Reframing Genesis 3:16: Eve’s Creation Memoir

Abstract

I will read Genesis 3:16 through the lens of Genesis 4. While Eve has become a fixed object in traditional interpretation as a dangerous temptress for man and the cause of humanity’s fall into sin, her story does not end in this chapter. Eve’s creative agency as “mother of all living” becomes the framework for the drama that unfolds in Genesis 4. Her body and her voice carry the story of life into the future. This essay shows the connection between Genesis 3:16 and the story in Genesis 4 by moving beyond a linguistic analysis of the common verbs, mashal and teshuqah. I will read the two texts together with the ancient scribes who distinguished Genesis 3:16 by placing this one verse between two setumah markers. Likewise, the story of Eve in Genesis 4:1–5:2 is placed between two setumah markers, thereby showing that ancient Hebrew readings emphasized a close relationship between Genesis 3:16 and Genesis 4:1–5:2. This is opposed to the Christian chapter division, which separates Genesis 3 from the story in Genesis 4, and places Genesis 3 in an authoritative position for the sake of extrapolating the doctrine of the fall into sin with the woman playing the central role in the fall story. I will further engage in deep reading, literary analysis, and performance criticism, and argue that Eve tells her own creation story with masterful subversiveness and creative audacity. The attempt of the essay is to reorient the dominant negative view of Eve toward a more positive, complex, and nuanced reading of her character in the Genesis text.

1. Introduction

Genesis 3:16¹ has become the defining biblical text for Eve as the emblematic representation for all women. Her story is burdened by an extensive history of Jewish and Christian interpretations depicting Eve as a dangerous temptress for man, the cause of humanity’s fall into sin, thus justifying male domination over women and the institution of patriarchy. Reading her story afresh in the context of the Genesis creation narratives is an exceedingly challenging task, yet it is imperative. A new and better interpretation is needed not only for communities of faith who hold high regard for the Bible, but also for the larger social world considering the impact the Bible has on many different cultures.

In order to better understand Gen 3:16, this study will include the narrative of Genesis 4. Here, Eve’s speeches at the births of her sons Cain and Seth serve as the foundation for the drama of life that takes place outside of the Garden of Eden. Here, in the fields of the earth, life is carried into the future through her body and her assertive speeches. To demonstrate this, it is important to move beyond a linguistic analysis of the common verbs teshuqah and mashal, which occur in Gen 3:16 and Gen 4:7 and include the larger contexts.

The method of analysis used in this study is multilayered. I will begin by reading the creation narratives in Gen 1–4 along with the ancient scribes who placed sense divisions into the Torah text to demarcate the narratives into petuha (“open”) and setumah (“closed”) paragraphs. The scribal sense divisions reveal a creation trilogy (Gen 1:1–2:3; 2:4–3:21; and Gen 3:22–5:2) instead of two different creation narratives (Gen 1:1–2:4a; 2:4b–3:24). The creation trilogy is an interconnected story with characters and themes that resonate with humanity’s common experience and desire for freedom, hope, and relationship-building in a world of loss, sorrow, and violence. The three narratives are intricately interwoven and create a compelling and profound tapestry of sophisticated and powerful ideas. The study will show that Gen 3:16 is placed between two setumot, thus making this the only isolated verse in the long narrative of Gen 2:4–3:21. Likewise, Genesis 4:1–5:2 is between two setumot. I will argue that these two texts, each telling an Eve story, are intentionally linked in the scribal Torah text and must be read in relation to each other. This new reading reveals the Eve story in Gen 4:1–5:2 as a counter narrative to Gen 3:16 with far-reaching implications for the understanding of the woman, the man, and Yahweh in the creation stories. The Christian chapter division, on the other hand, divides Gen 3 from the story in Gen 4, and places Gen 3 in an authoritative position over the story in Gen 4, thereby separating the texts that are directly related to Eve. Furthermore, Genesis 3 holds an exceedingly high position in the formulations of Christian doctrinal beliefs, such as the fall into sin and the status and role of the woman in the church and home.

Following the analysis of the scribal sense divisions, the study will engage in a literary analysis of key words, and the use of rhetorical criticism highlighting the importance of the ancient story, storyteller, and audience in the task of reimagining the ancient story of the life of Eve. Finally, with the assistance of performative narratology the story of Eve comes alive for “Everywoman” (Meyers 2012, p. 3).²

2. Sense Divisions versus Chapters

The Hebrew Bible did not come with chapters in place. Ancient scribes produced continuous consonantal texts partitioned into sense units, which, according to Emmanuel Tov, “reflects the earliest visible component of context exegesis of the written text” (Tov 1998, p. 142). Most biblical writings from the Judean Desert, as well as other Hellenistic and Aramaic texts from as early as the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, exhibit text blocks divided into meaningful units and separated by spacing. The text blocks in the Qumran scrolls show two different spacing systems: a space extending from the last word to the end of the line indicates an “open” unit, and a space in the middle of the line, equivalent in length to nine Hebrew letters, indicates a “closed” unit (Tov 1998, pp. 121–46). In the modern critical edition of the printed Hebrew Bible, such as the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS), the two spacings have been replaced by the letter signifiers, pe (P) for petuha (“opened”) and samek (O) for setumah (“closed”) (Blau 2019). The text units highlight the themes that are important for the weekly Torah readings in the synagogue following the liturgical calendar.

