What Do You Think About Genesis 3:16?

Jay sends me a fb message asking,

... on Genesis 3:16. What are your thoughts on this verse? תּשׁוּקה αποστροφη desire, recourse, return ????

My reply:

...on G3:16 ... the LXX is fascinating with its choice of ἀποστροφή.  I'd compare with the choice in the nearby G4:7 (and why not ἐπιστροφὴ, as in Song of Songs 7:10)? And there's what Oedipus says to his sons as he lays dying, preparing for Hades (in Oedipus the King by Sophocles): "Ὦ παῖδες, ἥκει τῷδ’ ἐπ’ ἀνδρὶ θέσφατος βίου τελευτή, κοὐκέτ’ ἔστ’ ἀποστροφή." Are the translating Jews saying something here in G3:16? I'd say they're signaling "Eve's" or "Life's" desire ( תּשׁוּקה ) as "away from" rather than "towards" the mortal, human man? In "The Women's Bible," Lillie Devereux Blake stresses "Then follows what has been called the curse. Is it not rather a prediction?... It is a pity that all versions of the Bible do not give this word ["Life" in G3:20] instead of the Hebrew Eve. She was Life, the eternal mother, the first representative of the more valuable and important half of the human race." So, the LXX: Ζωή. The Greek translation is certainly playing with, leaving open, and opening up the meanings of, the Hebrew. What are your thoughts?

Jay:

Thanks for your comments. You seem to have something more than I do. I really am puzzled. There seems something so rich here. What is happening in this curse and what is to be the eventual solution? Victor Hamilton in his commentary suggests that the LXX translators got it wrong. I don't know, but surely they had a reason. A reason to translate תּשׁוּקה as αποστροφη in 3:16 and 4:7 but as ἐπιστροφὴ in Song of Song as you said. And I too cannot understand why the other translators are not translating חוּה Eve as the Jewish translators did Ζωή. I learned the name Eve as a boy and it meant nothing to me until the first time I read her name in the LXX. Wow, what a difference, after the curse the she-man is named by the now curse man, Life. What hope after death. But what is the relationship of the αποστροφη in 3:16 and 4:7 Then rule in 3:16 משׁל κυριεύσει but in 4:7 αρξεις I really don't know.

Me:

What great questions and wonderful uncertainties here. I'd love to ask Sylvie Honigman (a wonderful LXX historian at Tel Aviv University), who makes the claim that to its earliest Jewish readers, the Septuagint was “at least as sacred as the Hebrew original.” And I believe Naomi Seidman (Koret Professor of Jewish Culture and Director of the Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies at Graduate Theological Union, and a translation theorist) could speculate on how the Talmud version of the LXX's history might offer some ideas on what the Septuagint translators were up to (if *seeming* to get it wrong). Would you mind if I posted our fb conversation here as a blogpost (at /wombmansbible.blogspot.com/) to see if anyone else has thoughts?

Jay:

Yes, you may post it. Looking forward to seeing what others might add.

So now it's your turn.  What can you add to our conversation?  What do you think about Genesis 3:16 (the writer's and translators' choices)?

Julia E. Smith's (outsider) translating

Here's some translating by Julia E. Smith:

PSALM CXXXI

SONG of ascensions to David. O Jehovah, my heart was not lifted up, and mine eyes were not exalted, and I went not in great things, and in wonders above me.
2 If I did not place and rest my soul as a child weaned of his mother: my soul as a weaned child.
3 Israel shall hope for Jehovah from now and even to forever.

She is translating all alone - not welcome on any Bible translation team of men of the late 19th century. Those men revising the KJV (without a woman or a Jew on their teams of American and British experts) differently-rendered the Hebrew psalm this way:

1 A Song of Ascents; of David. LORD, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty; neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too wonderful for me.
2 Surely I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with his mother, my soul is with me like a weaned child.
3 O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time forth and for evermore.

What fascinates me is how the Smith translating and the Revised Version compare with the Jews' own translating from their Hebrew into their Hellene back in Egypt, in Alexandria, that namesake city of Alexander the Great (student of Aristotle) so far from Jerusalem. Here's that Jewish-Hellene translation that defies Greek imperialism:

1 ᾠδὴ τῶν ἀναβαθμῶν τῷ Δαυιδ κύριε οὐχ ὑψώθη μου ἡ καρδία οὐδὲ ἐμετεωρίσθησαν οἱ ὀφθαλμοί μου οὐδὲ ἐπορεύθην ἐν μεγάλοις οὐδὲ ἐν θαυμασίοις ὑπὲρ ἐμέ
2 εἰ μὴ ἐταπεινοφρόνουν ἀλλὰ ὕψωσα τὴν ψυχήν μου ὡς τὸ ἀπογεγαλακτισμένον ἐπὶ τὴν μητέρα αὐτοῦ ὡς ἀνταπόδοσις ἐπὶ τὴν ψυχήν μου
3 ἐλπισάτω Ισραηλ ἐπὶ τὸν κύριον ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν καὶ ἕως τοῦ αἰῶνος

While there might be some dispute whether the Hebrew that the Jews in Alexandria were translating from and the Hebrew that the nineteenth century Brits and Americans were translating from was the same, there can be no argument over something else.

Notice how the Septuagint translators and Smith start verse 2 with the conditional. She says, "If I did not..."; and they say "εἰ μὴ."

Notice how Smith's and the outsider-Jews' own translation is a big departure from most other translations, including the Revised Version translation.

What does a woman know that most men don't? What do Jews far from home under a king in Egypt no less see in a Psalm of David and of his mother that other and otherwise "independent" men won't or can't?

Don't we get how central the relationship of a psalmist, as a baby, to his mother must be?