Charles Ellicott Commentary Genesis 3:16

"Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy conception; in pain thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." — Genesis 3:16 (ASV)

Unto the woman he said. —The woman is not cursed as the serpent was, but punished as next in guilt; and the retribution is twofold. First, God greatly multiplies “her sorrow and her conception,” that is, her sorrow generally, but especially in connection with pregnancy, when with anguish and peril of life she wins the joy of bringing a man into the world. But also, “thy desire shall be to thy husband.” In the sin, she had been the prime actor, and the man had yielded her too ready an obedience.

Henceforth, she was to live in subjection to him; yet not unhappy, because her inferiority was to be tempered by a natural longing for the married state and by love towards her husband.

—Among the pagans, the punishment was made very bitter by the degradation to which woman was reduced. Among the Jews, the wife, though she never sank so low, was nevertheless purchased from her father, was liable to divorce at the husband’s will, and was treated as in all respects his inferior. In Christ, as St. Paul teaches, the whole penalty has been abrogated (Galatians 3:28), and the Christian woman is no more inferior to the man than is the Gentile to the Jew, or the slave to the free.