Ruling Over Sin Instead of Ruling Over the Neighbor

“In a June 2021 article entitled, “Her Desire Will be For Her Husband”: What Genesis 3:16 Means for Marriage, Jason DeRouchie writes, “the woman’s ‘desire against’ her husband means that, in the cursed world, the wife will seek to overpower and subvert her husband’s God-given authority … when a wife attacks a husband’s God-given headship, he should still ‘rule over’ his wife in appropriately gentle, God-honoring ways.” De Rouchie is one of many complementarian scholars, authors and pastors who have adopted this view of the woman’s desire and the man’s rule in Genesis 3:16. In his article, De Rouchie fails to cite a certain woman by the name of Susan Foh, but he presents a hermeneutical argument that is almost a point-for-point match with an academic paper written by Foh, which appeared in the Westminster Theological Journal in 1974.”