The first humans have been deceived by the serpent and have disobeyed God. We have dealt with God’s messages to the serpent and the woman in response to the disobedience. We have seen that, on many counts, the traditional and popular ways of interpreting the text in Genesis actually subvert the intended meaning. Now we turn to God’s message to the man.

Hebrew text:

17 וּלְאָדָ֣ם אָמַ֗ר כִּֽי־שָׁמַעְתָּ֮ לְק֣וֹל אִשְׁתֶּךָ֒ וַתֹּ֙אכַל֙ מִן־הָעֵ֔ץ אֲשֶׁ֤ר צִוִּיתִ֙יךָ֙ לֵאמֹ֔ר לֹ֥א תֹאכַ֖ל מִמֶּ֑נּוּ אֲרוּרָ֤ה הָֽאֲדָמָה֙ בַּֽעֲבוּרֶ֔ךָ בְּעִצָּבוֹן֙ תֹּֽאכֲלֶ֔נָּה כֹּ֖ל יְמֵ֥י חַיֶּֽיךָ׃

18 וְק֥וֹץ וְדַרְדַּ֖ר תַּצְמִ֣יחַֽ לָ֑ךְ וְאָכַלְתָּ֖ אֶת־עֵ֥שֶׂב הַשָּׂדֶֽה׃

19 בְּזֵעַ֤ת אַפֶּ֙יךָ֙ תֹּ֣אכַל לֶ֔חֶם עַ֤ד שֽׁוּבְךָ֙ אֶל־הָ֣אֲדָמָ֔ה כִּ֥י מִמֶּ֖נָּה לֻקָּ֑חְתָּ כִּֽי־עָפָ֣ר אַ֔תָּה וְאֶל־עָפָ֖ר תָּשֽׁוּב׃

20 וַיִּקְרָ֧א הָֽאָדָ֛ם שֵׁ֥ם אִשְׁתּ֖וֹ חַוָּ֑ה כִּ֛י הִ֥וא הָֽיְתָ֖ה אֵ֥ם כָּל־חָֽי׃

Transliteration:

17 ū·lə·’ā·ḏām  ’ā·mar, kî- šā·ma‘·tā  lə·qō·wl ’iš·te·ḵā wat·tō·ḵal  min- hā·‘êṣ, ’ă·šer ṣiw·wî·ṯî·ḵā  lê·mōr, lō ṯō·ḵal mim·men·nū; ’ă·rū·rāh  hā·’ă·ḏā·māh ba·‘ă·ḇū·re·ḵā, bə·‘iṣ·ṣā·ḇō·wn  tō·ḵă·len·nāh, kōl yə·mê ḥay·ye·ḵā.  

18 wə·qō·wṣ  wə·ḏar·dar taṣ·mî·aḥ  lāḵ; wə·’ā·ḵal·tā ’eṯ-  ‘ê·śeḇ haś·śā·ḏeh.  

19 bə·zê·‘aṯ  ’ap·pe·ḵā tō·ḵal  le·ḥem, ‘aḏ šū·ḇə·ḵā  ’el- hā·’ă·ḏā·māh, kî mim·men·nāh  luq·qā·ḥə·tā; kî- ‘ā·p̄ār ’at·tāh, wə·’el-  ‘ā·p̄ār tā·šūḇ.  

20 way·yiq·rā  hā·’ā·ḏām šêm ’iš·tōw  ḥaw·wāh; kî hî hā·yə·ṯāh  ’êm kāl- ḥāy. 

NIV:

17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.

18 “It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.

19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.

Study:

God addresses Adam and tells him why he is being punished. A surface reading of the text would seem to indicate that he is being upbraided because he listened to his wife. And not a few Christians have taken this meaning and have concluded that husbands should not listen to the advice of their wives. However, Proverbs 31.10-31 describes a wife of great wisdom and strength, one who would give advice her husband would do well to heed. What Adam is being chastised for is disobeying God. On this occasion, his wife had given him advice to disobey God. He should have been on guard and refused to listen to this piece of advice. 

God tells Adam that the ground is cursed because of what he did. Quite often this is taken to mean that God cursed the ground because Adam had sinned. This is an unbiblical view of God as some cosmic dictator who just does arbitrary things simply because he can! If, in response to Adam’s sin, there had to be a punishment, it should have been Adam who was punished, not the ground. 

We have seen that there is a difference in God’s messages to the serpent and the woman. While God tells the serpent that the serpent is cursed because God would put enmity between the woman and the serpent, God tells the woman that he will increase the grief associated with conception, with no reference to any curse.

In the message to Adam there is a mention of a curse, but there is no active voice here. God is simply announcing the consequences of the man’s sin. He will soon banish the first humans from the garden and they will go outside it to the wider world. What would they do on the outside? They will still need to eat. But, outside the garden, the ground had not been cultivated and the humans would need to do this if they were to have anything to eat.

