In this part of the divine history of Moses therefore we have Adam and Eve restored, not indeed perfectly into that life which they had lost, but into the hope of that life, by which hope they have escaped, not indeed the first taste of that death, but the whole eternal substance of it. That is, although their flesh was sentenced to suffer and was compelled to suffer a temporal or momentary taste of death, yet, on account of the promised Son of God, who should crush the head of the devil, they hoped for a resurrection of the flesh and a life eternal after the temporal death of the flesh, which hope we also have. Next follows the other part of this divine speech, in which God first threatens her temporal punishment to the woman and then to the man his temporal punishment also. PART V. THE PUNISHMENT INFLICTED ON OUR FIRST PARENTS. I. V. 16. _Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy conception; in pain thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee._ This is the punishment which was inflicted on the woman; but a punishment full indeed of joy and gladness, because it varied not in the least from the sentence just before pronounced on Satan. For seeing that the glorious promise still remained that the head of the serpent should be crushed, there was a sure hope of a resurrection from death. And whatever is imposed on man as the punishment of his sin is possible to be borne, because this hope remains to him firm and sure. And this is the reason the Holy Scriptures are so very careful not to say anything in the punishment of the woman, which should be contrary to or at all militate against the sentence just before pronounced against the serpent. God did indeed impose a punishment on the woman, but he still left her the hope of a resurrection and of a life eternal. The death which she had deserved by her sin God transferred on the other and less honorable part of man, namely, on the flesh; that the spirit might live, because of righteousness through faith as the apostle says, Rom. 8:10, "The body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness."