> [!Scripture] > **17 Then to Adam He said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat from it'; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life. > 18 "Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field; > 19 By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return."** <img src="https://audio.mhbbible.com/media%3Agenesis%203%2017-19.jpg" alt="Genesis 3:17-19" style="max-width: 100%; height: auto;"> > [!success] Audio Commentary > <audio controls src="https://audio.mhbbible.com/Genesis%203%2017-19.ogg"></audio> ## Brief Observations - **Adam’s sentence: punishment fits the crime** — God reminds Adam his sin was heeding his wife over divine command—echoing Satan’s tactic with Job’s wife (“curse God and die”). Satan doesn’t create; he perverts God’s best gifts, targeting men through wives. Adam blamed her, but God rejects excuses, turning his deflection into grounds for judgment. + **Self-incrimination in justification** — Sinners often condemn themselves while excusing sin—like the unfaithful servant in Luke 19 (“By your own words I will judge you”). Blaming others/God affirms you knew it was wrong. Miranda rights warn of this; better to own guilt than dig deeper holes. - **Threefold curse on Adam** — First: ground cursed for his sake—paradise revoked, creation now hostile instead of serviceable. Second: toil, thorns, thistles—labor embittered, yielding weeds over abundance. Third: sweat for bread, return to dust—mortality sealed, body decaying like tilled soil. + **The curse’s reach: all creation suffers** — Ground yields thorns (physical/spiritual woes); toil mirrors soul’s struggle against sin. Even animals/plants groan (Romans 8:22). Humanity’s dominion now laborious—farming, building, all sweat-drenched, a far cry from Eden’s ease. - **Symbolic ties: body’s curse mirrors soul’s corruption** — Multiplied pain echoes soul’s travail in sin; subjection to law enslaves; thorns prick conscience; sweat reflects striving for righteousness; dust-return shows death’s grip. Sin embitters necessities like eating—pointing to soul’s hunger for God’s favor, the true bread of life. + **Christ redeems every curse** — As second Adam, Jesus answers: soul’s anguish in Isaiah 53; born under law to free us (Galatians 3:13, cursed on tree); crown of thorns; sweat of blood in Gethsemane; man of sorrows (Isaiah 53); death conquered by resurrection. No detail unchecked—God redresses the Fall fully. - **We inherit the curse, but grace triumphs** — Generations from Adam feel original sin’s unfairness—we had no say. Yet God sovereignly redeems: turning toil to glory, thorns to crown, dust to resurrection. Trust His wise ends; sin’s perversion yields to Christ’s perfection. + **Mercy in the midst of judgment** — Curses chasten for repentance, not ruin—like a Father’s discipline (Hebrews 12). God clothes, pursues, redeems. In Christ, sweat and sorrow become pathways to eternal rest—paradise regained. ## Full Commentary God begins His sentencing of Adam by reminding him of his crime. Adam was being punished because he listened to his wife at the expense of obeying God. Satan tried to snare Job in a similar way when Job’s own wife told him he should curse God and die. Satan is not a creator, he doesn’t create anything new, but he is a perverter. One of Satan’s primary strategies is to corrupt the best things God has given us. It’s not wonder he tries to target men through their wives. Adam succumbed to his wife’s temptation and then he blamed her for it when he got caught. God didn’t allow Adam’s excuse to stand. Yes it was Eve’s fault that she persuaded Adam to eat, but it was Adam’s fault that he listened. So you notice how Adam’s desperate justification is not only rejected by God, but God turns it against him as the actual grounds for his sentence. It’s not uncommon for sinners to incriminate themselves while attempting to justify their sins. In fact this is so common that part of the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination is for arresting-officers to issue Miranda rights. This warns suspects that their own words will be used against them in court and that they have the right to remain silent. In the parable of the minas found in Luke 19, the unfaithful slave incriminates himself with his own words by admitting he knew his master expected obedience — but he disobeyed him anyway. When the master finds out, he says to the slave, “By your own words I will judge you, you worthless slave.” It’s very easy to blame others and to blame God for our sins, but by doing so we are affirming our own understanding that the sin is wrong to begin with and we shouldn’t have done it. Adam’s sentence is comprised of three conditions. First is that his habitation is now cursed because of his sin. God said to Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.” This curse is the essential removal of paradise. Adam would have to live the rest of his days in a cursed creation. He would no longer dwell in a paradise that was blessed and distinguished. Throughout the Genesis studies we’ve talked about how God created the heavens and the earth to be serviceable towards humanity. Everything was custom-designed to serve as a good living-space for man. All of that was gone now. Turning the created order upside down with a curse meant Adam, and all of his descendants, would be locked in a bloody struggle against nature itself. The creation once served Adam an abundance of all things good, but now our necessary crops must be cultivated by the sweat of our backs and the ingenuity of our industry. Before the Fall of Man we knew the earth was blessed because of its fruitfulness. God created everything to serve as habitation for man, but the fruitfulness of the earth He expressly purposed for man’s sustenance. Adam’s sin took what was fruitful and made it barren. That was the consequence of sin on the creation, and it’s still the same consequence on man today. An obedient person may be marked by fruitfulness — principally the fruit of the Spirit. By contrast, when a person becomes enslaved to sin he or she deteriorates into a barren wilderness by comparison. The consequences of sin are a direct corrosion of your love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. To be void of all of these things is to be an enemy of God. Part of God’s redemptive plan is to destroy the heavens and the earth with fire and create them anew. Listen to the prophecy of this grand destruction and rebirth as given in 2 Peter 3:7-13 >**2 Peter 3:7-13** >7 But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. >8 But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. >9 The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. >10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. >11 Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, >12 looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! >13 But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells. We studied the protoevangelium, Genesis 3:15, in the previous episode. This first introduction of the gospel in the midst of God’s opening remarks concerning punishment for original sin highlighted God’s unfathomable goodness. God is so good He wouldn’t even finish His introduction of the original curse without giving us hope for redemption. We see more of His mercy and his goodness as He’s sentencing Adam. Notice how God cursed the serpent himself, but He never does the same to Adam. He cursed the creation because of Adam, but He didn’t curse Adam. Part of the reason for this is because God always preserves a remnant of His people in order that He might bless them in the future. It’s also because the lineage of Christ would be traced from Adam. God’s mercy is similarly found in the fact that Adam continued to have any habitation at all. God didn’t strike him dead the moment he sinned — which he would have been justified in doing. While the creation became cursed and fallen from what it once was, it would still be a habitation for humanity which became cursed and fallen as well. While Adam lost the pleasures and safety of paradise, he actually did gain one advantage as a consequence of God’s punishment. Having paradise on earth taken from you encourages you to look for paradise in heaven. Adam would no longer be perfectly content with his home on earth — he would need to hope and pray for eternal life in heaven. The same is true for us today. I don’t think it’s wrong to grieve the tragedies of this world, but the tragedies of this world are a continual reminder that this place can never be our eternal home. We have a future in the direct presence of God where everything is the way it ought to be. The second condition of the curse was that Adam’s activities and his labor would become difficult for him. All of the things he used to do for pleasure in the garden he would now do for necessity and he would struggle all the while. Before the Fall Adam could maintain the ground with ease. After the Fall the same maintenance would break down his body. The tasks which previously gave him a sense of meaning and purpose would now be a source of anxiety and torment. Remember there was no aversion to loss in paradise. There was no fear of scarcity. Now both of these things would be ever-present in Adam’s mind. Work is a fascinating thing. Some people love their work and it provides a sense of purpose in their lives. Some people hate their work and they suffer through it because they have to. Christians have long held the principle that work is important because scripture says he who does not work shall not eat. Scripture promotes work for all who are able-bodied and decries laziness. But something Christians commonly miss about work is that it’s also given to us as a sentence for Adam’s sin. God commanded Adam to work as punishment for his sin. In the same way, when we refuse to work our idleness is a daring defiance of this command. Refusing to work is squaring up in rebellion against God and rejecting His sovereignty to punish us. It’s enlightening to think of it this way because of how commonly people perceive work as unfair or like it’s some kind of punishment. Well when you read Genesis 3 you understand that’s exactly what it is. The uneasiness and weariness of work are parts of the curse which is the punishment for original sin. Such punishments are far less than we deserve. So how should we view work? Should we embrace the toil and work ourselves to the bone? Definitely not. Should we complain about the undesirable circumstance of being forced to do things we don’t want to do? Definitely not. We should quietly accept that work implies suffering and understand this is part of God’s ordained sentence against humanity. However we should also resist making God’s punishments heavier than He Himself has made them. In Christ we should study to lighten our burdens wherever we can while maintaining a God-honoring submission to the necessity of work. We do this by paying attention to God’s providence and humbly accepting His gifts and blessings when He gives them to us. We should find hope even in the most tedious work environments because we trust that we will find reprieve from drudgery in the kingdom of heaven. Adam’s food and the act of eating was also changed by the curse. He previously had all the delicacies he could want in the Garden of Eden. Now he must eat the grass of the field like the common beasts. While he used to eat with joy and contentment, now he would eat in sorrow and the sweat of his brow. Part of the reason he would eat in sorry is because the act of eating was instrumental in his original sin. For the rest of his life, every meal would remind him of the moment he ate the forbidden fruit and forfeited paradise. The guilt and shame which came from defying God would make itself part of a necessary daily ritual. It sounds harsh but we still deal with this burden today. There’s no pleasure we can partake in which escapes the melancholy cloud of