How would this experiment pan out? Would it go well for the humans? They had been placed in a garden planted by God himself. Presumably, this was in a location that was suited to the flourishing of all the plants God had planted. There certainly were weeds outside the garden, since v. 18 mentions thorns and thistles, but not their creation. But inside the garden they had a pristine region in which they could learn what made each plant species flourish so that when they were finally ready for the larger world, they would have had the requisite knowledge. But now they had short circuited the process of their learning. They had taken a shortcut on account of which they were going to be exiled from the garden. The ground would still need to be cultivated. But the ground they would now need to cultivate would not be the pristine land of the garden but the lands outside it.

Were they ready for it? Would they know what conditions each species would need to thrive? Or would they simply experiment? It is clear that the answer is that they experimented, not knowing what the right conditions were for each species. More to the point, humans have experimented without restraint. Humans were ill prepared for the complexities associated with cultivation outside the garden. Once we moved from being hunter-gatherers to being those who aggressively cultivated land through agriculture, we focused our attention on a few of the staples that we managed to domesticate. We repeatedly planted the same crop over and over, resulting in soil degradation. And once we realized that this was happening, we did not stop. Rather, we began to pump the ground full of synthetic fertilizers to compensate for the degradation and also to boost yield.
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What God is telling Adam here is that, since Adam was ill prepared to handle the complexities of life outside the garden, the ground that he would now cultivate out of ignorance would suffer. Adam would not be able to control the weeds and they would overwhelm him. Because he would work from a position of ignorance, the ground would not be as fruitful as it otherwise would.

This is not a situation in which God actively curses either Adam or the ground. Rather, this is an instance in which God gives Adam a glimpse into the future in which Adam has despoiled the land because he was not ready to bear the responsibility of cultivating it.

The final part of the text we are dealing with in this post is often used at Ash Wednesday services. While the priest smears the ash on the forehead of a congregant, making the sign of a cross on the forehead with the ash, the priest will often say, “From dust you came, and to dust you shall return.” God’s words here are a reminder to the man of his origin and an allusion to the reader back to Genesis 2.7, where the earthling (אָדָ֗ם, adam) was formed from the earth (אֲדָמָ֔ה, ad-aw-maw’). 

However, the word used for ‘dust’ is עָפָר (aw-fawr’) and not (אֲדָמָ֔ה, ad-aw-maw’). This switch is important. Whereas in Genesis 2.7 the parallel between אָדָ֗ם (adam) and אֲדָמָ֔ה (ad-aw-maw’) served to link humans inextricably to the earth from which they were formed, now the humans are warned not to think too highly of themselves. Were it not for God’s gracious act of forming them from the earth and designating them as his image bearers, they would only be worthless dust. But it is important that we do not take this warning too far and conclude that we are simply worthless dust for v. 19 reminds us that humans are taken from the earth (אֲדָמָ֔ה, ad-aw-maw’) and implicit in that reminder is the fact that they were formed by God. The worthless dust was given supreme dignity when God took it and formed it.

Adam has heard God’s messages to the serpent, to his wife and to himself. All three messages imply that the humans will have descendants. Even though their lives will be difficult, complicated by a continued enmity with the serpent, and even though his wife and her daughters after her will suffer, disenfranchised by a patriarchal system, and even though he and his sons after him will ruin the earth, cultivating it out of ignorance, there will be life. No matter how badly they have messed up, God’s messages to the three of them carry with them the implicit promise of continued life for the humans. So Adam focuses on this and names his wife Eve (חַוָּה, khav-vaw’) because she would become the ancestor of all the living (חַי, khah’-ee). 

Some have suggested that when Adam named Eve, he was exercising authority over her, dominion God mentioned in v. 16. However, that is to misread the text completely. Earlier in chapter 2, when Adam named the animals, this was primarily so that he could acknowledge that none of them was a helper as a mirror for him. When Adam first sees the woman, he recognizes her as part of himself. But now, once he has heard God’s messages to the serpent, to his wife, and to himself, Adam names her Eve, recognizing that, in the increasingly conflicting situation into which she and he were going to be thrown, where the forces of death will raise their heads, the help he needs is for the forces of life to keep the forces of death at bay. And he recognizes that his wife is just such a helper. She will be the mother of the living and help him to stave off the contagion of death outside the garden.

Prayer:

Almighty, loving Father. For too long we have seen your words to the woman and the man as words of condemnation and punishment. And in so doing we have betrayed a misunderstanding of your character. Enable us to see that even this life we experience, that is so full of grief, is somehow an expression of your grace toward us. Enable us to see that even the increased pain that we now experience is a sign that you are at work in this world to ward off the forces of sin and death. We ask you to enable us to see that you are always working to bring life. When we read such passages as the one we dealt with today, remind us that you have won the decisive victory in and through your Son, Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.

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^{1. Keith R. Baldwin. Crop Rotations on Organic Farms. (Accessed on 15 July 2019). See also Anusuya Rangarajan. Crop Rotation Effects on Soil Fertility and Plant Nutrition. (Accessed on 15 July 2019). See also What are the Major Causes of Desertification? (Accessed on 15 July 2019), a brilliant info-graphic on the subject of desertification around the world.↩}