And Jehovah Elohim said to the serpent, Because thou hast done this, be thou cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field. On thy belly shalt thou go, and eat dust all the days of thy life.
God speaks to the serpent first, before a word to the woman or the man — and He asks it nothing. Does the sentence fall on a real animal or on the enemy behind it, and why is dust its food?
God questioned Adam and Eve. He asked the serpent nothing. One writer finds the reason in the questions themselves:
To this confession do these questions of God call these first sinners of the human race. Because there is mercy for them, they are invited to cast themselves upon it. Because there is none for the serpent, there is in his case no question.
Another puts the same contrast in terms of who started the trouble and who was caught in it:
The serpent is recognized as the originator of the mischief; hence for him it is all judgment without a ray of light. The woman and the man were his victims; hence the only gleam is reserved for them.
The form the enemy took was itself part of God's dealing:
We have no reason to believe that Adam yet knew the mystery of who the tempter was. To him, "that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan" was surely nothing more than the craftiest of the wild animals the Lord God had made. In this, God's wisdom and mercy were shown. He did not let the tempter come as an angel, as one above man. He came in animal form, as one below him — one of the creatures man had named as their lord, and among which he had found no helper. How great was his shame when he listened to the deceiver! In that moment he gave up the rule God had given him.
The serpent had just succeeded. The sentence turns that success into ruin:
So the victory of evil is really the degrading of the victor. His own success drags him down. How plainly this lasting principle shows in every career of villainy under the sun! Because of it, Satan will not be the highest in hell and its prince, as people have imagined. He will be the lowest and most miserable of all the miserable there.
The word is not picked at random. Scripture uses it in one settled sense:
"Dust" means total and complete humiliation, as in "lick the dust" and "you who dwell in the dust." Scripture uses it this way again and again. Daniel 12 is the same: "many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth." Here it expresses the judgment that will fall on the power of Satan.
Commentators differ over how far verse 14 reaches. Some hold that God sentences the animal itself here:
The curse brings the serpent lower than the creeping things: it must slither on its belly (v. 14). We do not know what it was like before, but now its food was to be dust. This verse deals only with the literal serpent. What follows applies to Satan, who used the serpent as his mouthpiece.
Others see something deeper pictured in the outward sentence. Even so, they hold that verse 14 is not the final doom:
The actual judgment is in this world. So the serpent is not cast into the lake of fire here. God says, "Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field …"
When creation is finally at peace, one creature keeps its sentence:
Satan used the serpent to deceive Eve, and the curse on it ran, "on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat …" This sentence will never be revoked. It seems that among the lower creatures the serpent will stay as a sign and reminder of the tragic effects of sin. The serpent will not be able to hurt nor destroy, but its degraded and miserable state will remain.
God's first word of grace does not go to Adam or Eve:
What can be more striking or instructive? God reveals grace in judging the enemy, not in what He said afterwards to the woman (v. 16) or to Adam (vv. 17-19). This was not only just but for the divine glory in Christ. What could justify a promise to fallen man or woman? Their sin, just committed, called for judgment, and the LORD God did not fail to declare it.
- Cause. God asks the serpent nothing. His questions call for confession, and He asks them only where there is mercy.
- Form. God would not let the tempter appear above man. He came as an animal man had already named, so the fall gave away man's own place of rule.
- Sentence. Belly and dust mean total humiliation. The winner is the one brought lowest: Satan ends as hell's most wretched, not its prince.
- Reach. Writers differ. Some see only the literal serpent here; others see a deeper picture. All agree the lake of fire is not yet in view.
- Result. The curse is never lifted. The serpent stays as a lasting reminder of sin — and inside this very sentence on the enemy, God speaks His first word of grace.
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; he shall crush thy head, and thou shalt crush his heel.
After the fall, God speaks first to the serpent, not to the guilty pair. Inside that sentence of judgment lies the first announcement of a Deliverer. Who is this "seed of the woman," why is He the woman's and not the man's, and when is the serpent's head crushed?
Readers often call this verse the first promise. One commentator points out that the Bible never uses that word here:
Believers have long called it a "promise," but Scripture never does. God did reveal endless blessing for man here, but that is not quite a promise. He spoke the words to the serpent. If they promised anything to anyone, it was to the woman's Seed, the last Adam — not to the first Adam, whom God had just sentenced along with Eve.
Adam had just blamed his wife and, through her, God Himself. So the hope that reaches him rests on Someone else:
The question here is really between the serpent and the second Man, not the first. This is not a promise to Adam and Eve from God, nor a hope that their children will improve. God passes judgment on the enemy. In the same breath He reveals the Saviour — the child of the very woman who had drawn the man into ruin at the devil's hand. The woman's Seed will bruise the serpent's head, but He Himself is bruised first. What grace, yet what righteousness! What humiliation, yet what victory!
