Way More (Gen 3:16)

Into and Out of the Garden

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

I begin this week by reminding you that the single verse addressed to the woman in the aftermath of eating from the Tree of Sorting is (1) set off from its surroundings by unusual spacing; (2) not associated with the word ארר arur; and (3) not uttered subsequent to the cursing of the snake — if it was “uttered” at all — but simultaneously with it.

The snake is “cursed” by being demoted and, falling into the category of “other duties as assigned,” put into a state of permanent enmity with the human race. That’s why snakes slither along the ground and bite people. What do women do? They get pregnant and give birth. That’s the unique aspect addressed here in v. 16.

We’ll get to עִצְּבוֹנֵ֣ךְ וְהֵֽרֹנֵ֔ךְ in a moment. (Teaser: It’s a hendiadys!) First, though a word or too about harbah arbeh. To break down my translation:

• אַרְבֶּה֙ arbeh ‘I will make more’

• הַרְבָּ֤ה harbah ‘way’

The syntax is the same as in “You may totally eat from any tree in the garden” (2:16); see there for the details. I’ve chosen a different word to make this statement emphatic. I think the emphasis needs to be expressed the most natural way that fits the English of the translation. But there’s something else that needs to be said here.

Let me point out for new readers that I think that the story that I’m calling “Into and Out of the Garden” was (1) originally written by a different author than Version 1 of the creation story and subsequently (2) edited into the form we have it now to connect it with Genesis 1. Whether you accept that suggestion or not, you should notice that harbah arbeh repeats רבה, the same root with which the humans were instructed to “proliferate” in 1:28. (The link goes to 1:22, where that root first occurs, which is where I discussed it.)

The basic meaning of r-b-h is “many, much.” In Modern Hebrew the way to say “thanks a lot” is toda rabba. The Qal verb used in Genesis 1 literally means something like “become many,” which is where “multiply” of “be fruitful and multiply” comes from. Here the verb is Hiphil and therefore causative: I will “make them many.” (For a deeper dive into this aspect of Hebrew verbs, see Lesson 15 of my Hebrew course; watch the first lesson for free here.)

You see the irony, of course. Not only is there no curse aimed at the woman, nothing whatsoever will happen to her unless she tries to do what the earthlings were instructed to do by God in Genesis 1. But if she does try to do that, the same verb is turned against her.

Having spent decades in the university humanities orbit, I do know the expression “the intentional fallacy.” Do your worst, professors. I am a writer, and I would be extraordinarily proud to have written harbah arbeh with the intention of presenting the irony I’ve just described. So I will continue to think that anything of that kind that I find in the text was indeed intended by its author for the purpose. It is the kind of gift that writers love to give to their good readers.

Some of you, I suppose, have been waiting more and more impatiently, waving your hands in the air until I let you ask the following question:

What do you mean “I will make your pregnancies way more grievous”? It’s not like she’s had “grievous” pregnancies already!

Well, maybe she has. There will be much more to say about this when we get to Gen 4:1. In the meantime, don’t blame the messenger. The snake was not told he was going to crawl lower than he previously did, nor that he would be eating more dust than he was used to, but the woman is told her pregnancies will be more grievous.

Some understand this phrase to refer not to pregnancy but childbirth; much more about that next time. For now, let me remind you that there is no longer a conversation going on. Sentence is being passed on the snake, the woman, and the man simultaneously. The Bible presents them, and we are reading them, in a particular order, but they were not spoken in that order, or perhaps at all. (See the previous post for a more detailed discussion of this.)

Even “sentence is being passed” is perhaps a bit too harsh a description of what’s happening here. When arur ‘cursed’ starts flying around, that can’t be good, and vv. 11 and 13 make clear that YHWH thinks they’ve done something he did not want them to do. But they have certainly not committed a sin, let alone done anything evil. What I think we are seeing here is YHWH saying to these three creatures, or perhaps simply thinking to himself, “Why, you ingrates!” One doesn’t have to be speaking directly to the person to say, “You’ll pay for this!”

A few words more about hendiadys (as I promised) will take us to the end of today’s post. To show you what I mean, here is the King James Version’s much more literal translation of our phrase:

I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception

“Thy sorrow” and “thy conception” are not two separate things. YHWH is not threatening that he will make her very unhappy and also make sure she has a lot of children. That word hendiadys is really an entire phrase in Greek, as the OED explains:

< ancient Greek ἓν (neuter) one + διὰ through + δυοῖν, genitive of δύο two

Calling two words joined by and a “one-through-two” means that they are not saying two separate things (1, thy sorrow; 2, thy conception), but one. The OED’s example to explain hendiadys is this:

A figure of speech in which two words are connected by a conjunction in order to express a single complex idea, e.g. nice and warm for nicely warm.

Since when you are “nicely warm” you are warm and it is nice, a better example would be sick and tired. When you tell someone you are sick and tired of their behavior, you are not saying that you are sick and also that you are tired; you are neither of those things. You are one thing, the thing we call in English sick and tired.

That one thing, sick and tired, is expressed by saying two words that sound separate but aren’t. The same thing is happening with the two words in this phrase. We’ll talk much more about those two words, and what they mean as a hendiadys, next time.