The Story of the Woman

But God said, “No, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac; and I will establish My covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.
Genesis 17:19 (NASB)

There is something so sneaky and subversive about the way Genesis talks about women, you miss it if you read it too quickly.

For starters, while Abraham is the “father of our faith,” the story about the miraculous birth is really Sarah’s story, not Abraham’s.

Sarai was unable to conceive; she did not have a child.
Genesis 11:30 (NASB)

Remember, the inability to have children wasn’t Abe’s problem. He was able to have a son with Hagar, which meant he was perfectly capable of having children.

But Sarah was barren, and there is a sense of grief and desperation that surrounds her.

Though she is abusive towards Hagar, she reacts from a place of hurt and shame. It isn’t excusable, but it is understandable. She feels diminished and small, but God elevates her and changes her name.

The thing is, the name change for Sarah seems a bit subtle. Some translations (the NASB, for example) say that the words Sarai and Sarah are the same, but just in different dialects. But most translation commentaries state that going from Sarai to Sarah is going from “my princess” to “princess,” so there’s at least a sense of enlargement or increase in scope of her princessly responsibilities, whatever those may be. But what is a “princess,” exactly?

As it turns out, it has nothing to do with being the “daughter of a king,” but it does have everything to do with royalty and authority.

Both versions of her name are the feminine version of a word that means ruler. Chief. The one in charge. The shot caller.

I. prince, ruler, leader, chief, chieftain, official, captain
1. chieftain, leader
2. vassal, noble, official (under king)
3. captain, general, commander (military)
4. chief, head, overseer (of other official classes)
5. heads, princes (of religious office)
6. elders (of representative leaders of people)
7. merchant-princes (of rank and dignity)
8. patron-angel
9. Ruler of rulers (of God)
10. warden
Strongs: H269 (שַׂר): sar

Now, if you have gender-roles and leadership expectations in your head that precondition you to place a man in higher authority than a woman, you might think that Abram was wrong for listening to his wife in Genesis 16:6, but consider Genesis 21:12. Who tells Abraham to listen and heed his wife? It is God.

But God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed because of the boy and your slave woman; whatever Sarah tells you, listen to her, for through Isaac your descendants shall be named.
Genesis 21:12 (NASB)

And actually, any statement about the consequences of men “listening to women” fall rather flat when you realize that nothing Eve said was wrong back in the Garden of Eden. Look at Eve’s words!

The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’”
Genesis 3:2-3

Perhaps Adam should have listened more closely, actually.

Sarah is elevated from being royal leadership with Abram to being royal leadership with Abraham: the leadership and authority tied to the father of nations. She is, in a way, wisdom, personified.

By me kings reign,
And rulers decree justice.
By me princes rule, and nobles,
All who judge rightly.
Proverbs 8:15-16 (NASB)

(In Hebrew, “by me” can also be read “with me.” It’s a connective preposition.)

And to make it even more clear how much Sarah is elevated, God says it twice in one verse!

I will bless her, and indeed I will give you a son by her. Then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.”
Genesis 17:16 (NASB)

So blessed!

And why not? God made it clear that the Son of the Promise will be through her. Yes, through Abraham, but *also* through Sarah. Because God does not view her lower than him, or higher than him, but with him.

And that’s how it is meant to be.

Listen to Eve

If you think God said “because you have listened to the voice of your wife” to mean what we should not heed the voice of our wives, you have misunderstood.

Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’;
Cursed is the ground because of you;
With hard labor you shall eat from it
All the days of your life.
Genesis 3:17 (NASB)

Look more closely!

The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’”
Genesis 3:2-3 (NASB)

Go back to the start of the chapter and look at exactly what Eve said. What are her words? What would have happened if Adam had listened to her and heeded her words?

Can you see it? The problem is that Adam did NOT heed his wife’s voice.

The charge against Adam was not that he obeyed his wife, causing him to eat the fruit. The charge is that he HEARD his wife speak the truth and he STILL ATE THE FRUIT ANYWAY.

He heard her. Her words were true.

The problem is that he disobeyed God anyway.

Four Rivers

One read of Genesis 9 is that Ham did *something* to prevent Noah from having more children.

