The First Three Promises

The second word from God concerning the future is also an instruction, followed by a warning.  "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;  but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will certainly die."  The instruction:  Eat from all but this particular tree.  The warning, almost sounding like a "promise":  It is likely that you will eat of this tree even though I have told you not to, and in that case, you will die.    In the open view of God, there actually is room for this not to happen - this is not a rock solid foretelling of the future, and thus is not, in my mind, a promise.  It did, indeed, happen, but might not have if humanity had made a different choice.

The first real promise, in my definition of promises from God being those things that he says he will do:  "It is not good for the man to be alone.  I will make a helper suitable for him." (Genesis 2:18) In my mind, this is God's first promise to humanity.  The creation of the woman was God's fulfillment of this promise.  I am drawn to this idea of my identity as a woman being a fulfillment of God's first promise.

God's next words speaking to the future are to the serpent after the fall.  He will crawl on his belly and eat dust. The woman's offspring will crush the serpent's head and the serpent will strike the offspring's heel.   The second promise is to the serpent:  "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers." (Genesis 3:15)

And the third is to the woman:  "I will make your pains in childbearing very severe." (Genesis 3:16)  It disturbs me that this comes out of God's mouth in the first person.  Curiously, even though the pain I experienced with an abrupted placenta is supposedly more severe than normal labor - I don't actually remember much of the pain itself.  I remember being there. I remember the ride to the hospital as the pace of the contractions quickened from once every hour to once every five minutes.  I remember being offered a wheel chair and somehow ending up in it.  I remember the specific contents of my dinner from the night before as the only meal I lost during the entire pregnancy.  I do remember refusing to lie down and the excrutiating pain that would shoot through my lower back at any attempt.  I remember the gurney ride, in my seated position, to the operating room - and the cold iodine wash on my abdomen as I was finally pushed to a horizontal position.  Finally, I remember the angelic face of the anesthesiologist as everything around me faded to white.  I was pretty sure I was going to die - I was convulsing, but I don't really remember seeing my body shake or anything, just a prayer that God would care for my husband and my babies in my absence.

Then I remember waking with a very sore throat (I had been intubated to keep me breathing through the process) and the looming question as my hand instinctively searched - touching the deflated shell of a womb that at last remembrance housed my two children in a swell that resembled the belly of a whale . . . Where were my babies? This is where my own "childbearing" (the process of giving birth)  story ends and the story of child rearing begins.

In my experience, the third promise has been fulfilled.  What about the first two?  There is something very broken inside of me.  It would seem that I have not proved to be a suitable helper.  And yet, that desire for a husband remains . . . Did Eve prove to be a suitable helper?  Well, she successfully helped Adam step right out of God's will . . . I actually really want to believe that God keeps his promises - that we, as women, are what God promised we would be.  That we are suitable to the partnership of caring for creation. I want to believe that the feminine presence is what completes the image of God in humanity - for man's aloneness is the first thing God proclaimed to be "not good".

And as for the second promise, the enmity between the woman and the serpent - that which would tempt us away from all that God created us to be?  Eve fell very quickly into this temptation.  Perhaps that is what makes us women so suitably fierce in our desire to protect and nuture that which God has brought forth from our womb.  It was the woman who looked deepest into the eyes of the serpent - who communed with the darkness - and knew things that God never wanted us to know.  So we are charged with opposing the dark forces.  Tolkien taps into this idea of enmity in his portrayal of Eowyn in Return of the King.  It was a woman who was best suited to oppose the dark evil of the witch-king. 

So I have successfully talked myself into believing that God has kept his first three promises:

√ the woman as a suitable helper to man
√ enmity between the woman and the serpent
√ severe pain in child bearing

As for the curse given to the man (painful toil) . . . it was not worded as a promise in the first person from God.  I find this interesting but as a daughter of Eve I will leave further processing on this point to the sons of Adam.