She shows Judah his id markers she has been holding onto, and she escapes her sentence when Judah has to acknowledge the truth of his behavior. All the talk of burning is forgotten, and Judah, convicted, now declares, "She is more righteous than I am because I did not arrange for her to marry my son Shelah." In a righteousness contest, most likely neither of these two would be near the top if their particular relationship with each other were considered. However, I do think he's right that Tamar would be ahead.

Judah gives Tamar twin sons, who in true biblical fashion, at their births switch their birth order: one baby's hand comes out first, then the other baby is actually born first. Their names are Perez and Zerah, and they follow Judah immediately in future geneologies, skipping the generation of Er, Onan, and Shelah. I'm not sure what the official geneology protocols are in this kind of situation. Technically of course the boys are Judah's sons, even though Tamar's sons were supposed to count as Er's sons if they had been fathered by one of his brothers. I think it is really interesting that Tamar is one of the only females mentioned in Jesus's geneology in Matthew, perhaps it is because of the tricky nature of the line here. I wouldn't say that that alone counts as an endorsement of Tamar's scheme. But there is another place where we have some interesting commentary on what happens to both Dinah and Tamar.

The final commentary in Jacob's blessings
At the end of Jacob's life, he calls together all his sons to bless them before he dies. We have thought a little about a father's blessing and it's effect before, wondering whether it is meant to actually influence the future, or to rather predict it. In this case Jacob gives us a clear answer for what he means to do. "I will tell you what will happen to each of you in the days to come." He intends these blessings as prophecies, and when he says things like "I will scatter them among the descendants of Jacob," it sounds to me like he is really speaking for God, since this is not something an old man at the end of his life will be able to do. He has a message for each of his sons, but I think what he says to his first four are particularly thought-provoking for us.

Reuben is chided " you are as unruly as a flood, and you will be my first no longer. For you went to bed with my wife; you defiled my marriage couch." A sexual sin which is mentioned in one sentence earlier in the text now keeps Reuben from the blessing of his firstborn status. Jacob does seem mainly concerned in this instance with how he has been dishonored in the affair, rather than with the personal sin of Reuben or Bilhah. But still, this is evidence of the importance of sexual and marriage purity in the evaluation of a life. In the Me Too era, this is noteworthy. How many men with illustrious careers have been found in sexual sin, which they try to say doesn't matter when you consider their great contributions to the world? This defense does not hold water for Reuben when Jacob judges him.

Simeon and Levi are lumped together and indicted for the violence they inflicted on Shechem and his town. Jacob says he does not want to join in their meetings or be party to their plans, because of their fierce anger and cruel wrath. (Speaking for God here?) Their murderous action is judged harshly here, even though it was retaliatory. In the hindsight of history given in Jacob's blessing, Shechem is remembered as a victim, not a perpetrator. And if Shechem is a victim, Dinah is an ultimate victim, suffering both in her rape, and then in the loss of the hope of a family for herself. Though it is so hard to know what her perspective on it all was, her story ends badly. Dinah was really treated as a pawn by Shechem and then her own brothers. They are cursed for their actions, but Dinah herself bears a lot of the burden of everything that happens. Remember her name means "judged." Two meanings for that could apply to the people who hurt her: Shechem judged by Dinah's angry brothers, and the brothers judged by Jacob.

Having taken in the first three blessings, Judah's comes as a surprise to me. Reuben, Simeon, and Levi are held accountable for their sins, but Judah's treatment of and relationship with Tamar is not mentioned at all. Is this because of the "happy" ending? Judah gets the best, or second best blessing, tied with righteous and faithful Joseph. As the brother's stories play out, we do see Judah taking responsibility as an oldest son in their dealings with Joseph in his high position in Egypt. But Reuben does as well, and it seems, in the balance, that his sexual sin trumps his later good behavior.