living in a broken world. The miseries, calamities, evils, and deaths embitter the remains of this world’s pleasures and delights. We can’t know what a paradisal existence is like while we inhabit this world. Even the happiest, most healthy people are locked in a constant effort to maintain their circumstances. And all of them know that despite their best efforts, the sands of time are going to rip these circumstances away. Even if you manage to defend your life against all pain, which is impossible, you still get an audience with the suffering of others. This especially true in an age where we can open our phones and get a front-row seat to tragedies all over the world. If our hearts are not broken by the trials of our own lives, we can be certain to see things heartbreaking things which happen to others. Even in the sorrow of Adam’s eating we see the mercy of God. Adam was sentenced to eat the herbs of the field and to eat bread by the sweat of his face. By comparison the serpent was sentenced to eat the dust of the ground. No one enjoys enduring the consequences of sin. But one silver-lining around the consequences of sin is that they acknowledge the righteousness of God. If God were incorrect and sins were the proper way to live, they wouldn’t lead to such devastating breakdown. Sins would provide pleasure without cost and these positive attributes would extend into your own future and the futures of others. But that’s never what happens with sin. We spoke in a previous study about how unrepentant sinners will conceal the consequences of their sins because they know these consequences affirm the truthfulness of God’s word. That’s the same principle we see here when we talk about the consequences of sin acknowledging the righteousness of God. Part of what should encourage us and help us to carry on in the midst of these circumstances is understanding God’s mercy is found even in His curses. Yes Adam was cursed to toil all the days of his life, but his toil would make his times of rest all the sweeter. Yes Adam would eat in sorrow, but he would not starve in sorrow. The food would still be nourishment to strengthen him so he could continue living. The bread of the earth would strengthen his body and the words of God would strengthen his heart. His life may be full of trouble but his days would now be short. Adam would not have to live in this cursed creation forever — his newfound mortality guaranteed he would die. In this way death was a mercy and undoubtedly played into God’s decision to bar Adam and Eve from the Tree of Life. He didn’t want them to live forever as sinners. While death may be a reprieve from life in a cursed creation, this doesn’t change death’s alignment as the enemy. Death is still a function of the Fall and it’s not a good thing. Paul says to die is gain, but this is only because of eternal life in Christ. We should never seize control of death or try to use it as a way to manipulate the world or our own experience. Suicide is a tragic example of this. Everyday someone takes control of his own pain by ending his own life. Suicide is not a God-honoring solution and it’s made more dangerous when it’s institutionalized in the form of legalized euthanasia. I’m sympathetic to certain cases of euthanasia in the same way I’m sympathetic to the pain and darkness within someone who commits suicide. But in both cases humanity is occupying an office they are unfit to hold. In both cases we are foreclosing on the future in a way that assumes omniscience. _This will never get better. I will never stop feeling this way_. No one commits suicide without first making such broad claims on the future. The same problem is true of euthanasia. I understand the arguments in favor of putting someone out of his or her misery — especially in the case of painful, terminal illnesses. But if we opened the door to legalizing euthanasia would we really stop with cases where it might be justified? History tells us otherwise. History tells us we would use rhetorical devices to expand the definition of what it means to be worthy of death. What starts out as euthanizing burn victims condemned to live the remainder of their days in agonizing pain turns into a collective insistence that life as a person with down-syndrome really isn’t worth living. Euthanasia becomes an on-ramp to eugenics and eugenics results in genocide. Authority over life and death belongs to God alone. The moment we try to wield this authority ourselves, our own sinful nature corrupts our vision and leads us down dark and terrible paths. God’s declaration that Adam shall die and return to the dust is a reminder of our frame. We are made from the dust of the ground and it is the breath of life, given by God, which animates us into living beings. The moment God recalls our spirits, our bodies break down to the dust from which they came. The joy of our lives and even the vitality of life itself is dependent on God. Psalm 104:29 reads, “You hide Your face, they are dismayed; You take away their spirit, they expire And return to their dust.” This allusion to dust is not only an indication of our mortality, but it’s also representative of our frailty as human beings. By our own merits we are small and insignificant like dust. There is nothing formidable about our own strength. In matters of strength we are more like dust than we are like stones. God knows our frame, and He is mindful that we are but dust. His grace and mercy towards us is reflective of His understanding our frailty. Dust is an apt analogy for our mortality because it illustrates the short span of our lives. The wind may stir the dust into a cloud, and a great man’s life may be a great cloud. But in all cases the cloud dissipates and the dust returns to the ground as soon as the force of the wind is gone. Our first parents’ lives were unique because each of them were entrusted with a spark of immortality in this world. Had they not sinned they would not have died. No other human