44. Is Childbirth Pain a Punishment from God? A Biblical Deep Dive into Genesis

In this episode, I'm diving deep into one of the most misunderstood passages in all of Scripture — Genesis 3 — and tackling a question that so many Christian mamas have carried in secret: is childbirth pain actually God's punishment for Eve's sin?

This is a topic I've been wanting to bring to this podcast for a long time, because the way we answer it shapes everything — how we feel about our bodies, how we prepare for birth, and how we understand God's heart toward us as mothers. If you've ever felt like your pain in labor was somehow your fault, or wondered whether trusting God means just accepting suffering, this episode is going to bring you so much freedom.

Whether you're in your first trimester just starting to think about birth, deep in preparation and wrestling with fear, or somewhere in postpartum still processing your experience — this episode is full of truth, hope, and encouragement for wherever you are.

In this episode, I share:

📖 What Genesis 3 actually says — and what it doesn't — about women, pain, and the fall

🌿 The Hebrew meaning behind "I will greatly multiply your pain" and why it changes everything

💛 Why your birth experience is not a measure of your faith or your relationship with God

✝️ The very first gospel promise spoken in Scripture — and why it was spoken before anything else

👶 How Genesis 3 is ultimately a story of redemption, not condemnation, for you as a mama

Scripture Shared:

 "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. To the woman he said, 'I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.'" — Genesis 3:15–16 (ESV) 

Mentioned in this episode:

✨ Christian Mama Birth Prep Library - Free birth prep tools, worship playlists & more

💕 Work with Me 1:1 – Virtual Doula Support & Schedule a Private Coaching Call

✝️ Online Christian Childbirth Education - Explore my complete birth preparation self-paced course

📞 Free 15-Minute Discovery Call: Schedule your no-obligation consultation with me today! I would LOVE to connect with you.

🎴 NEW Christian Birth Affirmation Cards: You can now purchase them here

If this episode encouraged you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend.

Let's keep choosing faith over fear, one decision at a time. Go here for the full blog post, show notes, and all resources mentioned

