Benjamin McGuire

In LDS theology, Joseph Fielding Smith's opinion has been superseded by the proclamation on the family: This is current LDS theology on the issue. Gender is viewed as an eternal trait, and cannot be lost in a post-mortal state. I also think that current LDS thought also leans away from the idea that some sort of biological process is the mechanism for creating spirit children. Finally, there is a historical dispute among LDS leaders over the issue of progression ending with the resurrection. As President J. Reuben Clark noted: In other words, we have leaders who have believed that Celestial glory may become available to all of God's children who inherit a kingdom of glory as they progress. You can see how these issues all work together. If progression remains open, then there is reason to believe that gender could not/should not be removed. Only if you believe that progression ends for some does it make sense that these characteristics might be lost.

I don't think so. The problem with this is that this itself is simply an arbitrary declaration. There is no way to tell the difference between something that is conditional (when the conditions are unknowable) and something that is arbitrary. This sort of definition could be used to justify just about anything - and it defeats the entire purpose of discussing something as objective. Anyone could make the claim (on this basis) that whatever they are doing is moral (for themselves) and immoral (for everyone else). So you can believe this - but it it a meaningless argument. This is just a bad example. There is a relatively easy way to determine the difference between planets that you can see with the naked eye and stars. Planets don't 'twinkle'. But that's neither here nor there. Not really, no. There is a much larger problem with the issue of using planets as an example. Whether an object in the night sky is a planet or a star has no real impact on our daily activities. Morality and ethics does. We can't see botulism on food. But if you had a suspicion that the food in front of you was infected with it, would you eat it? You are re-framing the problem in a way that avoids the issue. We can have absolute (objective) moralities. Kant created a system which describes such a thing. Jeremy Bentham, with his utilitarianism created what he called a Hedonic calculus to create an absolute moral system. The problem isn't about moral or ethical systems that claim to be absolute and work within a specific set of rules that are always consistent, it isn't with a relativistic moral code which recognizes that morality and ethics is inevitably situational. The problem is with an ethical and moral code which appears to be relativistict, but is claimed to be absolute - where the argument is that the rules are preset, and unchangeable, but also unknowable. I am arguing that this particular situation is really a subjective morality that is being called objective for reasons that have nothing to do with the morality or ethics itself. There is another issue here. If, as you suggest, "we don't know the conditions that make something moral" then we can never be certain that we are acting in a moral way. We may intend to be more, we may try to be moral, but if we succeed at acting in a moral fashion, it occurs purely by accident - because you don't know the rules you are playing by. Is there any difference between such a moral system and playing Calvinball? In Mormonism, there is an attempt to shore up that problem by making the claim that it is impossible for a prophet to lead us astray. And yet the evidence points to the contrary (priesthood ban, I'm a Mormon campaign, etc). I believe that Kant is wrong. I think that we have a moral obligation to protect others from harm that supercedes our moral obligation to always tell the truth. And anecdotes like this one (assuming that it's true) are the exception and not the rule. Clearly God did not protect the Jews from harm. Six million of them were killed. It is a more fascinating question to ask people what they would do if the person that was being hunted was their child (after all, we don't have the same sort of built in self-sacrifice mechanism for strangers as we do for our own children). In any case, these kinds of anecdotes are harmful to the argument not helpful. This is a separate issue. What is sin seems subjective (relativistic). A six year old who lies - it is not a sin (Moroni 8). I think the platitude is generally wrong. There is an old saying - 'if you eat a live frog every morning for breakfast, nothing worse will happen to you all day'. To which the response is: 'to you or the frog'? We have to first decide what morality is before we can decide which is easier - and even then, there are always exceptions. Bentham's utilitarianism argues that what is most ethical is that which brings the most happiness to the most people. But if you are one of the few that is left out, your happiness isn't considered. This conundrum has been explored in a lot of different media. But the two that I like most are the movie Minority Report, and the story by Ursula Le Guin: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. The reality is that the easiness of our life has nothing to do with either the reality of morality as subject or objective, or the perception of it. As compared with a morality which you can't ever understand and will never know the rules for it? It seems to me that in a way, the idea of a perceived absolute morality is easy because the only real requirement is to keep the rules of the day (and wait to see if they change tomorrow).

