Genesis 3:17-19--Adam's Work and the Ground are Cursed

Genesis 3:17-19
World English Bible
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17 To Adam he said,

“Because you have listened to your wife’s voice,
    and have eaten from the tree,
    about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it,’
    the ground is cursed for your sake.
You will eat from it with much labor all the days of your life.
18     It will yield thorns and thistles to you;
    and you will eat the herb of the field.
19 You will eat bread by the sweat of your face until you return to the ground,
    for you were taken out of it.
For you are dust,
    and you shall return to dust.”

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God now turns his attention to Adam and curses him because he listened the voice of his wife ate of the tree that God told him not to eat from.  Because Adam did this, the ground that Adam came from and would return to and that he worked every day to try to get it to produce food for him would be cursed.  He would toil and labor and much of this would be in vain because it would not yield the maximal results that it used to produce.  In fact, the LORD promised that Adam will work hard to try to produce good crops, and, instead, the ground would naturally produce thorns and thistles that would choke out the very thing he is trying to grow and that he would have to constantly weed out these thorns and thistles, and this would be painful work.

Mankind at this point was still to only eat plants, but now they are allowed to eat of every herb of the field (not just of the fruit-bearing trees in the Garden).  They will learn to make bread from the grain that they produce, and they will work hard to have enough grain to feed themselves and their families.  This also seems to be in vain, for they will die and return to the ground and the earth (the creation) will not have moved any closer to the "very good" creation that it once was.  Nothing we do can remove the curse and stain of sin--all we can do is fight with creation and try to maintain order, but it is now a constant struggle.  This curse is best seen in the book of Ecclesiastes when Solomon explains to his son that without God, life is meaningless.  Is that the story of the Bible?  We know it is not!

We'll see next time God's gracious punishment of exile.  To Adam and Eve, this was the worst thing that could happen, but God had a good reason for this that we'll talk about next time.  We will learn some things there that will follow throughout the entire Bible like, Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin."