Genesis 3:17-19

THE PENALTY UPON ADAM

"And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it; cursed is the ground for thy sake; and in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

"Cursed is the ground for thy sake ..." It should be particularly noted that God's purpose in all of these judgments upon Adam and Eve was benign. God at once imposed upon the ground limitations and penalties against men, not as the mere punishment which disobedience had deserved, but as a means of a continual reminder of man's fallen estate, and as a means of hedging him in and procuring his seeking after God. Nor may it be supposed that this account of what happened to the earth is by any means complete. The entire series of the trumpet visions in Revelation 8, etc., are clearly related to the primeval curse mentioned here. God simply re-ordered this physical world in such a way that man would never be able to make himself too cozy in his state of rebellion against his Creator. There was a further "destruction of the earth" in the Great Deluge; and that also would appear to be an extension and development of the principle visible in these verses. Kiel agreed that this curse, "reached much further; the writer has merely noted the most obvious aspect."[19] The expulsion of the sinful pair from Eden was also benign, as Willis put it: "God lovingly seals off any possibility of his eating of the tree of life by driving him out of the garden."[20]