And I think that this is marvelous (even if my moral code is different in places). And this is my point about believing in a subjective morality. I think that in theory, the point of the gospel is to encourage us to develop our own personal moral compass (like this) and then to use it to mark a path that comes ever closer to divinity (even if that path is not a straight line). The message of the Tree in the Garden of Eden (and Lehi in 2 Nephi 2) is that we cannot become truly free (and truly moral) without a knowledge of good and evil - so subjective experience matters. But, and I think this is also important, if we are trying to emulate God, then God's morality matters a great deal. And, I would suggest, that perhaps when we read stories like the flood, we have stories where people have attributed bad things to God for which God was not responsible ... of course, this turns the narrative on its head, but given that there is no real evidence of the flood other than a literary tale that is based on earlier literary tales, I am not too worried about not believing in a historical flood either. At the same time, we have to be careful about our traditions of morality and their sources. Consider the cautionary tale in Mormonism of the priesthood ban. It is all a part of the same bag. The big discussion (and I could use all caps there) in the history of philosophical thought - and this includes America's found fathers, deals with the issue of the exchange of freedom for security. Just read Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. The constant debate historically has been over the question of what it means to be a natural man. Is the first man a tyrant or a peaceful individual looking for society? At least in our political philosophy, you cannot separate these two issues. I would argue that we are in a time period that is not significantly worse (or better) than most of history. We tend to romanticize the past. Opiate use is way up - but it's not because of pain relief of the sort you mentioned earlier. It because, since the late 1990s, we went through a period of time where we were shoving opiates into patients. Why? Because we had bad research that suggested that opiates were not addictive when given in a hospital setting. IN the 1960s, 80 percent of people who were addicted to opiates and using heroin were addicted because they started using heroin. Today, that number is almost zero. Most opiate addicts today became addicted through the use of prescription pain medications. We tend to ignore this while focusing on the cheap sources coming from foreign countries. We hit our peak (in the US) alcohol consumption in the 1830s. The amount of pure alcohol consumed annually per capita was astonishing. Benjamin Franklin wrote an essay describing the horrific deaths caused by drinking too much rum. Actually, it wasn't the rum that caused the horrific deaths - it was the fact that it was made in lead lined stills. Death by lead poisoning is something terrible to see. Of course, rum was made from raw materials imported from the British Empire. After the war of independence, Americans abandoned rum and started drinking whiskey. In large amounts. Good old Johnny Appleseed wasn't planting apples to eat - they were almost inedible by today's standards. But they made great booze. By those standards, most drinkers in America are complete lightweights. Society is much better. We have a more egalitarian relationship between the sexes. Child abuse is way down. Even with its flaws, our foster care system is much more humane than what we had in the past. We don't force children to work. We have safety rules in the work place. Life expectancy is up. Literacy is up. We could make a really long list of good things that we have. We tend to focus on all the bad things that we see - and yet, we haven't seen bad here. You should see what France was like during the French Revolution. I think that our perception of what God's laws are colors our view of what is going on today. I could argue that it isn't the drugs that are the problem. It's not the suicides (yes, our rate is currently high - 14.2 per 100,000 - but this is nowhere near the rates between 1930 and 1940 - 1932 saw suicide rates at over 22 per 100,000). Murder rates are way down from the 1970s, and the 1980s, and even the 1990s (but let's not forget the 1920s either). I will say that we are seeing a trend in thefts. But most of the thefts aren't your mugger (who carries cash anyways), its the internet guy who steals the savings from a cognitively impaired older person. There is a special place in Hell reserved for people like Jen Shah. So no, most of this bad stuff really isn't at record levels. But, the narrative that it is is really useful - it is this narrative that politicians use to convince people that all they need to be better protected is to give up a little more of their freedom.

The line between conditional and arbitrary is virtually non-existent. We get the argument, for example, that sexual intercourse is a sin when married - if the marriage isn't of an approved sort (same-sex marriage, unapproved polygamous marriage, polyandrous marriage, marriage between an adult and a child, marriage between a man and a non-human creature/object/whatever). And no, it isn't the conditions - without the act, there is arguably no immorality (under any circumstances). Part of all of this is the fact that the conditions are regularly moving goal posts. What I mean by that is that while we can delineate between types of marriage, and define which ones are sanctioned and which ones are not, the conditions themselves seem completely arbitrary. Why was polygamy okay during the Israelite time period, then not okay for the Nephites, then okay again for early Mormons, then not okay for later Mormons? What is the underlying condition that makes this non-arbitrary (if not predictable)? Some things are really clear - but they don't make good examples for us to use in a discussion about this sort of thing, because it isn't the stuff that everyone (at least for now) agrees on, but the areas where there is absolutely no clarity. This is a very interesting question (and I have given my two cents on it years ago). But, you have to be careful about the language that you use. What is murder? Nephi does kill a man who is passed out drunk, completely unable to defend himself ... when we get to the idea of "interpretation," when we get to dealing with "understanding," we are really already engaging in the subjective morality that everyone doesn't like. The fact that we can justify something by providing a context for it isn't a very strong argument for objective morality, it is a much stronger argument for subjective morality. To give a counter example, Kant offers a very objective morality (at least from a certain perspective). Following his categorical imperative, he would say that it is completely immoral to lie - even if you had Jews in the basement and Nazis at your front door asking about them. Your first moral obligation is to tell the truth, and that you then aren't held accountable for what happens afterwards. Kant's willingness to offer an objective morality seems extreme to many who, while claiming that they want or believe in an objective morality really believe in a subjective morality. This is it. I think that the end result of this position is that if we believe that the Gospel is true (and perhaps even if we don't), then true morality comes only as we search for it. One of the best philosophy courses I have ever taken, had, as part of its final project, a requirement that we create our own personal ethical manifesto. To be able to do this with understanding - and then to keep it current, to change it as our understanding improves - this is how we become moral individuals. And yes, it is completely subjective, and some people may have morality completely wrong. But, if we have rules that we believe are objective but allow for an infinite number of loopholes through special circumstances - that is at least as subjective, if not more so.

Yes, that is what I meant to say.

And what are those timeless, moral laws? Are you suggesting, to go back to the example, that Nephi was morally wrong when he killed Laban? Are you suggesting that God was morally wrong when he caused the flood? It's not just claiming to do something on behalf of God, it's claiming what God has done and understanding that as part of this moral or ethical code. By the way, I much prefer the term moral relativism to objective and subjective in terms of morality because it is much easier to discuss in context. Unpacking this would require its own thread. I am not going to condone what the Nazi's did. But at the same time, if we apply this sort of thinking to the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict we only get an absolute mess. I think that there are a few moral/ethical absolutes. One of those is freedom. But this is also a complex issue/ And I want you to realize that when you talk about careful thought and discernment, all you are saying is that the difference between believing in objective moral law and subjective moral law is nothing more than a subjective decision. I believe that ethics and morality have to actually work. But it is the way that we see it play out in individuals and society which tells us a great deal about people's ethics and morality. The thing about 2 Nephi 2 is that it clearly says that God gives us the Law. And if God gives us the law, it arguably cannot be subjective - God can (and does) give different laws to different groups. And this is the definition of a subjective morality (one that is dependent on the mind of God - arbitrary in the sense that what God gives you may be quite different from what God gives someone else).

This is the reason why I asked what they meant by "subjective morality". The idea that it is personal opinions and personal tastes works - but probably not quite in the way that you might expect. And subjectivity and objectivity aren't usually terms that we throw around when we discuss morality. The reason behind this is that a more technical definition of subjectivity and objectivity is: The moment we introduce God into this picture we run into a problem because God has a mind - He is a sentient being. And so any morality that comes from God would be considered arbitrary and subjective. The only way to make it non-subjective would be to claim that there is a morality that is external to God and that this morality is both absolute and unchanging. Mormonism does in fact make such a claim. But the problem here is that most of what we consider to reflect morality runs into the variability or arbitrariness of our religious account of this moral law. Are the ten commandments a part of this absolute moral law? Does Nephi violate moral law when he kills Laban? If Nephi doesn't violate objective moral law, then the commandment to kill cannot be some sort of moral absolute. If these commands come from God, and they are based on specific situations (similarly with polygamy), then we can only understand them in terms of subjective morality - i.e. we follow the moral dictates of God (who may be playing by a different set of moral rules than we are). And this is where the idea of subjectivity kicks in. If the moral commandments we live by come from the mind of God, they are subjective. We can have subjective morality (coming from the mind of God) without denying the existence of an objective morality (external to God). But now we are involved in a completely different discussion. Which brings us back to the comments I responded to - @sunstoned: I reject the idea that there is a devil. I do believe in good and evil, but these are creations of humanity. There is no cosmic influence on this. We, the people, control who we are and what we do. Carl Sagan wrote a book about this, and it saved me. More than anyone else, I credit what I learned from him for really giving me the foundation I need to be a good citizen. Maybe that’s crazy, but I grew up Mormon, and I was always trying to put pieces together that just didn’t fit. Sagan's ideas liberated me, made me more empathetic, and he taught me basic scientific ideas far better than any mythology. @JVW: So you believe in subjective morality? Perhaps you can see how this works. Sunstoned is arguing that good and evil are largely constructs of humanity. I would tend to agree with that point of view. And in fact, Sunstoned (who I don't know) is probably quite open to the idea of an absolute morality or ethics - principles of morality and ethics which hold true in every situation and every circumstance. But these principles and ethics will often be generalized principles (like Kant's categorical imperative) that then have to be applied in a given situation to understand what is the morally or ethically right way to move forward. In the medical field where I work, I tend to encounter this idea specifically in my work in the area of disaster preparedness. When there is a mass injury (or even a mass casualty) event, and we have limited resources (medicine, hospital beds, decontamination facilities), how do we prioritize who gets access to those resources? Is it moral to give those resources to the youngest people first? It is in religion, where we have very specific commandments, often that are often set against contradictory commandments, where we can see a much more subjective morality or ethics. If it right when God tells me to do it and wrong when God doesn't (or when God forbids it) we have a much more subjective morality either built around the mind of God (and our understanding of that mind of God) or around our own beliefs projected on to God. The other part is that in this response, JVW makes the comment as a sort of prod. It's like being called a moral relativist. It is language itself that is meant to be critical by using language that is supposed to be read as being critical - and thus avoid having to explain how Sunstoned's point of view reflects either that moral subjectivity or why that moral subjectivity is a particularly bad thing. I am trying to point out that such an effort is problematic even if it had been made with crystal clarity because of the implications of having an objective morality that rules God as much as it might rule us, and our own inability to access that objective morality.

What exactly do you mean by "subjective morality"? These are complicated terms. The problem with your "objective moral law given by God" is that - at least according to scripture - can only be defined as "doing what God tells you to do". If God tells you not to kill, then it is moral not to kill. If, on the other hand, God tells you to kill, then it becomes moral to kill. And since God's commandments are from time to time completely arbitrary (which means, of course, subjective), then the only way you can claim to have an objective morality is by using God's command as a meta-morality. It isn't the specifics of the commandment that matters (because that can be arbitrary) rather it is whether or not God commanded it that matters. Part of the broader problem with the religious in our society is that they tend to take a cafeteria type approach to the question of morality, and having chosen those things that they want to make a part of their moral code, they then pretend that this is the absolute morality that God wants. This isn't to say that there isn't some semblance of a universal morality that we might look at as being objective. But even there, in the real world, such objective morality becomes flexible - and often governed by some larger principle (making the objective morality subjective). After all, if we really think that the killing of innocents is a bad thing, then why is there no furor over the tens of thousands of women and children Palestinians killed by Israel in the last two years? If we decide that there is some greater objective moral principle that allows for the killing of innocent children, then clearly, even a prohibition on the killing of children cannot be considered as part of that objective morality, can it ... and of course this is the reason why when philosopher's engage in the question we end up not with an objective moral law, but rather with something like Kant's Categorical Imperative. Anyway, in the absence of some meta-morality, I am a firm believer in subjective morality. If polygamy could be morally wrong for the Nephites and right for the Mormons, then Mormonism holds to a subjective morality. If something is only immoral when God forbids it, and the same thing is moral when God allows it, then I question whether or not God has some objective moral law in the sense that you seem to be using it.

There is no doubt. However, a couple of points are worth making. The Early Modern English King James text has a meaning much closer to the NIV than a Modern English reading of the same text (the meaning of the "in" has changed over time). Milton uses the preposition in that way in his poetry - consider this from Paradise Lost, written 50 years after the King James (Book 10, lines 751-2): "yet God at last To Satan first in sin his doom apply'd". That's not an entirely different problem from your list incorporating some of the simplest translations for comparison. The New Life Translation has what could be called a highly simplified vocabulary. How simple? 850 words (apart from proper nouns). The King James? It's vocabulary is substantially larger - about 8700 unique words that aren't proper names (or ten times the vocabulary size). You will always get a more ambiguous text when you reduce vocabulary size. There is an inevitable problem with ambiguous text in that the reader misunderstands the intent as opposed to the author. All of which brings us back to the point I really want to make. Different readers also lead to different interpretations - even of the same translation. I read the King James text (at least in this verse) differently than you do. But, I probably have a lot more exposure to the historical variants of English. There are three legs to this stool. The texts, the readers, and the authors. And we can't simply say that it is the translation alone that leads to different interpretations - the (in)competency of the reader also matters. And having gotten there, I need to point some things out - you write: No, it doesn't. In fact, Adam isn't mentioned, the fall isn't mentioned. The entire discussion about the relevance of the Fall to this Psalm comes only with the development of such a doctrine within Christianity. This is all background that no Israelite would bring to this text when the Psalms were written. To interpret the Psalm in this way requires a pre-existing theological framework that isn't textual. To the extent that we can read Psalm 51 as a reference to the fall, it changes the language. Genesis 3 doesn't suggest a conception "in sin" but a conception "in sorrow". These are very different things. And of course there is something off about this interpretation. Why? David acknowledges his sin and then tries to explain that it really isn't his fault at all - that it is merely his human nature? Certainly not against Uriah the Hittite or Bathsheba ... Of course, if we removed the superscript, we wouldn't even know that this Psalm is about David and Bathsheba.

Not really. It's more of a paraphrase. If I am just reading for pleasure, it's generally going to be the KJV - because, at least for me, it has a high level of familiarity. If I am doing academic work, the KJV (or the NIV) usually work just fine for the text that I quote - depending on the audience. But in my research for academic work, I pull in a lot of other things including original language texts (Hebrew and Greek). What I read then is often very technical and at a level where this is often disagreement over nuances in the text. People can be overly concerned about which translation to use - in the long run, its better to find one that is readable to you, and to read through the text, than to start with what might ultimately be a better text but much harder for you to read and understand in a way that makes it meaningful to you.

There are a couple of things to consider. The reference to Ezekiel in D&C 27 is fascinating because it is one of the clearest instances of later editorial insertions into a revelation. The original revelation simply didn't have the reference. The connection between Ezekiel's prophecy and the Book of Mormon was first suggested by William Phelps in January of 1833 (the revelation was first given in 1830). Phelps was, at the time, reading through Jahn's Biblical Archaeology - he had just acquired a copy of the edition published in 1832. Phelps wrote this: And what stands out to us almost immediately is that in this interpretation, Phelps isn't talking about writing ON the sticks, but about writing on parchment and wrapping it around the sticks - and similarly, the practice of hanging newspapers on sticks to keep them neat between readers in more recent times. This isn't as common today as it has been in the past (because newspapers themselves are not as ubiquitous) - but if you want to see what Phelps is talking about, you can look here. This is really quite removed from the idea that the author in Ezekiel intended. But for Phelps, it was another way to connect the restoration to the Old Testament and to find prophecies about the Book of Mormon in the Old Testament. And his idea caught on like wildfire in the imagination of the members of the early LDS movement. It was such a popular idea that it was incorporated (as an interpretation) into one of the revelations given to the Church. The original version of the revelation was published in the Book of Commandments in 1833. But by 1835 the text had been expanded, and so Joseph modified the ending of this revelation to read (in part): And this becomes Section 27 of the D&C in 1835. It was it's inclusion in Section 27 of the D&C that has kept this interpretation with the Latter-day Saints since those early years. But this interpretation isn't consistent with the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. And before we give Phelps too much grief over this, this is what he was working from in his book Jahn's Biblical Archaeology: It was the last part of this that had really caught his attention (and why he focused on this part of his book) because he saw in here a reference to a "sealed book" and books inscribed on metal plates. In the same article he then gives what appears to be one of the earliest descriptions of the gold plates (as he understood them). The reason why the Church has been stepping back from this interpretation is because of the history that I have outlined here - coming out of the work on the Joseph Smith papers that really cemented the idea that this part of Section 27 was an expansion on the original revelation.

Don't forget though, that Joseph Smith wasn't making the claim that it was the most accurate translation based on his knowledge of ancient languages. What he said was that it "correspond[ed] nearest to the revelations which God has given to me for the last fourteen years." Based on his other comments, I think that at least part of this perception was created by the fact that Joseph wasn't fluent in German, and that the German translation that Luther made (which itself was highly influential on the KJV through Tyndale's translation) was made to be more accessible. I think that if we were to look at what Joseph Smith was referring to, it would be that Joseph found alternatives in Luther's translation to passages in the KJV that Joseph had difficulty with (theologically) and that regularly Joseph preferred Luther's approach to those problematic texts. I highly doubt that Joseph engaged in any systematic comparison between the German and the KJV. So I would tend to agree with your assessment all the way around (about the quality of Luther's translation), but I also don't think that Joseph's experience with Luther was terribly comprehensive - that is, I don't think that he was particularly competent in making the kind of claim that he made. In general, when I use this quote it isn't to suggest that Luther's translation was particularly good, it is simply to point out that Joseph Smith did not have the same high view of the King James that early 20th century Mormonism did. Their elevation of the King James came because of more modern translations and their conflicts with the unique LDS scripture (Book of Mormon, Book of Moses, etc.), and the fact that newer translations were not as compatible with the revelations given by Joseph Smith - mostly in the language.

I agree, the NRSV is better - but the question I was answering was: And the NRSV is not the answer to that question. I do not know how deliberate these things are, but, different translations match up with different educational levels. And the NRSV is a modern translation that doesn't sacrifice very much in terms of language content in exchange for readability. The NIV sits at a 7th-8th grade reading level. Once you drop below that you start getting into the paraphrases (the NLT, GW, etc.). And while there are a fair number of translations in the 7th-8th grade range, the NIV is, in my opinion, really good at maintaining a high level of readability without sacrificing too much. It is part of the reason why the NIV has become the most widely read translation today. It is also the reason why, in my opinion, that when the Book of Mormon references biblical text in non-King James language, it has a higher degree of similarity with the NIV - it is simply the quality of the language. In comparison, the NRSV makes for a much better academic translation or study bible. Although, I would add, that at least for most of my life, academics regularly used the KJV when quoting scripture for recognition on the part of the audience. This has really started changing in the last couple of decades. I keep a handful of translations in my reading room. Physical copies aren't as important as they once were for research, and so I don't have to use them that often. But they are sometimes easier to use when I need to continuously refer back to a specific text. I also have a few that are illustrated or copies of illuminated texts. Included in this group are a set of the St John's Bible, the JPS Torah (both regular and the commentary series), A Washburn College Bible, an ESV Study Bible, and Oxford Annotated NRSV with Apocrypha, a UBS4 with NRSV and NIV, an NIV Study Bible, Robert Altar's Five Books of Moses, a Jewish Annotated New Testament, a BHS, and a Moulton's Modern Reader's Bible. I have a bunch more stored in totes in the attic. When I die, my kids are going to have to deal with a lot of books they don't want ...

I am not sure I understand your question. Correlation is the process that attempts to make sure that statements can be connected to past authoritative sources. And the Book of Mormon is certainly considered to be an authoritative source. On the other hand, what the manual explains is that the Book of Mormon offers this information. In the current manual (which you link to) there is other material that that provides current understanding and context. First this instruction to the teachers: And then this commentary: Clearly, the LDS Church wants to make it clear (as your quotes point out) that they don't consider the change in skin color to be the curse. But in any case, what is in the Book of Mormon is generally always going to be correlated - even if we change our interpretations of it from time to time. And finally, when we have lessons for teenagers, there often isn't really much space given for nuance ...

This is wrong. Understand that language like this isn't contextual. The same Hebrew is used, for example, in Judges 14:4, where the KJV reads: The Philistines ruled as dictators. All of this other stuff is brought to the text as a way of altering what the language clearly says - the "to preside," "to have the final say," aren't ever considered a part of the Hebrew text - where the language can be easily read as "to rule like a dictator." The Hebrew also does not mean "to rule with compassion, kindness, love; and also with intelligence and wisdom." There is a Hebrew word, which while not matching this language you offer exactly, is much closer: "to shepherd" as in 2 Sam 5:2 (NIV): In a similar way, we get that well known line at the beginning of Psalm 23: The Lord is my Shepherd. That is the same word that we see in 2 Sam. 5:2 - and it has those connotations - but, that isn't what we find in Genesis 3:16. And further, Genesis 3:16 is describing the outcome of the curse. Which means these aren't good things being described but negatives. So, this sort of interpretation doesn't make sense in the context of the Genesis narrative. It only makes sense when we try to make the text relevant in a completely different context.