The division of the Bible into chapters is of a different nature and purpose. The chapter system is credited to Stephen Langton (c. 1150–1228), Professor at the University of Paris, English cardinal of the Catholic Church, and Archbishop of Canterbury (Schmidt 1892, pp. 56–91; cf. Landgraf 1937, pp. 74–94). Langton’s primary interest in the chapter system was for practical and logical considerations and for a neutral and universal utilization of the Bible in academic settings (Dames 2023, p. 95). The chapter system would make it easier to navigate through the biblical text due to the visible divisions and numerations on the page; it would also be more suitable for universal referencing in European classrooms. Another attribution of the chapter system for educational purposes is to Hugh of Saint Cher (c. 1200–1263), also Professor at the University of Paris, French Dominican friar, and cardinal of the Catholic Church. He became the author of the first biblical concordance, which employs the chapter system (Dames 2023, p. 319n14). An alternative setting for the chapter system is based on the discovery of a chaptered Bible from the Royal Abbey of Saint Albans in Hertfordshire dating to c. 1180 (Dames 2023, pp. 96–97). The Bible shows that the chapter system was already in use in an English monastic community before Langton created the divisions for the Parisian scholastic setting. A noteworthy element in the Saint Albans Bible is the expertly drawn calligraphy of the Hebrew alphabet and other illustrative details, which indicate close familiarity with Jewish scribal practice, suggesting that the monastery employed a skillful Jewish scribe’s handiwork (Saenger 2012, p. 187). Interestingly, the chapter divisions in the Saint Albans Bible closely align in the Torah section (Pentateuch) with the sedarim in the Jerusalem Talmud with its triennial reading cycle (Dames 2023, p. 97). Nonetheless, Langton’s chapter division prevailed and gained influence among Jewish scholars who adopted the system into the Hebrew Bible along with the sedarim. By 1330, the chapter system had become a standard in the Jewish community mainly because of Rabbi Solomon ben Ismael who placed the chapter numbers in the margins of the Hebrew Bible. By 1518, the chapter system appeared for the first time in the earliest printed Hebrew Bibles (Farmer 2016, pp. 173–76).

In the seventeenth century and continuing until the twentieth, British Bible scholars and editors began to question the biblical chapter system to the extent of criticizing it, labeling it as flawed, and rejecting it (Dames 2023, p. 145). The Enlightenment philosopher John Locke became one of the main critics of the Bible chapters. In his paraphrases and notes on the letters of St. Paul, Locke points out the fault of the chapter system as having transformed a whole text into a broken and dismembered text. The fragmentation by numbers, Locke argued, is contrary to the author’s intent, and disturbs the coherence of thought and argumentation. The reader is distracted by the number breaks and fails to appreciate and understand the sense and meaning of the text (Locke 1707, pp. vii–viii).

The dividing of them into Chapters and Verses, as we have done, whereby they are so chop’d and minc’d, as they are now Printed, stand so broken and divided, that … even Men of more advanc’d Knowledge in reading them, lose very much of the strength and force of the Coherence, and the Light that depends on it. Our Minds are so weak and narrow, that they have need of all the helps and assistances can be procur’d, to lay before them undisturbedly, the Thread and Coherence of any Discourse; by which alone they are truly improv’d and lead into the Genuine Sense of the Author … These Divisions also have given occasion to the reading these Epistles by parcels and in scraps, which has further confirm’d the Evil arising from such partitions … It cannot therefore but be wondred, that that should be permitted to be done to Holy Writ.

Nicholas Dames’ research on the chapter divisions in the Gospels is especially illuminating in this regard. Unlike units that contain literary elements such as scenes, episodes, climaxes, and denouements, the chapter is an abstract insertion imposed from the outside often conducted by editors rather than authors and imposed on the finished text in order to improve readability (Dames 2023, p. 196). Dames provides examples from the Gospels where the chapter breaks are inserted by focusing on locations and days pertaining to a certain action in the text, thus leaving the reader with an impression of detachment from the narrative. While the essence of time in the Gospels is kairos, which is God’s redemptive time, the chapters emphasize the temporality of chronos, the more impersonal regularity of mundane time. The emphasis is on the constant continuation of passing days rather than on the patterns of purposeful action (Dames 2023, pp. 103–6). The reader’s attention is turned toward an abstract and more intellectual comprehension of the text, and away from the expressive discourses, the dramatic stages, and cyclical rhythms of the story.

3. Reading the Creation Stories Together with the Scribes

The chapter divisions in Gen 1–4 have altered the ancient text in multiple and significant ways. The point of pause is changed to a different place, which affects or completely changes the narrative flow and the development of thought. The focus in the text, the viewpoint of the narrative or the narrator, the time, location, and action are affected by the chapter break in ways that were not initially intended. In the Christian context, it is undeniable that Gen 3 has become the unequivocal and final chapter about creation and the foundational chapter for what is considered the theology of the fall into sin (Pardes 1993, p. 39; Westermann 1994, pp. 2–3). However, when one reads the opening narratives in the framework provided by the ancient scribes, the stories have a different flow and flavor, a different subject matter, and a different intent (Schorsch 1999). The narratives are written in units of petuha and setumah units in the following ways:

• The first creation narrative contains seven petuhot, one after each of the seven days of creation with the seventh petuha marking the end of the first creation story at the end of Gen 2:3 in the chaptered Bible. This is the extravagant story about a well-organized world created by Elohim.

