“I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children"
Is conception tied to sorrow or is conception merely multiplied? Example:
I will greatly multiply your sorrow [but]
I will multiply your conception
In pain you shall bring forth children
Would the multiplication of conception be redemptive to the sorrow? Because conception and bringing forth children are two separate acts. One is pregnancy; one is full-term labor.
John 16:21-22 A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.
So, the multiplication of children would be a joyful thing, even if labor is awful.
See, I'm just not convinced at the traditional idea that Eve's punishment was painful labor, and that without sin there would be no labor pains at all. I don't see how a woman can not have labor pains because, well. . .biology. A lot of contractions and dilations are going on to give birth to an 8 or 9lb baby. I also believe the fall was necessary or at least foreseen, and so no matter what, childbirth would have been painful, regardless of Eve being deceived and falling into transgression.
God states "I" claiming He will do a specific thing: "I will multiply your sorrow"; "I will multiple your conception"; but I does not seem to be connected to painful labor: this reads more like a statement. It doesn't read, "I will give you painful labor" it reads more like a heads up, childbirth is going to hurt. Additionally, though I didn't quote it I is not connected with man ruling over woman: this also reads like a statement. Seems to me that painful childbirth and the male-female hierarchy were already formerly established and are natural law, not punishments.
Is the only real punishment (or consequence) here the fact that Eve now has multiplied sorrow?
John 16:22 Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.
Jesus Christ is the 2nd Adam and the Church is, by implication therefore, the 2nd Eve. Before Christ's crucifixion He tells His disciples (the first-fruits of the church) that they have sorrow, and why, because Christ was departing the world to go to the Father.
Likewise we see, not so much God departing Eve, but Eve departing God and being cast from Eden. A literary-poetic juxtaposition, so to speak. Either way, Eve was without God in the world, and the Church is waiting for Christ to return and because He is not in the world and we are not Eden, we have sorrow.
So if God actively multiplied sorrow, the only thing God actively did in Genesis 3 was cast them from Eden and cut them off from God. You now have sorrow, BUT I will see you again
God further then multiples Eve's conception: her ability to bear children and it is by Woman that Christ would come. Eve was cast from Eden, but through childbearing and the promise of a savior, God is saying, You will see me again.
So again I ask, is the only punishment the multiplication of sorrow by being in the world not by conception; childbirth; or martial hierarchy, just simply, not being in Eden.