Texts in Conversation
Genesis 3 describes pain in childbirth, and later Jewish traditions include the struggles of raising children. The Aramaic translation in Targum Onkelos takes a middle view, keeping the focus on childbirth yet adds an additional sense of difficulty.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Genesis 3:16
Hebrew Bible
15 And I will put hostility between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” 16 To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your labor pains; with pain you will give birth to children. You will want to control your husband, but he will dominate you.” 17 But to Adam he said, “Because you obeyed the voice of52 your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ the ground is cursed because of you; in painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Onkelos Genesis 3:16
Targum
15 And I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your son and her son. He will remember what you did to him from the beginning, and you shall watch for him at the end. 16 And to the woman He said, I will greatly increase your sorrows and your pains. You shall give birth to children in sorrow; and your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. 17 And to Adam He said, Because you have obeyed the word of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat of it, the ground is cursed because of you. You shall eat from it through hard work all the days of your life.
Date: 50–500 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
Eruvin 100b
Babylonian Talmud
Rabbinic
Rav Yitzḥak bar Avdimi proceeds to explain this verse. “To the woman He said: I will greatly multiply [harba arbe]”; these are the two drops of blood unique to a woman, which cause her suffering, one the blood of menstruation and the other one the blood of virginity. “Your pain”; this is the pain of raising children. “And your travail”; this is the pain of pregnancy. “In sorrow you shall bring forth children”; in accordance with its plain meaning, i.e., the pain of childbirth.
Date: 450–550 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Your pain ... this is the pain resulting from the difficulty in raising children (Rashi, based on the Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 100b), or during the first marital intercourse (ibn Ezra), or from menstruation (Sforno) ..."
Israel Drazin and Stanley M. Wagner, Onkelos on the Torah, Genesis: Understanding the Bible Text (Jerusalem: Gefen, 2006), 18.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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