• The second creation narrative connects to the previous story in the pivotal verse of Gen 2:4,³ but then introduces Yahweh Elohim as creator in a lush garden setting. Here, in the confinement of the Garden of Eden, the human couple is meant to enjoy life and not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The turning point happens with the serpent’s deceptive talks and the eating of the forbidden fruit with the result that the man and the woman discover that they are naked and filled with shame and fear. Yahweh Elohim arrives on the scene and issues verdicts for each, the serpent, the woman, and the man, and then clothes the human pair with garments of skin (Gen 3:21). Here, the Jewish scribe inserted a petuha to mark the end of the story. The lengthy petuha paragraph (Gen 2:4–3:21) of the second creation story contains one short setumah inserted by the ancient scribe as a blank space before Yahweh speaks to the woman and another blank space after the divine speech. This ingenious technique directs the reader’s full attention to the woman as she is listening to the fateful words. The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia has setumah markers enclosing the verse in Gen 3:16, as shown here:

To the woman he said,

I will make great your toil and your pregnancies.

With hardship shall you have children,

Your turning is to your man/husband,

And he shall rule/control you (sexually).⁴

In the modern Bible, the continuous narrative is divided into two chapters. The first ends with the description of the innocent human couple as “naked but not ashamed” (Gen 2:25). The second chapter begins with the cunning character of the serpent (Gen 3:1) seducing the woman to eat from the forbidden fruit. The interruption of the narrative flow evokes a strong sense of disturbance. The serpent, the woman, and the man turn the peaceful realm into a place filled with fear, shame, and guilt. Yahweh arrives and issues verdicts upon the serpent and the humans. Both the woman and the man are held accountable and told that they will suffer the consequences for their actions. The story ends with the implementation of safeguards at the gate of the Garden of Eden to prevent re-entry of the human couple (Gen 3:24). In Christian tradition, this story is the conclusion of creation and the basis for the doctrine of humanity’s fall into depravity and original sin.

• III.. A third and more complex creation narrative emerges in the scribal text with Yahweh’s exclamation “Behold, the human!” (Gen 3:22). A petuha marker occurs after the descendants of Seth “began calling Yahweh by name” (Gen 4:26). The first intricacy of this narrative is with the length and placement of the setumah; it starts with Gen 4:1 and extends into Gen 5:2, two verses beyond the petuha. Another sophisticated feature incorporated in this setumah is that Eve speaks in her own voice about the birth of her sons as an act of divine creation outside of the Garden of Eden. At the birth of Cain, she invokes Yahweh (Gen 4:1). Sarna notes, “[t]he most sacred divine name YHWH is here uttered by a human being, a woman, for the first time” (Sarna 1989, p. 32). But then for the birth of Seth, Eve evokes Elohim (Gen 4:25) from the first creation narrative.

Moshe Kline, who has performed groundbreaking research on the structural references of Elohim and Yahweh in the “woven Torah” (Kline 2022), shows that it is precisely in Eve’s narrative of Gen 4 where Yahweh and Eve are intimately associated. Kline argues for this connection based on the practice of “literary weaving [w]as an ancient scribal tradition” (Kline and Hocking 2022, p. 3). While Kline does not pay attention to the scribal sense divisions of the petuha and setumah paragraphs, his detailed literary analysis does support the argument of this study about Gen 4 as Eve’s creation narrative in partnership with Yahweh. Kline states (Kline 2022, p. 3),

Eve—not the narrator—is the first to mention both YHWH and Elohim after Eden. Both mentions refer to the birth of a son. So, we see that Eve knows the difference between divine characters after the expulsion from the Garden. Eve partners with YHWH in delivering Cain. Regarding the birth of Seth, she says: “Elohim has granted me other seed in place of Abel, for Cain killed him." The birth of Seth is the function of Elohim’s “grant”. YHWH and Eve partnered, but Elohim granted a son to Eve. From the perspective of the deity, YHWH is intimately associated with Eve, while Elohim lacks a personal relationship with her.

Furthermore, it is important to note that at both structural and rhetorical levels the setumah establishes a direct connection between Yahweh and Elohim by means of Eve’s speeches. In addition, Eve’s speeches at the beginning and at the end of the setumah create an inclusio for the content expounded in between in the Cain and Abel story. This conceptual framework facilitates a more profound understanding of Yahweh’s involvement with human sorrow, maternal loss, as well as hope in the world outside of the Garden of Eden.

The final part of the setumah (Gen 5:1–2), which is the fragment that extends beyond the petuha, is remarkable in that it provides a synthesis of the first and the second creation narrative. In its wording and poetic structure, this fragment resembles the beginning of the second creation narrative (“This is the account [toledot] of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that Yahweh Elohim made earth and heaven” Gen 2:4); but its rhetorical scope is to incorporate the generations who derive from the human pair outside of the Garden of Eden into the all-encompassing creation of Elohim. The final part correlates with the creation of ’adam in the first creation narrative (“Elohim created ha’adam ["the human"] in his own image, in the image of Elohim he created him; male and female he created them, and Elohim blessed them …” Gen 1:27–28); but here the setumah clarifies that the names of both male and female are ‘adam (“humanity”).

