“.….....YOUR DESIRE SHALL BE FOR YOUR HUSBAND…….”

December, 2009

Your desire shall be for your husband, so the Bible records for us in Genesis 3:16.
These words are a part of the curse that God spoke over the woman as a penalty for her disobedience to God’s command.
The man and his wife had been warned: do not eat from this one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For, God said, in the same day, in the same hour, in the same moment that you eat of it, you shall die.
They did transgress and the consequences were immediate and terminal, they died, that is to say, their vital connection with the Source of their life, the Lord God their creator was forever severed.
Their physical existence would continue on for some time to come, but the sparkle was gone, from here on life would be little more than bare existence, it would bring trouble, discord and struggle.
Spiritual darkness descended on them and from that time on humanity would be shut up in this darkness.
Light and Life were lost due to disobedience, but humanity keeps frantically looking for it, because they know it (that Life) has got to be somewhere.
But where?
The tragedy of humanity is that they look and grope around in this thick darkness for something that is not even there, for death is absence of Life by definition.

Gen. 3:16 : “And to the woman God said: I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception, in sorrow you shall bring forth children, and your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you”.
Here we see that “….your desire shall be for your husband…” is part of the curse that God spoke over the woman.
In our meditation on this phrase we need to keep this foremost in mind, that the woman’s desire spoken of in this verse is not a blessing, but a part of the curse because of sin.
The question is: what would the woman desire from her husband? What would she be looking for in her husband?
I would submit, that her husband is looking for the same thing, not in his wife, but in other places, for instance, in his achievements.
So, what are they looking for?
The same what their descendants have looked for and are still looking for.
When any of us loose something of great value, we start looking for it to find it back. The greater the value of the loss, the more effort we put into finding it back.

By their disobedience Adam and his wife Eve lost Life, the Life of the Spirit within them, the lights had gone out, they were now cut off from the Source of light and life, the Lord God himself.
And yes, the Lord God did promise immediately that the day would come that Light and Life would return to this darkness in a day yet far in the future.
This Light and Life of the Spirit expressed itself in the garden in giving man a real sense of love, acceptance, value, peace, security, happiness, to name a few of the attributes of real Life.
But for now, man was left to his own resources to cope with life after loosing the real thing. And the search began for an acceptable substitute, something that would satisfy the longing for the real thing.
And where would the woman look for the substitute of the Life lost?
I would submit that she desired this Life from her husband, that he would give her what she was looking for: love, acceptance, value, security, etc., in short, the Life that is in the Spirit.
And she found that he could not give her much of anything and often it was conditional, you look after me and in return I will look after you.
The problem was that he, the husband no longer possessed this Life of the Spirit either and what you do not posses, you cannot share.
Besides, he was so busy trying to find these same values in his occupation, tending his crops, struggling to keep weeds and thistles under control.
He wanted so much to impress his wife with the results of his efforts, but the thistles were constantly opposing him.
What was he looking for? We know that already: love, acceptance, value, etc.
Exactly what his wife was looking for from him.
“…… Your desire shall be for your husband…….”.
Adam and Eve, our earliest ancestors and all their descendants after them have been looking for this Life that was lost on that fateful day when the fruit looked good and their appetite for it caused their downfall.

And humanity is still looking for this Life, looking for it in all the wrong places.
Man is looking for this Life everywhere, they call it something like the meaning of life, satisfaction, self-esteem, fulfillment, happiness and a number of other things.
But regardless of the term used, Life cannot be found in wealth, reputation, profession, family, or any other effort that man might engage in.

As God promised, Light and Life would one day return to this sin-darkened world in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And that will be the subject of the next issue of Reflections.


St. Thomas, Dec./’09. Simon VanderKooy.