The following is an edited version of the lecture given on September 3rd 2006 in the series entitled "In the Beginning."   Also for Adam and his wife the LORD God made tunics of skin, and clothed them.    (Genesis 3:21)     To the Woman He SaidTo the woman He said: "I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." Then to Adam He said, "Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat of it': cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return." And Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. Also for Adam and his wife the LORD God made tunics of skin, and clothed them. Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever" - therefore the LORD God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.  (Genesis 3:16-24)   Genesis chapter 3 is a passage that we have read many times. It usually comes up whenever we talk about the matter of sin. In verse 16 it says, "To the woman He said," and in verse 15, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed." This woman in Genesis chapter 3 would appear to be Eve. Then, if we consider that later it says, "To the woman He said: I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children," in a broader sense, this seems to be referring to women in general. Also, if we consider this verse 15 in relation to Jesus, this woman could be a reference to Mary, who gave birth to Jesus. Of course, when it talks here about the Seed of the woman, it means Jesus Christ, whose birth was unconnected to any physical relationship between a man and a woman. As I have said before, however, if you read the books of Jeremiah and Hosea, you can see that when it talks there about the seed of woman, this woman is Israel.The Bible tells us that God predestined the Church before He created this world (See Ephesians 1:4-5). At that time, the nation of Israel had not even been predestined. Israel was predestined as Adam was driven out of the Garden of Eden after he sinned, and this is a matter related to this earth. When God said to the serpent that He would put enmity between the seed of the serpent and the Seed of the woman, His words also contained prophetic significance in regard to a particular historical nation that would arise in the future.  From passages such as Jeremiah chapters 3 and 31, we can see that it is the Jews that were God's partner in love in the Old Testament. In New Testament times, however, God brought His Son into the world through the body of a woman, and through that Son's death on the cross, the Church -His partner in love- came into being. And this is the Church that God had planned originally, and it is the principle that the apostle Paul proclaimed through the New Testament. Jesus Himself said, "But many who are first will be last, and the last first" (Matthew 19:30). In the light of these words, when we look at the relationships between brothers in the Old Testament, beginning with Cain and Abel, and consider how, in the book of Esther, Queen Vashti was dethroned and Esther appeared as the new queen, and when we consider many other stories in the Bible, we can see that the Jews, who had the role of God's wife, made the mistake of crucifying Jesus, and as a result, the Church became the partner of Jesus Christ who is the Son of God, and it receives the glorious position of becoming part of the body of Christ. We find this within many stories in the Old Testament.So when we come across this reference to a woman here in Genesis chapter 3, rather than seeing it as a reference to Mary or Eve, we will find it helpful to our understanding of the Bible, if we see it as a reference to Israel - the woman who appears in the Old Testament as the adulterous woman who abandons her husband.   To the woman He said: "I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."  (Genesis 3:16)   Here we have God's words of warning to Eve -and to women in general- about the pain she would have to endure when giving birth to her children. Here also the relationship between husband and wife is revealed in the words, "Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." We are able to understand this more deeply when we read the letter to the Ephesians.   The Curse that Adam Received Having Listened to the Words of His WifeThen to Adam He said, "Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat of it': cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life."  (Genesis 3:17)Here God pointed out Adam's mistake. God said, "Because you have heeded the voice of your wife." First, Adam acted unwisely in listening to the voice of his wife, and as a result he acted unwisely by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. "The LORD God commanded the man, saying, 'Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.'" (Genesis 2:16-17) Even though God had said this to Adam, Adam listened to the words of the woman and ate the forbidden fruit. He ignored the words that God had spoken, and he listened to the words of the woman. As a result, God said, "Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life." God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils. Then God commanded the man to "fill the earth and subdue it" (Genesis 1:28). Adam received the authority to subdue the earth and rule over it. Even so, Adam disobeyed God's word, and as a result, he was cursed along with the ground over wh

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