This is the book of the generations [sefer toledot] of humanity [’adam]

In the day when Elohim created humanity [’adam]

He made him in the likeness of Elohim.

Male and female, he created them.

He blessed them, and called their names ’adam,

in the day when they were created.

(Gen 5:2)⁵

In contrast to the chapter divisions in modern Bibles, which uphold two distinct creation narratives followed by the story about the fall into sin, the scribal sense divisions in the Torah indicate a creation trilogy with diverse perspectives about the deity and human beings. The first creation narrative in the three-part series introduces Elohim as the creator of the heavens and the Earth. Human beings, male and female, are created to function as representations of Elohim (“image and likeness” Gen 1:26–28). In the second creation narrative, Yahweh is creator god of a lush garden, animals, and of ha’adam and his woman. The focus is on the relational and intimate nature of Yahweh and the human pair (“one flesh” Gen 2:24). In the third creation narrative, the humans are expelled from the garden and Eve gives birth to her sons. The remarkable part of the third narrative is that Eve’s speech during childbirth places Yahweh alongside humanity into Elohim’s world outside of the Garden of Eden (Gen 4:1, 25; 5:1–2). In this sense, Torah’s creation trilogy is an overarching narrative with intricately connected characters and themes, appealing to humanity’s universal aspirations of freedom, hope, relationship building, as well as the experience of loss and grief. The parallel storylines are woven together as an interconnected rich tapestry of nuanced and impactful messages. Table 1 shows the scribal sense divisions in the Masoretic Text marked by petuha (P) and setumah (O, for the letter samek), which correspond to the chapter and verse references in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia.

4. Listening to Eve’s Story

Ilana Pardes has pointedly noted, “Eve does not vanish after Genesis 3” (Pardes 1993, p. 40). Her setumah begins thus:

Now ha’adam had known Eve [et-Hawwa] his woman,

and she conceived and birthed Cain [et-Qayin] and she said,

I have created [qanah] a human individual/man [ish] Yahweh [et-YHWH].

(Gen 4:1)

Toward the end of the setumah, after having birthed Seth, Eve speaks again:

Adam again knew his woman and she gave birth to a son

and she called his name Seth,

for Elohim set for me another seed in place of Abel,

for Cain killed him.

(Gen 4:25)⁶

This section of the study emphasizes the character of Eve as a “helper suitable for him” within the narratives delineated by ancient scribes. The two setumot, the short paragraph (Gen 3:16) and the long section (Gen 4:1–5:2), connect over the major themes of sorrow and birth and call for an interpretation in light of each other. A reading of the short setumah (Gen 3:16) as punishment or as a result of the fall into sin is foreign to the ancient text of the scribes. This includes the treatment of the linguistic associations between the words teshuqah (“desire”) and mashal (“rule” or “master”) used in both setumot (Gen 3:16 and 4:7). Interpretations that prioritize the explicit linguistic aspects while disregarding the themes pertaining to the woman as a “helper suitable for him” and as a mother present throughout the story of her sons in Gen 4 fail to grasp the profound insights embedded in the ancient creation triad.

“A man’s world tells a woman’s story” (Trible 1978, p. 166). This is Phyllis Trible’s introduction to the treatment of the story of Ruth. For centuries, male interpreters have told the story of the first woman in the Bible. We have learned about Eve’s sin, her evil character, her alluring body, and her punishment, which, as we were told, has become the fate of all women.⁷ We were also told that God is in this too, or that God set it up like this, some say it was divinely prescribed, others say it was described. In the end, is there truly a difference between a prescribed or described fate for women embodying the temptress and the troublemaker? This is the story, Trible notes, that “has acquired a status of canonicity so that those who deplore and those who applaud the story both agree upon its meaning” (Trible 1978, p. 73).

For a deeper exploration of the woman in the creation trilogy of the scribes, I will use an intertextual approach enhanced by rhetorical analysis and performative narratology. This multilayered method is based on the recognition that ancient writers created texts as “acts of imagination” (Brueggemann 2001, p. x) to challenge their audiences to reimagine and “remake the world” (Ricoeur 1991, p. 129). David M. Carr explains, such biblical texts emerged within the context of an oral culture (Carr 2011, p. 24). The texts were memorized and publicly performed. The “written copies of these texts were used in this process to help students internalize the textual tradition, check their accuracy and correct it, and/or as an aid in the oral presentation of the text” (Carr 2010, p. 18).

Oral communication of biblical texts goes along with performative speech acts. As an emerging field in biblical studies, performance analysis has greatly contributed to a nuanced way of biblical interpretation (Pearson 2002, pp. 89–95). In this sense, the written text refuses to be used as a springboard for rationalized, cogent, and well-crafted explanations or doctrinal statements. Rather, the text is a document of memory, of re-imagination, and re-lived experiences with the intent to stimulate faith, trust, and hope. In the context of an oral culture, the text may be memorized and recited in a communal setting and performed before and together with an interactive audience. The performance requires a deep understanding of the text and skillful recitation, an engaged and dynamic audience, as well as place, time, and circumstances conducive to the experience. The text does not remain static or fixed on a scroll or a page in a book but invites a re-lived experience of the narrative. How this may contribute to a reimagining of the woman’s “curse” is the story of Eve in the two setumot of the creation trilogy.