being has ever experienced that on this side of Heaven. When sin entered the world it brought death with it, and death has been a universal of life ever since. When we think about the sentence God passed to Adam and Eve we need to keep in mind at every level there are spiritual implications. The sentence itself is an embodied representation of the misery sin inflicts on a soul. And so God is doing two things here: He’s sentencing humanity to punitive consequences for their sin, but He’s also revealing the kind of consequences their sin would have on the soul. The pains of a woman in labor are reflective of the waves of shame one feels when convicted by a guilty conscience. Many unrepentant sinners are able to anesthetize themselves to this pain for periods of time — be it through substance abuse or affirming their sins through self-deceit. But over and over shame will crash down like a wave in the soul of even the most stalwart liar. He will be given glimpses of himself and the reality of what he’s done and these will hit him like rounds of labor pains. Eve being placed into a position of subjection to her husband represents the soul’s subjection to sin. Living in unrepentant sin means sacrificing your spiritual liberty. Many times this loss of spiritual liberty cascades down to a loss of will itself. Ask anyone who is captured by addiction: even if they want to stop it feels like they can’t stop. This parallel between female subjection to male and the sinner’s subjection to sin is so deep that I think it accounts for God’s comment to Eve when He says, “Yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Let’s unpack this idea further by reading Paul’s illustration of the parallel between the two subjections in Romans 7:1-5: >**Romans 7:1-5** >1 Or do you not know, brethren (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives? >2 For the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. >3 So then, if while her husband is living she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man. >4 Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. >5 For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. Eve’s desire will be for her husband, and he will rule over her. The sinner’s desire will be for the sin, and the sin will rule over him. I want to be careful to underscore that I’m not comparing biblical male headship to slavery to sin. That misses the point. Adam was head of his house before the Fall, the difference is the combative tension between woman and man concerning this headship which arose in the heart of Eve under the curse. This tension under godly subjection is the result of being unable to see past the loss of liberty — and it’s the same tension which occurs when a person is enslaved to his sin. God’s curse on the land that it should be barren and overgrown with thorns and thistles is an illustration of the sinner’s soul. A person given over to evil has a soul which is barren concerning the fruits of the Spirit. There is no love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness or self-control. His sin prevents the soil of his soul from being fertile for such things. The thorns and thistles are the corruption and the fruitfulness of evil. These are all the ways this person lies to others and, like a thorn bush, harms those who get too close to him. Scripture says these sinners are close to being cursed and end up being burned. Adam’s labor amidst the thorns and thistles represents the difficulty faithful people must deal with when working to advance the kingdom of God in a fallen world. The sinner’s soul has a worldly stain and its tendency is to breakdown much the same way the body breaks down to dust when we die. Part of Adam’s curse was to eat food by the sweat of his face. This embittered the very act of eating, which we discussed earlier in this study. This embitterment points to the soul’s yearning for the comfort of God’s favor. We need God’s favor like we need our necessary food. God’s word and God’s favor are the bread of life. So we’ve attempted to draw a symbolic connection between the bodily punishments of God’s curse on humanity with the corrosive effects of sin on our souls. The connections become even more powerful and even more fascinating when we examine the atonement of Christ and how each of these curses were answered by it. The travailing labor pains are witnessed in Christ in Isaiah 53:11 where we read, “As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities.” Jesus rebuked the labor pains of a sinful soul with His atonement on the cross and He defeated the agony of death with His resurrection. Humanity was enslaved to sin through subjection to God’s law, but Christ was born under the Law and the righteousness of His Spirit sets us free from sin. Galatians 3:13 reads, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, "CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO HANGS ON A TREE” So Jesus died a cursed death so we might be liberated from the curse of the Fall. The thorns came into the world with the Fall of Man, but Christ bore the crown of thorns on His head. The sweat of our labor for righteousness is mirrored in the hematohidrosis of Christ in Gethsemane (this is when he sweat blood). Sorrow and grief entered the world with sin, and Jesus Himself is described as a man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief. Finally death loomed large over all humanity once sin entered the world, and Jesus submitted Himself to death so He might conquer it. You can see how the person of Christ (as the second Adam) and His gospel sacrifice are redemptive answers to all the ways in which the first Adam invited curse onto humanity. Living generations separated from Adam and Eve can make us feel like we didn’t have a say in original sin. It’s true we could not have stopped it. But it’s also true God Himself has redressed every part of it. God has left no detail unchecked in His redemption of a cursed creation and a cursed people.