The phrase breaks the pattern of every genealogy that follows in the Bible.
Everywhere in creation, from man downward, the seed belongs to the male and not the female. So the seed of the woman is not according to nature as we know it. It stands outside what God had just made, and it points forward to a new creation. The Lord Jesus was born of a virgin, and here we have the first hint of that fact, which is a vital one. No taint of the fall attached to Him. He was not just innocent, as Adam was at the start — He was holy.
That wording also rules out any patching up of the old order:
This is not a repair of the place Adam lost. It is a new and mysterious beginning. In it God's power takes up the weakness and instability of the creature — seen most clearly in the woman — to display His grace. The victory over the enemy costs something. The Conqueror bruises the serpent's head, but His own heel is bruised.
The verse speaks of the serpent's seed as well as the woman's, and one writer reads the sentence on two levels at once:
A double meaning runs through this verse, one literal and one deeper. Everyone knows that people hate snakes more than any other creature. So the sentence is literal. In the deeper sense, the seed of the woman is Christ. The words "between your seed and her seed" then cover two sides. On one side are all who belong to Christ. On the other are the children of the devil, whether wicked spirits or wicked men. The hostility would not come from the children of God toward others. It would come from the wicked toward the righteous. Cain murdering Abel showed this at once.
The same writer notes that the pronoun "it" is masculine in Hebrew, because the verb is masculine — pointing to Christ, not to Mary, as some have argued.
The two wounds are not equal, and the choice of body part is deliberate.
This overwhelming victory would also cost the Victor some suffering. During the conflict the serpent would bruise His heel. In walking, the heel is the first part of the foot to touch the ground. The picture is striking. The Victor suffered when He first touched the earth in His holy Manhood. God made Him a little lower than the angels so that He could suffer death — the death that Satan's cunning brought about.
Commentators differ over how much of the head-crushing has already happened. Some place it at the cross. Others point out that Satan still goes about, so the word is not yet fully carried out. One writer sets the two stages side by side:
Christ suffered at the cross, and this Scripture came true there. It had announced what would happen to Christ, the woman's Seed. It was also a partial fulfilment of what He would do to Satan. "Through death" He destroyed "the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil." The crushing of the serpent's head will be complete when the Lord casts the devil into the lake of fire.
Believers are not spectators in this. One writer comments on a later verse that says God will soon crush Satan under the feet of believers:
The church is joined to Christ. It will then be with Him who, as the woman's seed, will bruise the serpent's head. But the power is in Christ, not in the church.
- Spoken — the words are addressed to the serpent, not to Adam. Grace reaches the guilty man through Another, and rests on Him alone.
- Second Man — the contest is between the serpent and the second Man, never the first. Adam is sentenced; Christ is the object of promise.
- Woman's — seed always belongs to the male, so this phrase stands outside nature. It is the first hint of the virgin birth, and a new beginning instead of a repaired old one.
- Seeds — from Cain onward, two families run through history. The hostility flows from the wicked toward the righteous.
- Heel, then head — the wound to the Victor was real but limited. The wound to the serpent is fatal. It began at the cross and ends in the lake of fire.
To the woman he said, I will greatly increase thy travail and thy pregnancy; with pain thou shalt bear children; and to thy husband shall be thy desire, and he shall rule over thee.
God turns from the serpent to the woman with a sentence in two parts: pain in childbearing, and a husband who rules over her. Writers ask whether this is a curse at all, and how much of it still stands today.
Her sentence lands where her sin happened. She had a place beside Adam, and she stepped out of it.
True and righteous indeed are His judgments! Where she had sinned, there she was punished. Her lust had conceived and brought forth sin. So her sorrow and her conception were to be greatly multiplied, and she was to bring forth children in sorrow. She had forgotten her place as Adam's "helper." Taking the lead, she misled him into that terrible first sin of disobedience against God.
The word "cursed" is spoken over the serpent and over the ground — not over the woman. What she receives is described as God's ordering of life on earth from now on, and it stands against the plain contrast of what she had before.
As with the serpent, Jehovah Elohim speaks to the woman of the present governmental effects of her sin. Woman, more than any other female, was to have sorrow multiplied in pregnancy and in giving birth. Woman, not man, is the one who suffers this sorrow again and again. It was righteous, however sad. She first listened to the enemy, despising God and His word; then she drew her husband after her into the ditch. From now on she was to be subject. Like a younger brother to an elder, her desire was to be to her husband, and he was to rule over her. The fall would make this hard. How different the original position of companionship! Sin made God a judge: before it, He simply blessed.
A writer takes the pain of birth as a witness about the child, not just the mother. He then asks what happens when people try to overturn the order this verse sets for marriage.
But this sorrow underlines that every child is born with a sinful nature. David says in Psalm 51:5, "I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." Her desire would be to her husband, and he would rule over her. This is the normal condition of the marriage relationship now. Many people have tried, and still try, to change this. The result is a state of things that is not normal, and it only causes more confusion and dissatisfaction everywhere… When people ignore God's word, no wonder the troubles of the world multiply. People cannot sidestep the consequences of sin so easily as they think.
Both halves of the verse are picked up in Paul's letter to Timothy — and the second half comes with something Genesis never mentioned.
Genesis 3:16 is explicit in naming two results which were to follow for the woman as a consequence of her sin. The second of those two results is alluded to in the verses we have been considering, while the first result is alluded to in verse 15 of our chapter, and in connection with that a gracious proviso is attached, no mention of which is found in Genesis 3.
Another writer calls this same order part of the curse, and then shows what Christian teaching does with it. Older translations read "your desire shall be to your husband"; the ESV renders it "contrary to your husband."
Part of the curse pronounced on the woman at the fall was, "Your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you." Christianity confirms this order, but so remodels it that all trace of the curse disappears. When a believer submits to the Lord, or the Church to Christ, that is no curse and no bondage. These are now the patterns for a wife's submission… How beautiful to see a human relationship — one that takes part of its character from the fall — turned into a picture of the mystery in which God displays His "manifold wisdom."
Her pain does more than remind her of her sin. It also points her forward.
In her sorrow and pains the woman is always reminded of her sin. She is also reminded of Him who will deliver her from the results of her evil, through a deeper sorrow and pain. So from the very beginning, the desire for the promised Deliverer is planted in her heart.
One writer sets God's word to the woman here beside a later word spoken to a woman in tears.
Self-will had brought forth its full harvest of sin and sorrow. To the woman He says, "I will surely multiply your pain." But now, to the woman, "Woman, why are you weeping?" Sorrow has taken the place of joy in this world, because self-will came in, and death followed it. But now the old things have passed away… death has given place to life, and sorrow to joy.
- Sin. She was punished where she sinned — she left her place, took the lead, and drew her husband after her.
- Sentence. Writers differ on calling it a curse. God sets the terms of her life on earth now, in place of the companionship she had before.
- Sorrow. The pain of birth witnesses that every child enters a fallen race. Efforts to overturn the marriage order only multiply trouble.
- Order. Christianity confirms the order, but remodels it on Christ and the Church, so that no trace of the curse is left.
- Joy. The same sorrow keeps alive the desire for the promised Deliverer, and the later word to a weeping woman turns sorrow back into joy: "Woman, why are you weeping?"
And to Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee saying, Thou shalt not eat of it cursed be the ground on thy account; with toil shalt thou eat [of] it all the days of thy life;
God speaks to Adam last, and He gives His reason before He gives His verdict. Why the ground and not the man? How far does the curse reach, and does it ever end?
Adam had tried to shift the blame onto the woman, and onto the God who gave her to him. God answers by naming that very act as the cause of judgment, and by aiming the sentence at Adam himself.
Was Adam's guilt lessened by his wife's sin? Far from it! He offers his wife as an excuse: "the woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate." God declares that very thing to be the reason for Adam's judgment: "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife… cursed is the ground because of you" [not because of her].
The words fall on the soil, not on the pair standing before God. Later, after the flood, God set a limit to it.
Man was not cursed. The curse fell on the serpent and on the ground. In sorrow man was to eat of the fruit of the ground all the days of his life, and in sorrow the woman was to bring forth children (Gen. 3:17). After the flood, the Lord smelled a sweet aroma from Noah's sacrifice. He said in His heart, "I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Gen. 8:21).
The verse speaks of ground, food and pain. It says nothing about what becomes of the soul, and that silence is deliberate.
Scripture says nothing here about his soul and spirit. The consequences in view belong to God's government of this life, not to eternity. Men scheme to get rid of the sweat and toil, and they may think they are going to achieve it. But already we have heard the slogan, "We work or we want." To that we may add, "We sweat or we starve." We can no more dodge that part of the curse than we can escape death.
Did work itself begin as a punishment here? Adam was already tending the garden before the fall.
That there was no "work" before his fall is not stated. Man placed in the garden "to work it and keep it" shows it was not God's will that His creature should be idle. But there was no "toil" or "sorrow" connected with such occupation. Now thorns and thistles were to appear, and man was to eat bread by the sweat of his face… Labour here is good for all, and there is profit in it. Out of evil God can and does bring good.
The same sentence that burdens man also steadies him.
In a certain sense mercy mingles with these consequences too, as usually happens, I think, in God's government. Man in his present state is just that much less happy when he does not know what it is to work in a world like this. It is not only what he is doomed to, but the wisely ordered place for fallen man here below. There is no one more miserable than the man who has no object before him.
The thorns of Genesis 3 appear again as a crown on Christ's head.
The world belonged to Him, for He made it… but it was under the curse. Man's disobedience had brought the curse upon it, and thorns were the product and lasting evidence of the curse. He had come to redeem the world, to remove the curse and bring in the blessing, and to do this He must bear the curse… the original curse fell upon Him, and the sign of this was the crown that He wore.
The ground took the curse, and the ground will share in its removal.
Creation was made subject to emptiness, not by its own choice, but because of man when he fell. It groans and waits for the day when it will be set free from its bondage to decay, into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. We read in Genesis 3, "Cursed is the ground because of you… thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you." But of the day of its renewal: "instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress, instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle."
- Cause — Adam's excuse became the charge against him. He listened to a voice other than God's, so God sentenced him — for his sake, not hers.
- Curse — The words fall on the ground, not on the man. God cursed the serpent and the soil, and after the flood He promised never to curse the ground again.
- Cost — Work was there before the fall; sorrow and sweat were not. Thorns and thistles are the new element, and no scheme of ours escapes them.
- Care — Even this judgment carries mercy. Labour keeps fallen man from the misery of having no object before him.
- Cure — Thorns crowned Christ, the sign that He took the curse to remove it. The ground still waits for the day when myrtle replaces the brier.
and thorns and thistles shall it yield thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field.
God tells Adam what the ground will now do: it will fight him. Commentators read the thorns as more than a farming problem — they see in them the mark of sin and the reason creation still groans.
The curse falls on the ground, and Adam bears it. He must now live on the same plants as the animals under him.
Because of the man the ground is cursed. His higher place brings wider and more serious results. He too must face sorrow here below all his days. Thorns and thistles fight against the food he needs and looks for. Hard work must be his lot if he is to eat bread. The plants of the field were given to him just as they were given to the animals under him — to the man who had lost, through rebellion, the beautiful and rich garden which the LORD God had planted.
Did work itself begin with the curse? One writer answers that question by separating work from toil.
Scripture plainly states that the ground was cursed because of Adam's sin. It does not say that there was no "work" before his fall. Man placed in the garden "to work it and keep it" shows that it was not God's will that His creature should be idle. But there was no "toil" or "sorrow" connected with such occupation. Now thorns and thistles were to appear, and man would eat his bread by the sweat of his face.
Thorns are evidence. The question is what they testify to.
Since Adam's fall, the curse of God rests on the earth. It brings forth "thorns and thistles." They bear witness to man's fallen, ruined state, not to God's glory.
The cursed ground is not only loss. One writer argues that its hardship does man good.
What should we do without the thorns and thistles which grow out of the ground cursed for man's sake? What should we do without the need of the sweat of the brow? What, without the work that death itself does? Surely a blessing is in this curse; it is an evil which is good; the discipline of the Father of spirits for our profit.
Cain brought God a gift grown in this cursed ground. That is where his worship failed.
Cain offered to God what cost him more. He was not a completely irreligious man. He offered to God, he worshipped God, and God rejected him completely. He was not an unbeliever or an irreligious man. He was a worshipper — and a rejected worshipper. His worship was founded on unbelief. A sinner, one out of paradise, he thought to go to God as though nothing had happened! And what did he bring? The very thing that had the stamp of the curse upon it.
Thorns appear again in the crown Jesus wore. One writer reads that crown in the light of this curse.
The world belonged to Him, for He made it. As the eternal Son He was the Heir to it. But the world was under the curse. Man's disobedience had brought that curse upon it, and thorns were the product and lasting evidence of it. He had come to redeem the world, to remove the curse and bring in the blessing. To do this He must bear the curse… The original curse fell upon Him, and the crown He wore was the sign of it.
Man did not fall alone. The world under him fell with him, and its future is tied to his.
By his sin, man has not only brought ruin on himself. He has spoiled his home and dragged down all the creatures that depend on him. Thorns and thistles are marks of man's sin… The whole of this lower creation either suffers or rejoices with its head. This is its time of suffering. "For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now" (Rom. 8:22).