According to the short setumah, the woman is to experience great toil, many pregnancies, travail in childbirth, and desire for the man who will rule over her (Gen 3:16). In contrast, the long setumah (Gen 4:1–5:2) does not make any reference to these fateful prospects. Nonetheless, the tragic nature of this setumah begins with a backstory, “ha’adam had known Eve, his woman” (Gen 4:1).⁸ Ziony Zevit explains the syntactic construction of this sentence in relation to the previous text section as a knowing of the past that is bound to the life in the garden, “He expelled the human and settled the cherubs and the flaming ever-turning sword to the east of the garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life; and/but the human had known Eve his woman and she had conceived and birthed Cain”(Zevit 2013, p. 188). Sarna clarifies the concept of knowledge in the Hebrew Bible as something that is not primarily associated with intellectual pursuits, but extends beyond the simple act of objectively seeing reality. It possesses experiential, emotional, and predominantly relational characteristics. It is utilized in the context of interpersonal relationships and sexuality to convey the deepest and holiest bond (Sarna 1989, p. 31).

The brief reference to ha’adam⁹ “had known” Eve, although a euphemism for sexual intercourse, is now burdened with a surge of memory about the events that transpired within the garden, the words spoken to her, the sentiments, gestures, and actions directed toward her. Her body carries the scenarios from inside the garden out into the fields of the earth. The storyteller offers her voice to the audience, not to give an account or explain what happened, but to create an atmosphere of sympathy between her and the audience. It is about an understanding that transcends temporal, spatial, and behavioral boundaries; it is about searching deep into an encounter of knowing that is bound to happen between her and her audience.

She tells her story, “ha’adam had known Eve, his woman” (Gen 4:1). Her bodily presence clothed in garments of skin, perfectly matching his, confirms Yahweh’s commitment, “I will make him a helper suitable for him [ezer kenegdo]” (Gen 2:18). As ezer (“helper”) she is not an assistant, a subordinate, as some English connotations may suggest.¹⁰ She is a person of great strength, equal to a hero warrior¹¹ who comes to the rescue when life-threatening circumstances occur. As ezer, she carries out her destiny of being the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:27), who himself identifies as ezer (11×).¹² The added expression, kenegdo, only increases and intensifies the remarkable nature of the ezer. The expression kenegdo is a combination of three parts, the preposition k (“as”, “like”), which is attached to the preposition neged (“in front of”) and concluded with the third-person suffix o (“him”). The idea behind this three-part term is often translated as “suitable for him” or “corresponding to him”. This rendering, writes Trible, “tempers [the] connotation of superiority to specify mutuality and equality” (Trible 1978, p. 90) between the human and the ezer. I digress, for it is important to note that the translation “suitable for him” does not consider the significance of the preposition in the middle of the three-part term, ke-negd-o, with its lexical semantic based on the verb nagad, “announce”, “tell”, and “inform”.¹³ Emphasis on the verbal meaning of nagad as related to the preposition neged transforms the ezer into one who is to “tell him” or “announce to him” important matters, which is the function of the nagid (cognate noun of the verb nagad). The nagid is mentioned forty-two times in the Hebrew Bible designating a prominent person, such as a ruler, a prince, a captain, and a messiah. One of the primary tasks of the nagid is to tell an important message. She exerted her nagid task as a formidable speaker already during her encounter with the serpent (Gen 3:1–3) (Gnuse 2014, p. 110). Naturally, then, an engaged audience joins her bewilderment as she hears ha’adam’s response to Yahweh’s question, “Where are you?” (Gen 3:9):

Your voice

I heard in the garden,

and I was afraid

because I was naked,

and I hid myself.

(Gen 3:10)

In a mere seven Hebrew words, he said “I” four times plus the additional “myself”. She had been part of each one of the four actions (Gen 3:7, 8). “Who told [higgid] you that you were naked?”Notice Yahweh’s use of nagad from ke-negd-o, the helper who has gone through the entire experience together with him. Yahweh’s second question exposes the “I” as an absurdity, if not egotistical, especially when contemplating on the two being “one flesh” (Gen 2:24). His response, again, is disappointingly telling, “The woman, whom you put with me” (Gen 3:12). Eventually, he names her Eve/Hawwah and recognizes her as the “mother of all living” (Gen 3:20), but only after learning about his own demise (“dust you are, and to dust you will return” Gen 3:19). Indeed, becoming and being a mother outside of the garden will disclose Eve as one who partners with Yahweh “in hailing the arrival of another human being” (Speiser 1964, p. 30), one who imagines a world that resists violence and sin, and therefore rejects the description of her predicament in the short setumah (Gen 3:16).

On this side of the gate heavily guarded by Yahweh’s cherubim and the flame of the whirling sword, Eve utters three Hebrew words:

I have created [qaniti]

a human individual [ish] Yahweh [et-YHWH].

(Gen 4:1)

Gerhard von Rad noted, “every word of this little sentence is difficult” (von Rad 1972, p. 103). Indeed, it is, but only when it is relegated to be analyzed as a “text for study” and “translation [is used] as a vehicle for explaining” (Alter 2019, p. xvi) the words rather than conveying their meaning, insight, and vision through the skillfulness of ancient Hebrew story telling.

