Genesis 3 · a question people ask
What does "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you" mean?
Protestants read these words as part of what changes after the first sin; chapter 2 has nothing like them. The Hebrew word for desire occurs only three times in the Hebrew Bible, which is why readings differ.
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
A desire to control
The same Hebrew wording (desire "for" someone, and "rule over") comes back in 4:7, where sin crouches at the door: "Its desire is for you, but you are to rule over it." On this reading, desire in both places means wanting to master, and marriage becomes a struggle for control.
Genesis 3:16 · Genesis 4:7
A longing
Brown-Driver-Briggs gives "longing", and the Song of Solomon uses the word for love: "His desire is toward me." On this reading, the woman will still long for her husband, even though the relationship is now marked by his ruling over her.
Genesis 3:16 · Song of Solomon 7:10
The verses
“To the woman he said, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth. You will bear children in pain. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.””
“The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She will be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother, and will join with his wife, and they will be one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed.”