Transcript

Natalie Portman 0:45

Hey there, mama, and welcome back to the podcast. I'm really glad you're here today. This episode is one that I've been waiting to share on this podcast for a long time, and it's something I think so many of us have heard or wondered about, even if we've never said it out loud, and that is that childbirth is painful because Eve sinned and that labor pain is a curse and women suffer in birth because God is punishing us. Maybe you've wondered, is that actually what the Bible says? Or maybe you felt this weird tension between that idea and the God that you know, a God that's loving and kind and good. So today we're going back to Genesis three. We're going to look at what it actually says and what it doesn't say. And I think you might be surprised because here's the thing, Genesis three does tell us about a life that is broken in this world, but that's not the point of that chapter, and the point of it is redemption. So genesis three happens right after the fall. Adam and Eve have just eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And with that, sin enters the world and this chapter isn't God's showing up angry, inventing punishments on the spot. It's God stepping into the mess and naming what life is going to look like in a world that is broken by sin. So relationships, they're going to be harder, work is going to be harder. Creation itself is groaning under the weight of all of this. And God speaks to the serpent, to the woman and to the man, and he doesn't speak to them all in the same way. there's a word, a Hebrew word for curse, and it's a roar. And you know how many times that word shows up in this whole chapter? Only twice. God curses the serpent and he curses the ground. That's it. He does not curse women. He doesn't curse her body or her womb or her motherhood. He speaks to her. Yes, but he doesn't speak against her. And I think we just need to sit with that for a moment because so much of what we've been taught has made it sound like women were cursed through child. But that is not what scripture says. Genesis three 16 is usually translated something like, and I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth. And when we dig into the Hebrew, there's so much more going on there. So first I will greatly multiply. That does not mean God is adding something brand new. It means he's intensifying something, making it heavier. So he's not saying, I'm creating pain where there wasn't any before. He's saying it's going to be harder. Now the Hebrew word for pain at savon. It doesn't mean physical pain. It means toil, sorrow, labor, deep effort, you know? And that's meaning emotionally, physically, all of it. It is actually the same word used later when God talks about Adam toiling in the ground. And the word for childbearing, it doesn't just mean labor and delivery of a child. That's talking about the whole journey, conception, pregnancy, birth, raising the child, all of it. So what God is really saying here is that. In this broken world, the work of bringing forth life and nurturing it, this sacred, beautiful work of being a mother is going to involve so much toil. And we know that that's true for some women. Even conceiving is hard, waiting for months, years, and then still wrestling with miscarriage, hoping and grieving at the same time. That's toil. Before you're even pregnant. And then pregnancy itself, experiencing nausea, deep, deep exhaustion, wondering if your baby is okay, carrying the weight of the emotional and physical pain that goes with being pregnant. And then there's the birth itself, even when it's beautiful and empowering. Your body is going through something massive and you're laboring in every sense of the word. And then you have postpartum sleepless nights figuring out how to feed your baby. Your body is recovering hormones, and the identity shift of becoming a mom. That's so much. And then there's the rest of the motherhood journey daily laying down yourself, worrying about your children, making hard decisions, and then the heartbreak when they are hurting, that's the multiplied toil that God was talking about. Not as a punishment, but just as a reality of living in a world that is broken. And here's something that I really want you to hear. This has nothing to do with how much faith you have. There are women who do not know Jesus. Who have never surrendered their lives to him, who have completely painless births. Women who describe labor as just pressure, not pain, and then they breathe their baby out, who cannot believe how manageable it was. And then there are women who are deeply faithful, who love the Lord and trust him and know him, who experienced really intense pain in childbirth, and so the level of pain you experience in your motherhood journey is not a measure of your faith, and it's certainly not a report card of your relationship with God and is also not punishment for something you did wrong or a reward for doing something right. Pain and childbirth is a part of living in a fallen world. But it's not universal. It's not the same for everyone, and it's definitely not about how spiritual you are. What matters is knowing God, who's with you in whatever your birth unfolds so now I want us to look at the second half of verse 16 and another kind of gray, misunderstood verse. And it says, your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. And we need to be really careful here because this verse is not telling us how marriage should work. It's describing what's going to be broken about marriage in our fallen world. The word for desire here is and it shows up again. In Genesis four where God warns Cain that sins desire is for him, but he needs to rule over it. So it isn't this romantic longing. It's more like an urge to control and to dominate. What God is describing is the power struggle that's about to enter marriage before sin. Adam and Eve were partners, co rulers and image bearers working together. But sin fractured that. So now there's going to be a push pull, a desire to control, and a tendency to dominate. And I want to be really clear. This is not God's design. This is not what he wants for marriage. This is him saying, here's what's going to happen. Now, if you felt that tension in your marriage, the struggle to control the feeling of not being heard or having to fight for your voice. You're not experiencing something God prescribes, you're experiencing the brokenness. Genesis three describes the gospel, doesn't reinforce that