Eve’s three words shouted out in childbirth announce the arrival of a new world. First to note is a pun connecting Cain/Qayin with qanah (“buy”, “acquire”, “create, “produce”, ”beget”, and “bear”).¹⁴ This phonetic correlation does not imply semantic similarity between the verb and the name (Pardes 1993, p. 43). Wenham has shown that there are additional assonances throughout the story, such as, Qayin qanity (“I created” v. 1), yaqam Qayin (“Cain arose” v. 8), Qayin yuqam (“Cain will be avenged” v. 15), and yuqam Qayin (“Cain is avenged” v. 24), which suggest that “the etymology of Cain’s name offered in the text is ‘poetic’” (Wenham 1987, p. 101). The audience is invited to not only hear the setumah as epic poetry about a time in the ancient past, but to be stimulated and engaged in the story. Eve’s wordplays, atypical terms, and nuances, the twists and rhythms are rhetoric of a generative imagination about a different world.

Steven T. Mann published a literary analysis of Eve’s speeches in Gen 4 (Mann 2021) by applying John Searle’s speech act theory (Searle 1969). Mann’s study concludes that Eve’s speeches are illocutionary acts (that is, actions carried out through speech) with a declarative, assertive, and performative force on two levels: the story level and the storyteller level. At the story level, Mann shows the imaginative force in Eve’s speech by considering herself as partner of Yahweh, not of ha’adam, and creating a human individual/man (ish), not a baby (Mann 2021, p. 83). Ilana Pardes criticizes translations such as the KJV and JPS that render Eve’s words in a rather negative light by translating the verb qana as “acquire” instead of “create” (Pardes 1993, p. 44). Pardes considers “acquire” as a discredited translation following the careful studies by Cassuto in Ugaritic texts with the same root (qny or qnw) speaking of the “creatress/bearer of the gods” (Pardes 1993, pp. 45–45). Likewise, Ellen van Wolde holds that the verb qana speaks “in particular to the coherence between the creation of God and the procreation of woman” (van Wolde 1991, pp. 27–28). Tammi Schneider notes (Schneider 2008, pp. 171–72):

Eve’s statement highlights that she considers herself involved in the process of creation working with the Deity. The creation verb Eve uses is one of the verbs used to refer to the Divine’s role in creation ([Gen.] 14. 19, 22; Deut. 32.6), and of the Deity redeeming the people.

(Exod. 15.16; Isa. 11.11)

Furthermore, when Eve speaks with such odd language about her newborn as an ish, instead of using the common Hebrew ben for a newborn (e.g., Gen 4:25 in reference to Seth), she identifies Cain first and foremost as an individual belonging to the human family (Stein 2022, pp. 283–311). Her last word about this newborn is “completely unexplainable”(von Rad 1972, p. 103). The ambiguity of the particle et has been addressed in different ways by ancient (see Holguín 2018, pp. 26–28) and modern translators¹⁵ and mostly rendered in the sense of the preposition “with”, “together with”, and “with the help of”,¹⁶ and only rarely in the sense of “a man, (who is) Yahweh” (Holguín 2018, p. 26). In spite of the difficulty in understanding the particle et in relation to the name Yahweh, it is important to recognize that the creation narratives in Genesis 1–4 use et about seventy times consistently and exclusively as a marker for the direct object (such as here, “ha’adam knew Eve [et-Hawwa] his woman, and she conceived and birthed Cain [et-Qayin]” Gen 4:1, 2). This indicates that the prepositional use is atypical while et as direct object marker is common especially in connection to names (see Gen 4:17–22). In the context of Gen 4:1 as a birth narrative et-YHWH may express the mother’s ultimate outburst in the very moment of delivery, “a human individual—Yahweh!” Sarna’s remark captures this moment best, “[t]he most sacred divine name YHWH is here uttered by a human being, a woman, for the first time” (Sarna 1989, p. 32). In this sense, Eve’s childbirth scream may evoke ha’adam’s jubilant cry at the creation of the woman (Gen 2:23):

She!

Ha-paam

Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh.

She!

She is called woman [isha]

For from human [ish] she is taken.

She!

(Gen 2:23)

This translation is intentional about emphasizing the three-fold Hebrew feminine demonstrative pronoun, zot, as “she” rather than using the ungendered English “this”. Sarna holds that Eve’s exclamation is similarly euphoric, “I, woman (’ish(sh)ah), was produced from man (’ish); now I, woman, have in turn produced a man” (Sarna 1989, p. 32). Ultimately, the ambiguous et-YHWH, may carry the “sign” (et) that Yahweh too has left the confinement of the garden. Eve’s audacious cry has delivered in one breath both the human and Yahweh upon the earth outside of the garden. Yahweh joins Eve and her sons in the fields of the earth where her farmer son and her shepherd son work and build altars, where Abel is always the brother of Cain, but Cain is not a brother to Abel, where Cain’s face turns red and angry, where the earth swallows the blood of the dead, but the blood cries out to Yahweh.

Steven T. Mann offers three insightful findings about Eve’s speech at the birth of Cain. First, she “resists male authority over women (patriarchy)” (Mann 2021, p. 84). This argument is based on the naming of the children by the mother and the lack of ha’adam’s name in her direct speech. Second, Mother Eve “provides and alternative depiction of childbearing” (Mann 2021, p. 84). In contrast to Genesis 3, where childbearing is described as a distressing procedure, Eve presents it as an act of creation with no mention of the emotional strain involved. Finally, “Eve’s relationship with Yhwh does not relay on her connection with a man” (Mann 2021, p. 84). Her remarks regarding the birth of her first and third sons pertain to her relationship with Yahweh, rather than into a bond of dominance under her husband (Schneider 2008, p. 174). Mann concludes, “Eve’s assertive at the opening of Genesis 4 invites the readers to imagine the identity and authority of women in ways that counter the world that is on display in Genesis 3” (Mann 2021, p. 84). At the birth of Seth (Gen 4:25), the narrative exhibits another anomalous feature when Eve’s voice blends with that of the narrator:

Adam again knew his woman and she gave birth to a son

and she called his name Seth,

for Elohim set for me another seed in place of Abel,

for Cain killed him.

(Gen 4:25)

Here, Mann argues, “the narrator looks out at the audience as a woman who can successfully utter this assertive” (Mann 2021, p. 94) without having a “she said” to demarcate her speech and disassociate her from the storyteller (as in KJV, ASV, ESV, NRSV, and NASB). The community listening to her ancient story recognizes that she has not finished her story; she proceeds by telling about Enosh, her grandson, and a new kind of beginning of “calling upon the name of Yahweh” (Gen 4:26). As the scribe responsible for the petuha paragraph concludes his creation narrative after the final “Yahweh” is uttered, the setumah narrator, does not finish here. Her story carries on into the book of Adam’s generations (sefer toledot ’adam). Here, it persists boldly; it turns to the second creation narrative, and then to the first reminding the audience of Elohim who created and blessed humankind, male and female, “and called their names ’adam in the day when they were created” (Gen 5:1–2). This happens without hesitation or scruples about the accuracy of naming or the segregation according to sex and gender roles. Female is ’adam just as male is ’adam. Eve’s creation memoir ends and reimagines a world of shared and divinely blessed humanity.

Tragically, after the setumah marker (Gen 5:2) the story of Adam’s descendants continues without Eve.

Adam lived one hundred and thirty years,

and he beget in his likeness,

according to his image

and he called his name Seth.

(Gen 5:3)

Now, he is credited with both the birth and the name giving of Seth. In the words of Anne Lapidus Lerner, “Eve is doubly excluded from this description” (Lerner 2007, p. 167). She has disappeared never to be mentioned again in the Hebrew Bible. However, throughout the centuries of human history, Eve’s predicament has remained. Her story has gone through numerous unfavorable transformations in text and interpretation, some more cruel than others (Miller and Scott 2006).¹⁷ There is a sermon written about Eve by Saint Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306–379), a prominent Christian theologian, poet, and deacon of the church in Edessa (Kalish 2012, pp. 4–7). In a homily about Cain and Abel, Ephrem imagines what Eve would have said when she discovered her two sons in the field, one slain, the other trembling. Saint Ephrem follows the tradition of oral performance as he preaches the story in the voice of Mother Eve:

If I say what happened, I will be of no help for Abel

And I will accuse Cain.

How can I become the accuser of my offspring?

I pity the life of this one, and I lament the death of that one.

She is the mother of both Cain, the slayer, and Abel, the slain.

I reaped hostility, and I reaped death.

Her maternal attachments are so deep that she is unable to reject her own child. In the sermon preached to a Christian audience, Eve chooses to take the blame and the responsibility for Cain’s actions onto herself. In the Christian setting, Eve’s story is deeply moving while at the same time an illustration for the concept of original sin.

5. Conclusions

Eve’s creation memoir is unique in a number of ways when compared to the previous narratives in Gen 1–3. The scene is situated outside of the tranquil garden with its lush environment, fruit trees, and water sources. Rather than receiving the gift of food (Gen 1:29–31; Gen 2:9; 3:2, 6), Eve’s sons offer food gifts to Yahweh (Gen 4:3–5). Cain is instructed to “do good” (Gen 4:7), rather than to enjoy the “very good” of Elohim’s creation (Gen 1:31). The ground (’adamah) in this creation narrative assumes characteristics of an active agent with body parts and fluids. It has opened its mouth wide and swallowed the blood of the deceased brother. Cain is “a worker of the ground”, but the ground withholds its strength from him; he is cursed from the ground, must leave the ground, and wander around in the land of aimless Wanderings (Gen 4:9–12). Eve’s creation story is located in the reality of a world of scarcity, on ground suffering from human violence. In Eve’s story, God is Yahweh (10x), her partner at birth, intently gazing at the altar of one of her son’s but not at the other son’s altar, concerned about the angry attitude of Cain, and about the voice rising up from the blood-soaked ground. Nevertheless, Yahweh’s voice does not roll like thunder across the earth (Gen 3:8), humans do not fear him and hide at his arrival (Gen 3:7–10). Interrogation is absent from Eve’s story as well as judgment and verdicts (Gen 3:9–19). Yahweh does not demand or command; there is divine presence coupled with great restraint. There is guidance and protection, even for the most unwanted man (Gen 4:12–15). In Eve’s story, Yahweh is Heschel’s God: “God is not indifferent to evil! He is always concerned. He is personally affected by what man does to man. He is a God of pathos” (Heschel 1962, p. 284).¹⁸

In ancient scribal exegesis, Eve’s creation memoir presents a new framework for the world outside the confines of the Garden of Eden. In this new world, the predicament of the short setumah (Gen 3:16) about the man’s dominance over the woman is lifted. Hence, the conjectures regarding a divine curse upon the woman hold no significance in Eve’s and in Everywoman’s world. The one query and counsel that Yahweh places before ish, the mature human individual born from the woman, is the only one that holds genuine legitimacy in the world:

Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen?

