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.