Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament(BDB) (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1968), 617.- The ESV margin gives “against” as an alternative for teshûqåh + ’elin Genesis
3:16 and 4:7. This seems to be the most accurate rendering. The preposition
’elcan take the meaning “against,” as is clear from the next verse, Gen. 4:8,
where “Cain rose up against (’el) his brother Abel, and killed him.” BDBgives
sense 4 for ’elas: “Where the motion or direction implied appears from the con-
text to be of a hostile character, ’el= against.”They cite Gen. 4:8 and several
other verses (40). - The only other occurrence of the word teshûqåh in the entire Hebrew Old
Testament is found in Song of Solomon 7:10 (verse 11 in Hebrew), “I am my
beloved’s, and his desireis for me.” There the word does not indicate a hostile
or aggressive desire, but the man’s sexual desire for his wife.
I had previously argued that a positive kind of “desire to conquer” could be
understood in Song of Solomon 7:10, whereby it indicated the man’s desire to
have a kind of influence over his beloved that is appropriate to initiating and
consummating the sexual relationship, an influence such that she would
receive and yield to his amorous advances. This sense would be represented by
the paraphrase, “His desire is to have me yield to him.”
However, I am now inclined to think that the word teshûqåh itself does not
signify anything so specific as “desire to conquer” but rather something more
general such as “urge, impulse.” (The word takes that sense in Mishnaic
Hebrew, as indicated by David Talley in the following footnote.) In that case,
Genesis 3:16 and 4:7 have the sense “desire, urge, impulse against”and Song of
Solomon 7:10 has the sense “desire, urge, impulse for.”This seems to me to fit
better with the context of Song of Solomon 7:10.
The difference in meaning may also be signaled by the different construc-
tions. The Genesis and Song of Solomon examples are not exactly parallel lin-
guistically, because a different preposition follows the verb in Song of Solomon
and therefore the sense may be somewhat different. In Song of Solomon 7:11,
teshûqåh is followed by ‘al,but it is followed by ’elin Genesis 3:16 and 4:7.
(The preposition ‘alis misprinted as ’elin Song of Solomon 7:11 as cited in
BDB,1003. BDBapparently does this because they follow the Biblia Hebraica
Stuttgartensiaeditors [1334] who in the margin suggest changing the Hebrew
text to ’el,but this is mere conjecture with no manuscript support. The LXX
confirms the difference, translating with prosfor ’el in Gen. 3:16 and 4:7 but
with epifor ‘alin Song of Solomon 7:11, which is what we would expect with
a very literal translation.)
In any case, while the sense in Song of Solomon 7:10 (11) is different, both
the context and the construction are different, and this example is removed in
time and authorship from Genesis 3:16 and must be given lower importance
in understanding the meaning of the word in Genesis. Surely the sense cannot
be “sexual desire” in Gen. 4:7, and it seems very unlikely in the context of Gen.
3:16 as well. - The understanding of Genesis 3:16 as a hostile desire, or even a desire to rule
82 BUILDINGSTRONGFAMILIES