If we follow the geneology in Matthew, when Judah blessed his sons at the end of his life, he would have been blessing Perez and Zerah, the sons of Tamar. How should we understand the ethics of what happened between them?? Judah's sin was in leaving Tamar, and his son Er, without any children. When Tamar set up an outside of marriage tryst, which Judah would have had to acknowledge was a sexual sin for him as he committed it, was she coercing him into doing what he should have done? The text says that his wife had already died when he set off on the trip where Tamar met him, but I don't think their family relationship would have allowed them to marry. And after their one meeting, he never has sex with her again. This is a real-world complicated story with real-world complicated characters and motives.

Dinah and Tamar in contrast
A final judgment on Judah and Tamar is difficult, but, let's look at the arcs of Dinah's and Tamar's stories in contrast, because I think that is really interesting.

• Dinah: Injustice is done to her, she does not act, the people who wrong her are judged, she suffers.

• Tamar: Injustice is done to her, she takes action in a questionable/sinful way, the person who wronged her is not judged, she escapes her suffering.

The major caveat to the above sketches is that God's justice is not fully administered until then end of each of our lives. We can trust that he provided full perfect justice for Dinah, Simeon and Levi, Shechem, Tamar, and Judah, ultimately. But I think Jacob's prophetic commentary should pique our curiosity about God's mercy for Judah and Tamar. The true answer, by which to set your compass, is that no matter your circumstances, you are not justified in using sinful means to try to make things better for yourself. But I think we see God having mercy on Tamar (and Judah!) in their sin here. I won't go so far as to say he finds no fault with what Tamar did. But her action brings conviction to Judah, children for herself, and no final judgment from Jacob. I will just leave it as a question mark, it would be way off to conclude that God doesn't care about sexual sin. But I do think you see the story showing that Judah's sin of neglecting Tamar is a bigger infraction than hers of ensnaring him for sex.

We've been learning that after the fall, the relationship between men and women is troubled by a power dynamic, where women want to control men, but men are destined to rule over them. The curse leads us to expect to see men exploiting their power over women; and the physical nature of femininity, with women doing the vulnerable work of childbearing, reinforces that. In these two stories, women suffering from lack of power choose two different responses. I'm sure of God's ultimate justice for Dinah, who simply suffered. But we can also see here God's patience with, and activity in, the life of a woman who did not lay by the wayside, but acted to try to bring about justice and regain power for herself.

Also, I don't think we can end our discussion of all this without noticing that none of the characters in these stories invite God into the action. No prayers are even mentioned. God is over all of this as a witness and judge, but he does not intervene, and he is not asked to. How might things have been different??

Takeaways:

• Tamar and Dinah both suffer injustice from men who should have provided for them. Dinah does not act and does not escape her suffering. Tamar does act, in a morally questionable way, and does escape hers, at least in some measure.
• Continue to notice the centrality of the feminine domains of marriage, sex, and childbearing to the plot of the Bible here.

Questions:

• Do you think Dinah forgave and loved Shechem, or would have been happy to be "rescued" and brought back to her father's house?
• How do we rate the morality of Tamar's scheme with Judah? Do you think Tamar gets completely off the hook? 
• If women experience injustice from powerful men in our own lives, how should we figure out how far to go to get justice for ourselves? As far as Tamar did? Further than Dinah? Is it different in for different people in different circumstances?

The Lord and Noah (Gen 6:8-9:17)

Last time, we talked about the strange history of the sons of God, the daughters of men and the Nephilites, which leads up to the story of Noah and the great flood. In that last story, the beautiful daughters of men played a notable role (indecipherable though it may have been). However, once we start into the main story of God's judgment of the world and salvation of Noah, women almost completely vanish from the action for several chapters. Though we are told that Noah and his sons have wives, they are not discussed any more than the animals' pairs that are to be taken onto the ark.

But if women are only "extras" in this story, even Noah has only a supporting role. The lead actor here is the Lord. The Lord decides to wipe out all living creatures, but he finds favor with Noah, so he tells him to build a boat, and Noah does it. Then the Lord tells him to bring his family and all the animals onto the boat, and he does it. When Noah and the animals are on the boat, the Lord sends the floodwaters, and the Lord himself closes the door to the boat. Then God wipes out all life, but he remembers Noah and the creatures on the boat. God is doing everything, Noah is just obeying. 