Here are the clues:

Noah had three sons, and could not have four.
Ham had four sons (Cush, Egypt, Put and Canaan); Noah curses Canaan, who is the fourth one.

And there is one more clue.

A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters.
The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.)
The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush.
The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur.
And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
Genesis 2:10-14 (NIV)

A quick glance at Genesis 2 lists four rivers. I broke down the verses by river, and you see a clearly descending order of detail, with the Pishon given a lot of page-space, and the Euphrates barely being described at all.

Ironically, we have no clue where the Pishon or the Gihon are. They don’t exist anymore. They’re never even mentioned outside these verses listed, or outside the Bible. But we know the Tigris and the Euphrates.

You might think the Genesis writers were like, “Oh, everybody knows the Tigris and Euphrates, so we don’t need to describe them much,” but that would mean you haven’t been paying attention. That’s not how how the writers organized the words.

There are allegories here.

Rabbi Fohrman wrote that the Genesis 2 account of rivers is a prophetic cutting-off of what should have been. God told Noah to be fruitful and multiply: to have a fourth river, but Ham’s action (whatever it may have been) made it impossible.

The river is named, but it goes nowhere, like a child you’ve named in the womb, or a child you dreams of having.

Noah’s action of cursing Ham, in this view, is retaliation: you cut me off, so I’m cutting you off in the same way; your fourth for my fourth. Your river for my river.

Maybe Noah even named this fourth planned son, but the plan goes nowhere.

So maybe Noah stopped trusting God at this point.

When Adam and Eve were told to be fruitful and multiply, the consequence of eating the fruit was death, which created the first “oh no! How will God fulfill his blessing of *be fruitful and multiply* if humanity dies?”

God’s solution: Adam names his wife Eve, which means LIFE. The antidote to death.

When Eve thought that Cain was God’s promise, only to have Cain kill Abel, this was the second “on no! How will God fulfill his blessing? There are no more sons!”

God’s solution: Seth is born. God appointed Seth as the conduit to bring His promises into humanity.

When God sees the whole world is corrupt and will wipe it all out in a flood, the reader experiences the third “oh no!”

God’s solution: He preserved Noah and his family, even though the sons were not “good” according to the story. They were corrupt like the world.

So Noah is accustomed to this. When God tells him directly to be fruitful and multiply (to replace his corrupt sons?), whatever Ham does creates the next “oh no!”

Rather than wait for God to provide a solution, Noah unleashes a curse into his own family line.

So what will God do now?

God’s solution: I will use Shem, broken or not, and I will bring the fulfillment of my promise through him. I will maintain the goodness of my Name through him.

And “Shem” means “name.”

The story of Scripture is about God fulfilling His promise, no matter what happens, whether it’s our own disobedience, or the disobedience of our children, or of the whole corrupt world.

God will not be stopped from fulfilling His promises.

A Flood of Grief

This is a topic that is a bit sensitive for some folks. It requires a tremendous amount of gentleness. I think it also requires some age and wisdom to fully grasp it.

This is about the grief and suffering of the dying.

We have a vocabulary about death. We say things like “at least it was a quick death,” or “at least they died in their sleep.”

In the sadness of loss, we acknowledge the mercy found in certain kinds of death. This sort of death is… better. Better than suffering.

For the one experiencing the loss of a loved one, these phrases don’t lessen the pain, but it is helpful to know that the words are true, isn’t it? It’s good to know that loved ones who die this way did not experience prolongued agony and pain before they passed.

But it doesn’t lift the grief. It is still sorrowful.

But what about those who do suffer in agony?

I won’t describe any of it, because there are those who know already know people who have died this way, and they don’t want to be reminded. We have witnessed it. We have grieved it. And we have prayed for it to be over. We have prayed for an end of the suffering. For mercy.

And when the end comes, we are left with the most troubling and turmoil-filled spirit. We prayed for the end, but then we grieved the loss. We are relieved that their suffering stopped, but we didn’t want to lose them.

This is sorrow.

In Genesis 6, prior to the flood, the text mentions the “wickedness of man.”

We’ve been taught to read this as written in the English. Humanity is completely wicked, so the Flood waters are a judgement to wipe out the earth in God’s wrath.

But that is not the whole picture.

