3:16 multiply thy sorrow. Had Eve not sinned, the experience of childbirth would have been easy and pleasant, like every other experience in the perfect world God had made. The Curse, however, fell in a peculiar way on Eve and her daughters, and the pain and sorrow of conception and birth would be greatly multiplied.
Nevertheless, the bearing of children, especially by a woman who loves God and seeks to obey Him, is a time of blessing and rejoicing even though accompanied by a time of suffering (John 16:21). In the experience of giving birth, every woman experiences by proxy, as it were, the privilege granted Mary when she became the mother of the promised Seed. Furthermore, she even becomes a type of Christ, who “shall see His seed...He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied” (Isaiah 53:10-11). The suffering is submerged in the rejoicing, and this in itself goes far toward mitigating the physical pain (note I Timothy 2:15).
3:16 rule over thee. She who had acted independently of her husband in her desire for the forbidden fruit must henceforth exercise her desires through her husband, and he would be ruler in the family. This prophecy has been fulfilled throughout history, in every time and nation.
To the woman who knows God, however, especially in the full light of Christianity, her role of submission to God and to her husband becomes her means of greatest fulfillment and happiness. The “rule” of a true Christian husband is not one of harshness and subjugation, but one of loving companionship and caring responsibility (Colossians 3:18-21; Ephesians 5:22-33; I Peter 3:1-7; etc.).
3:17 unto Adam. The full force of the Curse fell on Adam, as the responsible head of the human race, and on all his dominion. Instead of believing God’s Word, Adam had “hearkened to the voice of his wife,” and she had been beguiled by the voice of the serpent. It is always a fatal mistake to allow the words of any creature to take precedence over the Word of God.
3:17 cursed is the ground. The “ground” is the same word as “earth.” The very elements of matter, out of which all things had been made, were included in the Curse, so that the “whole creation” (Romans 8:22) was brought under bondage to a universal principle of “corruption” (literally “decay”–Romans 8:21). That is, all things had been built up by God from the basic elements of matter (“the dust of the earth”), but now they would all begin to decay back to the dust again. The curse evidently applies to the entire physical cosmos, as well as to the planet Earth, though it is possible that the decay principle operating in the stars and the other planets may relate also to the prior sin of the angelic “host of heaven.”
3:17 for thy sake. The curse was not only a punishment for man’s disobedience but also a provision for man’s good, forcing him to recognize the seriousness of his sin, to realize the folly of trusting anyone but his Creator, and his inability to save himself from destruction. This would encourage him to a state of true repentance toward God and to trust in God to save him. Analogously, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is the modern scientific statement of this decay principle (see notes on Genesis 1:1), though pointing toward an ultimate death of the universe, at the same time points back to a primeval creation and therefore compels men to look toward the Creator as its only possible Savior.