In this story, we see God saving people (and animals too) in families. We are not told anything about Noah's wife's obedience or lack thereof, nor even of his sons nor their wives. God saves all of them because of Noah. This is surely a strong example of male headship of a family, since the whole family's survival rides on Noah's obedience.

At first, I found it hard to make this fit with the idea that salvation depends on each person's individual repentance and faith. But then I remembered that the salvation of my soul that requires repentance and belief is not the same kind of salvation as being saved from a natural disaster. I may die in a natural disaster and still be saved spiritually. That is my only hope, actually, and was the only hope for Noah and his family too, since some kind of physical death, via disease, disaster, violence, etc, comes for everyone.

Surviving a flood would not automatically equal spiritual salvation (see the story of Noah's sons, next chapter), but it would dramatically influence who was around to rebuild civilization, particulary, to reproduce. Perhaps Noah was saved as a godly man who would obey the Lord and lead those under his care and authority to do the same. The earth needed to be cleansed en masse of evildoers who were ruining everything with their sinful ways, and the flood accomplished this, leaving only Noah and his family to restart human life on earth. From what we know from the rest of the Bible, God must have eternally judged each son and wife according to his or her own heart. But this family was chosen together for the family job of repopulation of the earth.

After all of the Lord's movement of the plot, Noah's first self-determined action is to release the raven and the dove. He also decides to lift the cover of the ark back, but they all wait to get out until God tells them to. When he does tell them them to come out, The Lord issues his first "be fruitful and multiply" command of three in the chapter, to the animals. 

Noah's next self-determined act is to offer a sacrifice to the Lord (according to God's instructions.) God is pleased with the sacrifice and now delivers his longest speech yet in the Bible, even longer and more substantial than the curses delivered when humans left the garden. This seems significant to me, since we saw humanity totally lose touch with God,with no dialogue between them recorded over several chapters and many years as people became more and more evil. There are several parallels here that recall the first days of humanity, and make this really seem like a restart of our human race.

God's first words are to himself. We've previously seen the Lord speaking to himself when he said the words of creation (ch 1), when he decided that the humans must be banished from the garden (3:22) and when he decided to destroy all life in the flood (6:3, 7). To himself, he purposes never to curse the ground again despite his expectation that humans will continue to be pretty much evil all the time. God also says he will never again destroy all things and will keep the seasons going as long as the earth remains. 

Remember that Noah's father Lamech gave him the name Noah, which sounds like their word for relief, with this hope "May he bring us relief from our work and the painful labor of farming this ground that the Lord has cursed." Is that what is happening when God says he will never curse the ground again? Is he lifting the curse of the ground in some way? Maybe it used to be even harder to farm before the flood, or maybe God had previously left open to himself the option of cursing the ground further? [If God is lifting the curse of the ground in some way, why doesn't he say he will lift it at all for childbearing? Hmm. I think all we can do for now is file this story and that question away for further illumination as we read through.]

Then to Noah, God repeats the initial commission he first gave to human beings in Eden--to be fruitful and multiply, and to rule over the creatures of the earth. But there are a couple of differences. In the first version, God tells us to rule over the animals and to eat plants, and that animals will also eat plants. Now he says that we may eat animals, but may not eat anything that is still alive. He also makes it clear that we are not to take the lives of other humans. In this section God says he will require blood from anyone who takes a human life life. This is a foreshadowing of the sacrificial system that will be so important to the Bible's message. 

God then repeats his command for humans to be fruitful and multiply to replenish the earth. Though women are not mentioned, you could argue that this single main job God now gives humanity falls mainly upon them. A second notable difference between this section and the first time God tells humans to be fruitful and multiply in Eden is this: in Gen 1:27-28 we are told that God created humans in his image, male and female, and then he blessed them and said "be fruitful and multiply," etc., but the second command is issued "to Noah and his sons." Women are really conspicuously absent from this story. Is this just stylistic, or does it mean something?

The last part of what God says, is the symbolic rainbow promise he makes to all creatures on earth, both humans and animals, that he will never again destroy the earth with a flood. 

To wrap up, in this story it is really striking how God drives the action, and the human beings are just spoken to and acted upon. Though women are so absent, perhaps this is because the story is so much about God and people-- people being represented by one man, the head of his whole family and the new line of humans. In the next story, the personalities and actions of Noah and his sons are emphasized much more, though women are still missing. But we'll save those observations for the next post!

Takeaways:

• Women are totally missing from this story.
• God saved people and animals in families in the flood.
• The Lord starts humanity 2.0 with the same command for people to be fruitful and multiply, which depends heavily on women.

Questions:

• Why are women so conspicuously absent from this story?
• Did God lift the curse of the ground in some way after the flood?
• If he did, why don't we hear anything about Eve's curse? Is it because there are no women in this story? And again, why?

The Curse (Gen 3:8-24)

I wonder how long Adam and Eve had to suffer in shame in paradise before they heard God walking in the garden "when the cool evening breezes blow." This little detail is so poignant to me. A walk with the Lord himself in Eden when the cool evening breezes blow. To think that was the old normal--

Covered in their fig leaf disguises, they further hid themselves in the trees, but the Lord sought them out, calling to them, and they had to answer. Adam answers, giving away his new knowledge, that he is hiding due to his fear and sense of nakedness. The Lord confronts him on his sin, which he acknowledges. He blames the woman for giving him the fruit. God confronts her, and she claims deception by the serpent, but also acknowledges eating the fruit. 

Though modern day interrogators would certainly ask for more details like we were asking for in the last passage, the Lord God does not. In contrast to our concern with why, and how, and what would have happened, the Lord's question-yes or no?-- results in immediate judgment.

Does God put any stock in the blaming that takes place? He does curse the serpent as a direct response to Eve's confession. The curse for the woman doesn't mention the serpent's influence. It is simply judgment for having eaten. The curse for the man however does start by indicting him for listening to his wife, in contrast to the God's commandment. In the context it seems like more of a description of the sin, than a mitigating factor. From this maybe we could take an application that when God asks us to do something, we aren't let off the hook if there are circumstances that made disobedience extra tempting. It is, "will you obey? yes or no?" 

The first part of the serpent's curse is to wallow on it's belly. So interesting. Do snakes mind crawling on the ground the way we mind childbirth and slaving away to make a living? Hostility between the offspring of the woman and of the snake has certainly come true . . . mostly. I think a Christian wildlife specialist would have a real appreciation for snakes though. Is this metaphorical somehow? Why is the snake as an animal wrapped up in this story? "He will strike your head and you will strike his heel," is the first prophecy of the triumph of the son of man over the offspring of the serpent, and the sin the serpent brought into the world. 

Also interesting is that the hostility is between the serpent and the woman, and its offspring and her offspring. The woman is really central in this curse, and in this story, and in the prophecy of the triumph of humanity. That could be all because it was the serpent and the woman who were involved with each other directly in the first sin. But the shakeout in history is that the woman has had major influence, negatively, and then in redemption.

The men's and women's curses are an astoundingly succinct summary of the things that actually plague men and women in life. They are prophetic, and profound, but also, in a way, mundane. They have to do with childbirth, marriage, and work. Let's take them one at a time. 

The woman's curse is shorter, but it has two parts: pain in pregnancy and childbirth, and (futile) control struggles in her marriage. I think I could boil down the hardest parts of my life to trying to bear and raise my children, and trying to negotiate with my husband about how to plan my life (that is set my own agenda, or control family life). Our marriage has modern traditional roles: he works in an office, I homeschool the kids. And this probably makes this curse feel particularly applicable to me. However, through the course of history, our time is very unique in its understanding of gender and its lack of applicability to life work. For most of history, I think women have felt solidarity with my experience. 

So many evenings I find myself waiting for Paul to arrive home after work completely exhausted from trying to coach 3 small children through the increasing wind up of energy that precedes bedtime, desperate to know when he will arrive (in 10 minutes or an hour and a half?), pressing him for information on this front, and either receiving incorrect answers or no answer at all. This is the curse playing out in my life and it is one of the hardest normal things I deal with day to day.

