The "Curse" of the Ground

"...cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Gen. 3:17b-19

It is interesting to note here that the curse pronounced at this time is not directly upon the man himself. It is instead a curse upon the ground which the man will have to work and sweat over in order to produce his food. As has been mentioned before, we should not confuse this with a curse of work. It is a myth that work was a curse given to man because of sin. As we see here the curse is the fact that work now becomes hard labor which produces a small gain, as opposed to the pleasure of work tending a beautiful and bountiful garden which generously supplied all that man needed or desired.

The line, "by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread..." is certainly familiar to anyone who has tried to grow food on a farm or in a garden. Even with modern technology, long, hard hours of work are required and there are no guarantees of a good return. The curse of the ground in reality is the curse of the entire environment of the earth. Precarious weather patterns such as flood or draught, damaging hail, tornadoes, even earthquakes and hurricanes all are a part of this curse of the ground. Our sin, from the very beginning of man to now, is the cause of these kind of difficulties for without a sinful beginning, we would never experience the corrupt creation we are a part of now. (see Romans 8:19-21)

Finally, the sentence of death is given in that our bodies will die and decay and become a part of the very earth that we are doomed to scratch out a living from. We all, one way or another, will "return to the ground." At least, that is the fate of our bodies. Our spiritual selves await another fate which we will talk of in detail at a later point.

Your joyfully loquacious expositor
LEE

Adam's Mistake

And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;" Gen 3:17

Here is all we who are husbands need to be a bit careful! It would be very easy for us to use this passage as an excuse to tell our wives we should never listen to them! However, that would not only be a mistake, it would also be using an incorrect interpretation of the passage.

This verse tells us about the specific 'curse' that the male of the species received from God as a result of his disobedience. The disobedience itself involved two actions. One was when Adam "listened" to his wife's suggestion. Two was when he followed the suggestion and ate the fruit. What does this tell us about sin and Adam's sin in particular?

One of the important teachings we can gather here is that sin begins before the physical action takes place. Here it was a suggestion planted in the mind of Adam that he chose to listen to. It was not simply hearing the voice of his wife that was sinful, it was entertaining the thought of actually taking the fruit. That is the difference between temptation and sin. Once a thought of sin becomes more than passing, the danger of sin is present. Adam's mistake was that he did not recognize and resist the thought of sin at this point. If we can recognize and then resist at the point of the thought of sin, we have a better chance of not committing the sin.

Of course, the question arises, "How can we recognize and then resist sin?" The answer is, only with the help of the Lord. We can only get that kind of help if we know the Lord as our Savior, and if we call upon Him for help in the time of temptation. Adam knew the Lord God intimately, yet he did not turn to God when temptation hit. That was his mistake, but it need not be ours.

Your Joyfully Loquacious Expositor,
LEE