- Cause. One man disobeyed, and the ground turned against him. The curse strikes the soil, and the damage spreads because man stands over it.
- Sign. Every thorn and thistle is a standing witness — not to God's glory in creation, but to man's ruin.
- Mercy. Sweat and hard work are not only punishment. They are also a Father's discipline — a blessing wrapped inside the curse.
- Warning. Cain brought God fruit from this cursed ground, and God refused it. Worship that ignores the curse denies what we are.
- Removal. Christ wore those thorns as a crown and bore the curse. Creation groans now, but it will rejoice with its Head.
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, until thou return to the ground for out of it wast thou taken. For dust thou art; and unto dust shalt thou return.
God's last word to Adam in the garden is about work and about dying. It names where man came from and where his body goes. Commentators ask how far this judgment reaches, and whether mercy is mixed into it.
God turns to Adam last, and the sentence falls on his daily life.
Then Adam came up for judgment, and the governmental effects of his sin are more clearly seen. He had listened to the voice of his wife instead of listening to what God had said, and now he must face the fruits of it. God cursed the ground because of him. He must earn his living from it with sweat and sorrow until death overtakes him, when his body should return to the dust out of which it was taken. Men scheme to get rid of the sweat and toil, and they may think they will manage it. But we have already heard the slogan, "We work or we want." To that we may add, "We sweat or we starve." We can no more dodge that part of the curse than we can escape death.
One writer notes that the exact wording matters here:
It is not merely "your brow," as people usually misquote it. The "face" gives a larger and more graphic picture of the fact.
The sentence gives a reason: man came out of the ground. One writer takes that as proof of how God made man.
Nothing is clearer than that Adam was not simply a lower organism raised to a higher form, but the subject of special creating power. Scripture states one of the sad results of his fall: his body must return to the dust of the ground he came from. He was therefore a true creation, and moreover created for life, and not for death; since death came in by sin.
The sentence names the body and the ground, and stops there. One writer weighs what that silence means.
How clearly the body only is in view here, and the end of life on the earth! Yet chapter 2 carefully showed where man's soul came from: God breathed it into him, unlike every other creature on earth. … The theme here is God's present government, not hades or the lake of fire. … The body alone returns to dust. The soul did not come out of dust, but, as we are told elsewhere, the spirit returns to God who gave it. All the notice taken of man here is to humble the one who did not look up to God, nor obey Him: sorrow and toil, death and dust.
This was not God's last word on Adam.
The sentence on Adam was not a final sentence, but one in which the mercy is evident amid all the severity of righteous judgment. Without the ministry of death, sad as the history of the world has been, it would have been much sadder… The sentence passed on Adam after his sin is clear enough, and no one can doubt what it means. Of the second death it may be, and is, a type, and a warning: but no more.
Another writer looks at the toil itself:
When our first parents fell, we read of no "curse" pronounced on them personally, though we do read that God cursed the ground because of them. The very penalties He pronounced on them were morally necessary, and had mercy in them. For example, Adam was condemned to toil, and what would men be, what would the world be, without such a necessity?
God forgave Adam, and the sentence still ran its course.
Grace forgives; but the wheels of government roll on in all their terrible majesty. Adam was perfectly forgiven, but his sin produced its own results. The guilt of his conscience was removed, but not the sweat of his brow. He went out pardoned and clothed; but it was into the middle of thorns and thistles that he went.
Adam's world lay under this curse, and one writer says what the Lord did about it:
The world belonged to Him, for He made it. But it was under the curse. Man's disobedience had brought that curse on it, and thorns were the product and lasting evidence of it. He had come to redeem the world, to remove the curse and bring in the blessing, and to do this He must bear the curse. The original curse fell on Him, and the sign of this was the crown He wore.
Another writer follows the sentence to its end:
The Lord had to go into the grave and enter into the full extent of God's judgment on man. It is important to keep the grave in mind as part of the sufferings Christ bore in our place under the judgment of God.
- Cause. Adam listened to his wife instead of God. God cursed the ground because of him, and the result is sweat, sorrow and dust.
- Scope. This is God's present government, not eternal judgment. The body returns to the dust it came from; the spirit returns to God who gave it.
- Mercy. God cursed the ground, not the persons themselves. Toil and death are penalties with mercy in them, and the sentence is not final.
- Grace. Adam went out pardoned and clothed, but into thorns and thistles. Forgiveness removed his guilt, not his sweat.
- Removal. Christ bore the curse: thorns crowned Him, and He went into the grave itself, taking the full judgment on man.