TRADITION VS SCHOLARSHIP
The answer
Agree. That is the note on Genesis 3:16-19 in The New Oxford Annotated Bible, a study Bible. The word translated pain, the note says, may refer to the woman's toil of endless pregnancies, just as the man is condemned to endless toil in Genesis 3:17-19. The same note adds that the speech to the woman has no accusation and no word for curse. Pain in childbirth stays the usual reading, and the one the NRSVue translation prints.
Why it’s interesting
Toil is the word the man's speech already uses: "in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life" (Genesis 3:17). Read the note's way, the woman and the man are handed the same hardship, in different places. The note says may, and the NRSVue translators kept pain, so the two readings sit side by side.
Genuinely debated
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