the gospel redeems it, and in Jesus marriage is being restored to what it was always meant to be. So here's the thing about Genesis three. It's descriptive, not prescriptive. God isn't commanding women to suffer. He's acknowledging what life is going to cost now that sin is in the world. And this matters so much for how we think about birth because if childbirth pain were a curse, then getting relief from it would be rebellion but scripture never says that god is not glorified by women suffering unnecessarily. He's glorified by our trust in him and our nearness to him in hard times. So all throughout scripture, God meets women in childbirth. He opens wombs. He strengthens laboring mothers. He shows up in those vulnerable moments. And pain is something God redeems, not something he demands. But now I want to zoom out a bit because we cannot miss the forest through the trees. What Genesis three is actually all about. And yes, this chapter certainly describes consequences. It's naming the brokenness. But before God says any of that. Before he even speaks to Adam and Eve, he speaks to the serpent. And in Genesis three 15, he makes a promise, the first gospel promise ever spoken, and it says, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring, he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. This is called the Proto Evangelism, the first gospel before all this hard stuff is described, hope is spoken before God names the weight of life In a broken world, he promises redemption, and that just tells you everything about his heart. So when God says there's going to be enmity between the woman and the serpent, he's setting something up. And the immediate sense he's talking to Eve and to all women after her that there's going to be an ongoing spiritual battle between Satan and humanity, especially around bringing forth life. And this tracks, I mean, how many times in scripture does the enemy try to destroy the line that leads to Jesus? The slaughter of baby boys in Egypt. Herod killing infants in Bethlehem. The constant attacks on God's people, on mothers and on children. But this promise is pointing to something even more specific. One particular woman, ultimately Mary, who would bear the seed, who crushes the serpent's head, one woman would give birth to the redeemer, Jesus. And here's what's beautiful. All of us who follow Christ, we participate in this promise. We're not passive victims. God has placed enmity or active oppression between us and Satan. We stand in that gap. We bring forth life. We nurture it. We pray over our children, and we fight for them spiritually. The serpent might bruise our heels. There will be wounds, there will be pain, but he can't crush us because the one we follow already crushed his head. The word offspring in this verse is singular in Hebrew, and then it gets very, very specific. It says he will crush the serpents head, not they, not humanity. He Jesus. So from the very beginning, scripture is pointing to one redeemer. Our savior who would come through, a woman who would be wounded, yes, but not defeated, who would crush the enemy completely. The serpent bruises his heel, but he crushes the serpent's head. So you know, this should ring a lot of bells about Jesus dying on the cross, but then that death on the cross, meaning ultimate victory over sin and death. And that's not an equal fight. That is Jesus winning with total victory. So this is the lens. We need to read the rest of Genesis three through. Yes. Again, sin brings the consequences. Life is hard. Being a mother is hard, but redemption is already on the way. Genesis three does not teach that women are saved through motherhood either. So our salvation is not coming through our bodies or our experience, or even our role as a mom. Motherhood is certainly meaningful and birth is sacred, but that is not what saves us, and it's not our truest and our ultimate identity either. Only Jesus is we don't prepare for birth to redeem ourselves, and we don't endure pain to prove our faith. Our hope is in Christ the promised seed, the one who came to undo what sin destroyed. and when we see that Genesis three is ultimately about Jesus, about redemption, not condemnation, everything else makes sense. We can be honest about the hard parts of life without letting them define us. We can acknowledge the toil without being crushed by it. We can walk through hard things knowing they're not punishment. There's something our savior is already redeeming, and so now I would love to just pray for you as we kind of soak all of that in Jesus. I, I thank you that you do not leave us without hope. I thank you that even in the moment sin entered the world, you were speaking redemption. Thank you, God, for sending Jesus the promised seed who would crush the enemy and make a way for us. And I just pray, Lord, for the mama who's listening right now, if she's believed that suffering is her punishment, would you just gently release her from that lie? If fear has taken root, I pray that you would replace it with truth and with peace. I pray that you would remind her that her worth isn't about how her birth goes or how well she mothers, or how much she performs, but that her worth is in you and Christ alone. I pray, Lord, that you would bless her body. I pray that you would strengthen her in her pregnancy, during her birth and in that postpartum time. I pray that you would meet her in the toil, not with condemnation, but with your presence. I pray that you would help her to trust you more. Not because everything will be easy, but because redemption is already done and we have victory in all things because of you. Lord, I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen. So sweet. Mama, if this has stirred something in you, if you're wanting to prepare for birth from a place of faith instead of fear, I would love to invite you to take my online childbirth education course. Inside this class, I go over what the Bible actually says about birth breastfeeding and postpartum, and we talk about theology and physiology and how they work together. This episode is really just the start and the course is really where we can walk this out a little bit more. And if you're interested in taking that, visit the link in the show notes. And I just want you to remember, if you take away nothing else from today's episode, I pray that you remember this. You were not cursed, you were not abandoned, you were loved so much that the son of God came down from heaven to redeem you.