The word here for “the wickedness” is the noun-form of the word ra’. We translate it as “wickedness” or “evil,” but the word carries the connotation of suffering. So when we read “…and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time,” we are being told something important.

Can you see it?

III. evil, misery, distress, injury
1. evil, misery, distress
2. evil, injury, wrong
3. evil (ethical)
H7451: רַע (raʿ)

The text is not describing a humanity in defiance or disobedience to a holy God who must respond in wrath. That’s not the story. It is describing a humanity that is suffering. They are in misery. And they are dying. The curse of sin (death) has laid hold of all of them.

And when the text says “the Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled,” we see it clearly.

This form of “regretted” is compassionate mercy.

1. (Niphal)
1. to be sorry, be moved to pity, have compassion
2. to be sorry, rue, suffer grief, repent
3. to comfort oneself, be comforted
4. to comfort oneself, ease oneself
H5162: נָחַם (nāḥam)

And this form of “grieved” is precisely that feeling of troubling and turmoil-filled sorrow. It is the ending that you wish didn’t have to happen, but you understood that it would be worse if it didn’t.

5. (Hithpael) to feel grieved, be vexed
H6087: עָצַב (ʿāṣaḇ)

This is what our God is showing us with this story.

This stems from Adam and Eve’s eating from the tree of the knowledge of Good & Evil. This evil is the source of the suffering of humanity.

The narrative isn’t pointing to a God who is punishing us for doing the wrong thing. It is about a God grieving our suffering from it.

But God does not leave us in our suffering.

In Noah (whose name means “comfort“), we see God pointing to restoration. We see God making a new covenant and promising that this Flood will not happen again. Perhaps it’s because He will one day end all of our suffering.

Violence Against Women

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
Genesis 6:4 (NIV)

The actions of the “sons of God” here are written in stark and glaring contrast to Genesis 4:1, where it says that Adam knew his wife Eve.

I believe the text is describing violence.

To Know

The fact that Genesis 4 opens up with “Adam KNEW his wife” is striking. Yes, this is the Hebrew way of saying sex, but the wording suggests that immediately prior to this chapter, Adam did not know Eve. Not really.

We read that “their eyes were open” in Genesis 3, but perhaps “seeing” does not mean “knowing.” It requires something more.

Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, “I have acquired a man from the Lord.”
Genesis 4:1 (NKJV)

Motherhood and the First Born

You’re not supposed to hate Cain in the story. You’re supposed to look at him through the eyes of a grieving mother who believed that he was the answer to all her problems.

You can relate to Eve, because we’ve all put our trust in something and had it fall apart on us, and perhaps you can relate to Cain, who was under a lot of pressure from his mother.

Adam’s Role

In the Bible, the father is normally the person listed as naming the children, but it’s Eve who names both Cain and Abel in Genesis 3. Adam isn’t involved.

Eve names Seth, but in Genesis 5, the text says Adam does, so the implication may be that they both did. And perhaps that’s the point. We are meant to work together.

Trust after a Broken Heart

I’m not a mother, but I try to imagine the depth of hurt, ache, and the mixing of hope & hopelessness bound up in the birth of Seth.

Eve knows God will redeem the world through her children, but one is lost by murdering the other. All of her hope is destroyed.

She holds Seth.

How she must have trembled at his first cry. How she must have clung to him and pressed him close to her body, but also feared losing him, just like she lost the others.

Could she trust God with this child? She trusted him with the first two, and we know what happened.

I weep for Eve. For us.

How do we trust after we’ve been let down? How do we hope when everything we hoped for has been dashed?

The story of Eve and Seth is a story of God healing the broken hearted. It will require time. It will require God.

Neither Cain nor Abel

We always call it the story of “Cain & Abel,” but this ignores a critical part of the story.

Eve assumes God will use Cain – she says as much when she first speaks. And we, seeing Abel’s sacrifice, assume God will use the younger son to fulfill the blessing of “be fruitful and multiply.” But our assumptions are dashed by murder. Cain leaves the scene, and Abel dies. What will God do to solve this problem?

Perhaps the right name of the story should be “Not Cain, not Abel, but through Seth.”

Seth’s name means “appointed.” As in, selected by God to be used for a specific purpose. God’s purpose.

This is the nature of things.