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.
The ground cursed, and man put under government
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.
"Face," not "brow"
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.
Dust: where man came from
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.
What returns to dust — and what does not
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.
Mercy inside the sentence
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?
Forgiven, and still sweating
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.
The One who took the curse and the dust
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.
Summary
- 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.