11 January 2014

Lessons in Gender Roles in Genesis 3

I've been reading Genesis 3:17-19, which talks about Adam and Eve eating the apple and being punished by God. Eve did not listen to God and ate the apple anyway. God punishes her by making childbirth painful. The lesson here is that women are to be meek and to submit to authority. Eve then gives the apple to Adam and persuades him to eat it. Adam obeys Eve and eats the apple. God punishes Adam by making him work for food all the time. It is the man's duty to work in order to eat. Adam is punished for obeying his wife. Instead of being a man and leading the woman, he instead allows Eve to lead him.

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

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