The man's curse begins with the cursing of the ground from which he must "scratch a living." Though the man struggles to bring forth grain, the ground will bring forth thorns and thistles. Only through the sweat of his brow will the man have food to eat until he returns to the ground in death. There is poetry here with the man struggling with the ground until he returns to it. Maybe even a metaphor here, if the man is actually one with "the ground" and he is unable to bring forth good fruit from the ground, that is, himself, since he is now in sin? 

I am not a man, so this curse doesn't directly apply to me, but I do see it play out in the man I know best, as well as others I hear from. One of my husband's favorite activities is gardening, and another is building things. He gets great satisfaction from work, when it goes the way he wants and he is able to succeed. But I think some of his greatest challenges come from feeling compelled to work at things he does not want to work at. He has to struggle and scratch to make a living. He is very concerned with making a good living for himself and his family, but it is difficult and takes up almost all of his time. He has a real sense that he is using his time at hard work, while losing time he has left before returning to dust. The curse for him is being stuck at the office for most of his waking life when he would love to be adventuring or creating something he is passionate about. 

It's interesting that the woman's curse is partly about the man, and the man's curse doesn't really have anything to do with the woman. I think it does hint that women care about their relationships with men more than men care about theirs with women. That sounds terrible. But I think it is there. And I think you can find evidence of that in the way the world works. Partially, this may be because of the practical dependence in which women find themselves when they become mothers. I don't think it's all a result of the curse, but I don't think it would have been painful at all without the curse. Maybe men would have rejoiced in their work and women would have rejoiced in their families, without women feeling pain in childbearing or loss of control over their husbands or men feeling frustration in their jobs. What would it have been like? We'll never know. What will it look like redeemed? Let's hope further reading in the Word will reveal that to us. 

There is a short paragraph before the final part of the curse where Adam and Eve leave paradise and lose their immortality. In it, the man and woman receive their names. Adam is simply named in the text, but he names Eve "because she would be the mother of all who live." I love that Eve is named for her motherhood. My own identity as woman has been so shaped by motherhood, and I think potential motherhood is a defining characteristic of womanhood. After all, humans are designated as male or female by their reproductive parts, which are, of course, for reproduction. Though a woman's purpose from God seems to have been "helping," her role seems to be "mothering." This is where her life challenges are, and where in my life I have experienced my greatest rewards. Of course not all women are mothers, but the question of motherhood will be an issue for all of them, and the potential for motherhood is always there. For almost all women, the monthly cycle of preparation for motherhood will be present and have some (not necessarily small) effect.

That Eve is the mother "of all who live" sounds to me like it could also have to do with the fact that her offspring will crush the serpent's head and restore eternal life to those who will attain it and "live."

Another brief event to talk about in this passage is the Lord making clothes for the humans from animal skins, replacing their fig leaf clothes, I suppose. Animals would have had to die for this. Whether they were dying before the fall of man, I don't know. It may only have been humans who were immortal in Eden, or maybe this is one of the first results of sin, and one of the first foreshadowings of death being needed to cover over the consequences of sin.   

After these developments, God closes the chapter of humanity in paradise. He sends the humans out of Eden so they will not be able to eat the fruit from the tree of life and live forever. Who knows how depraved a human could become in sin for centuries or millenia. This is punishment, but also perhaps a mercy. But this is where the promise of death resulting from sin is fulfilled. 

God banishes them from Eden and sends Adam out to begin the work of "cultivating the ground from which he had been made." Another use of that metaphor about cultivating the ground and attempting to cultivate himself? Eve is not given a commission, though soon after they leave, she will bear her first child. 

Mighty cherubim and a flashing sword are stationed to keep the humans away from the tree of life from here on out. 

Takeaways

• In the curse of the serpent, we find that women are major players in the fall and redemption of humanity.
• Men's and women's curses are different, and apply to different life circumstances faced by men and women.
• Eve is named "the mother of all who live"

Questions

• How did a snake get mixed up in this situation?
• Do you think women have more invested in their relationships with men than the other way around?