If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up?

And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door;

and its desire is for you, but you must master it”.

(Genesis 4:6–7)

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Data Availability Statement

No new data were created.

Conflicts of Interest

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Footnotes

Notes

1. Unless otherwise indicated, all English Bible texts are my own translations of the Hebrew texts as they appear in BHS (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia).

2. Carol Meyers argues for the ancient life experiences of Israelite women as “Everywoman Eve,” see (Meyers 2012, p. 3).

3. In modern studies, the question about the end of the first creation story and the transition to the second story is a matter of source critical debate. The biblical text under discussion is Gen 2:4 with the toledot formula and the phrase about God creating “the heavens and the earth” in 2:4a, which forms an inclusio with Gen 1:1, and Yahweh Elohim creating “the earth and the heavens” in 2:4b. The first story (Gen 1:1–2:4a) is attributed to the Priestly source (P); the second story (Gen 2:4b–3:24) is regarded as Yahwist (J) or non-Priestly. For discussions on the creation stories see (Westermann 1994, pp. 78, 178, 197; cf., Speiser 1981, pp. 3–13).

4. This translation of Gen 3:16 is Carol Meyers’ in Rediscovering Eve, pp. 81–102. Meyers holds that the last line of the verse grants men “mastery in marital sex–but not dominance in all aspects of life” (96), which she considers as a response to the potential resistance of Iron-age women to sexual relations because of the dangers in numerous pregnancies and high infant mortality rates.

5. The Hebrew ‘adam without a definite article denotes the collective, “humankind” or “humanity”. See HALOT, p. 14.

6. Within Gen 1–4, it is only here in Gen 4:25 that the Hebrew ’adam without a definite article mention Adam as a personal name.

7. The implications of this interpretation are seen in depictions of Eve as femme fatale embodying the downfall of man in art and other cultural artifacts (Morse 2020, pp. 151–79; cf., Borney 2020).

8. See, yada, “to know sexually”, in HALOT, p. 391. The medieval scholar Rashi concluded that sexual intercourse had occurred in the Garden of Eden prior to the expulsion, a viewpoint that is supported by the textual evidence found in Gen 3:30. There is no evidence to support the notion that sexual behavior originated only outside of the Garden of Eden.

9. For an analysis about Adam in Gen 4, see Snyman (2020, pp. 1–17).

10. According to Merriam-Webster, an assistant is “a person who helps a more skilled person” such as an apprentice, servant, helpmeet, employee, subordinate, maidservant, etc. See, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/helper (accessed on 26 August 2024). Also implied in the “act of serving food”. See, https://www.etymonline.com/word/helping (accessed on 26 August 2024).

11. HALOT, pp. 810–12.

12. Exod 18:4; Deut 33:7, 26, 29; Ps 33:20; 115:9–11; 121:2; 124:8; 146:5 (cf. Trible 1978, p. 90).

13. See HALOT, pp. 665–66; (cf. Hardy 2022, p. 95). The verb nagad, “to tell, make known, inform” occurs in the Hifil and Hofal, only.

14. See HALOT, p. 1112; cf. Lipinski, E. qãnâ. TDOT 8: 58–65.

15. Those who take the particle et as the preposition “with” (Westermann 1994, pp. 290–92) or as an accusative marker, translate, “with the help of the LORD” (Sarna 1989, p. 32; cf. Speiser 1964, p. 30) acknowledge that “et never means ‘with the help of’” (von Rad 1972, p. 103). Robert Alter translates, “I have got me a man with the LORD” (Alter 2019, p. 19).

16. A similar prepositional use of the related particle itti is attested in the Babylonian creation myths, Enuma Elish and Atra-hasis, where the creatress deity creates mankind “with” or “together with” the male god (Pardes 1993, p. 45).

17. The Jewish pseudepigrapha of the Life of Adam and Eve dating to the first century AD and the Greek, Latin, and Ethiopic versions from the third to the fifth century AD contain various descriptions about the penances that Adam and Eve inflicted upon themselves after their expulsion from Eden. See https://pseudepigrapha.org/docs/intro/AdamEve (accessed on 26 August 2024).

18. Heschel’s contention for the divine pathos is no trivial matter given the Christian historical perspective that God is impassible (Heschel 1962, p. 284).

Footnotes

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Table

Table 1

Scribal sense divisions in Genesis 1:1–5:2.

First Story	Second Story	Third Story
Gen 1:5	Gen 2:4–3:15	Gen 3:22–24
P	O	O
Gen 1:8	Gen 3:16	Gen 4:1–26
P	O	P
Gen 1:13	Gen 3:17–3:21	Gen 5:2
P	P	O
Gen 1:19
P
Gen 1:23
P
Gen 1:31
P
Gen 2:3
P

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