A passage from Genesis I found interesting was, “And to the woman He said, “I will make most severe. Your pangs in childbearing; In pain shall you bear children. Yet your urge shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you” (Genesis 3:16).

This passage comes after God has discovered that Adam and Eve have eaten the forbidden fruit after the serpent convinces Eve and she convinces Adam. God is furious and decides the punishments for each of then. God decides that the serpent will always crawl on it’s belly and from the dirt it will eat, and that Adam will no longer eat from the tree and the ground will be cursed. Eve receives a drastically different punishment. Because of Eve’s choice God decrees that during childbirth she will receive harsh pangs, and that she will give birth in pain. He also declares that her urge will be to her husband and that he shall rule over her. This struck me for multiple reasons, the main being that this aspect of the Adam and Eve story I had forgotten, or more likely it was glossed over when I was kid and even more likely that I did not understand the implications as a young child. Childbirth is no easy task, the pain that one endures as their body morphs to be able to support giving birth is evident in all mammals. However, the concept that at the beginning childbirth was intended to be as rough as it is, as deadly as it can be , and that essentially because Eve ate the fruit God made the final stages of reproduction treacherous going forward is shocking. However it also raises the question of if that when the early people were searching for an explanation for this pain besides basic science that they did not have an understanding of yet, why did they turn to Eve as the one to blame?