Grievous Pregnancies (Gen 3:16)

Into and Out of the Garden

¹⁶ I will make your pregnancies way more grievous. הַרְבָּ֤ה אַרְבֶּה֙ עִצְּבוֹנֵ֣ךְ וְהֵֽרֹנֵ֔ךְ

We talked a lot last time about the first two Hebrew words of this phrase and introduced the next two as a hendiadys, leaving each of those words, plus their combination, for a longer discussion this time. Now here we are.

Let me pull apart the words quoted above so you can see what I’m doing in the translation. The bold text shows which English words are translating which Hebrew words:

• I will make your pregnancies way more grievous. הַרְבָּ֤ה אַרְבֶּה֙ עִצְּבוֹנֵ֣ךְ וְהֵֽרֹנֵ֔ךְ

• I will make your pregnancies way more grievous. הַרְבָּ֤ה אַרְבֶּה֙ עִצְּבוֹנֵ֣ךְ וְהֵֽרֹנֵ֔ךְ

This is not a simple equation where English word X = Hebrew word Y. We still need to talk about each of these two words individually before we can go to work what it means to combine them.

We mentioned a while back that both the snake and the man, but not the woman, would hear the word arur ‘cursed’ aimed at them. The man and the woman, but not the snake, also share a word. It’s the first of our pair, עִצָּבוֹן itzavon. It’s very much related to the word we’ll see as soon as we continue, the next word in the verse, עֶצֶב. Here’s how HALOT defines that word:

—1. hurt: ‏דְּבַר־עֶצֶב a hurtful word: Pr 15₁

—2. strenuous work Pr 10₂₂, 14₂₃; pl. what is acquired with difficulty Pr 5₁₀, לֶחֶם הָעֲצָבִים bread acquired with pain, or bread of anxious toil Ps 127₂, cj. Jr 11₁₉ for עֵץ בְּלַחְמוֹ rd. ? עֶצֶב לַחְמוֹ

—3. pain (of childbirth) Gn 3₁₆ (SamP. בְּעִצָּבוֹן). †

The six occurrences listed in that definition are the only ones in the Bible (that’s what that dagger means in a Biblical Hebrew lexicon), but when I type עצב into my Accordance Bible search program I find 40 more with just those three Hebrew letters. They show up in different parts of speech, all dealing with grief or pain (or false gods). עצוב means “sad” in Modern Hebrew. These three letters bode no good!

Our particular word, itzavon, occurs just twice more in the Bible, once in the very next verse and once, thankfully, in Gen 5:29, when Noah is born, given that name “because he will relieve us from our itzavon.” Much more on that phrase when we get there, but you can see that from a literary perspective it’s connecting the Flood story (of which Noah is the hero) to the Garden story that we’re reading right now. Because it’s used in this verse with regard to pregnancy, I’ve translated it to say that pregnancy will now become more grievous for her. That English word seems to combine difficulty, pain, and sadness into one package.

That’s dependent on understanding the next word as “pregnancy,” which not everyone does. The NRSV and NJPS both translate our phrase as “your pangs in childbearing” (not “pregnancy”). Surprise! It’s a hapax legomenon.