The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.

Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.

My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.

Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version Anglicised (ESVUK) with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.

Genesis 3:17-19

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,”

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Last week’s post discussed God’s curse on the woman — Eve — for disobeying Him and listening to the serpent instead. Original Sin began with her eating of the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Then the woman gave her husband — Adam — the fruit to eat and, also disobeying God, he ate it.

Eve’s curse involved the female sphere of the home: painful childbearing and the unease of having her husband rule over her.

Matthew Henry gives us a summary (emphases mine below):

(1.) The pains of a woman in travail represent the terrors and pangs of a guilty conscience, awakened to a sense of sin; from the conception of lust, these sorrows are greatly multiplied, and, sooner or later, will come upon the sinner like pain upon a woman in travail, which cannot be avoided. (2.) The state of subjection to which the woman was reduced represents that loss of spiritual liberty and freedom of will which is the effect of sin. The dominion of sin in the soul is compared to that of a husband (Rom 7 1-5), the sinner’s desire is towards it, for he is fond of his slavery, and it rules over him.

Now God pronounces a curse on the man — named Adam for the first time — because he listened to his wife and ate fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil; because of the man’s sin the ground would be cursed and, through painful toil, he would eat food from it all the days of his life (verse 17).

The man’s curse means he must work throughout his life.

Henry explains God’s reasoning:

We have here the sentence passed upon Adam, which is prefaced with a recital of his crime: Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, v. 17. He excused the fault, by laying it on his wife: She gave it me. But God does not admit the excuse. She could but tempt him, she could not force him; though it was her fault to persuade him to eat, it was his fault to hearken to her. Thus men’s frivolous pleas will, in the day of God’s judgment, not only be overruled, but turned against them, and made the grounds of their sentence. Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee.

John MacArthur tells us why God held Adam responsible for Original Sin:

[The] man was not deceived like the woman, he chose to disobey God willfully and premeditatedly, chose to do what his wife wanted him to do. He chose his wife over the Word of God. And he, not the woman, as the head of the union and the head of the race, was held culpable for the sin. That’s why in Adam we die, rather than in Eve. He is the head of that union, he is therefore the head of the race.

And so he, joining in the sin of his wife, is then held responsible because he abdicates his authority and submits to her for plunging the whole human race into decay, disorder, disease, destruction, and death. Paradise was lost, then, for all time, for all humanity. The whole race became sinful …

What it tells us here in verse 17 is what it doesn’t tell us back in verse 6. The reason that he did this was because he listened to the voice of his wife rather than the voice of God. He decided to do what she wanted him to do rather than what God commanded him to do. It’s that simple.

I know people today have a difficult time with Original Sin, probably because it no longer features in sermons or in religious education. I wonder how many clergy believe in Original Sin. I met a clergywoman who was unfamiliar with the Bible verses saying that no one is righteous, not even one, beginning with Romans 3:10:

10 As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one.

That refers to verses from the Old Testament, such as Psalm 14:1:

1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt; their acts are vile. There is no one who does good.

Also Psalm 53:1:

1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, and vile in their ways; there is no one who does good.

And Psalm 143:2:

2 Do not bring Your servant into judgment, for no one alive is righteous before You.

Returning to today’s verses, MacArthur gives us an insight into the Hebrew used in verse 17:

He’s always the man up to now, the man and the woman, but this is the first time the man is called Adam. Down in verse 20 is the first time the woman is called Eve. The Hebrew grammar indicates that the word for man, adam, that’s the word that’s been used, should now be considered a proper noun. Why? Because the definite article is dropped. Up until now it’s been the man—the adam, the adam, the adam—and now it’s Adam …

By the way, the word “ground” is adamah. The man is adam, the ground is adamah because the man comes from the ground, dust to dust. And he has a relationship with the ground because it’s out of the ground that man draws his life. Everything we eat comes out of the ground, doesn’t it? You say, “Well, what about chickens? Animals above the ground?” They survive by eating what comes out of the ground, right? The ground is the source of food in the food chain, even among the animals.

From this curse on mankind, we get the first indication about how much God hates sin and disobedience. For people who think God’s verdict is cruel, consider that he gave Adam and Eve a perfect world with only one commandment to obey. They disobeyed it.

MacArthur says:

So the man is indicted for a first-degree crime, premeditated, willful disregard of God, and the man deserves to die. He does not deserve to live, he deserves to die, and he well deserved to die on the spot. Obviously, that’s not what happened. The seeds of death began to operate and decay immediately entered in, and death would come inevitably and eventually. But he deserved to die on the spot and so did Eve.

Why didn’t God kill them? Why didn’t He? There’s one reason: because He’s the God of what? He’s the God of grace and mercy. You know, these liberals and critics of the Bible say, “Oh, the God of the Old Testament is a terrible God.” The God of the Old Testament, some in the past called Him a demiurge, a scandalous, vicious sub-god …

The question is what kind of a God lets anybody live? Isn’t that a better question? Because we all deserve to what? To die. The question isn’t why did God kill those people, the question is: Why does He let anybody live? … And this is a matter that is central to Scripture, that God is the God of mercy, and you see it immediately in the case of Adam and Eve. And when we get down to verses 20 to 24 … we’re going to learn in those verses that redemption is actually promised right then and right there, immediately after the curse.

So they were called to honor God, they were called to glorify God, to obey God. They didn’t do it. They didn’t find in God their highest love, their purest delight, their greatest joy. They disobeyed. They had a clear word from God that the sentence for that disobedience was death and yet when they sinned, God withheld His hand and demonstrated mercy and grace to them. And the promise of redemption also was in the curse to Eve, that there would come one from the woman who would bruise the serpent’s head. There’s more of that redemptive promise in verses 20 to 24, as I said.

But the question when you study the Old Testament is not the question, Why does God kill these people? The question is, Why does He let so many people live who should be dead? The wages of sin is what? Death. The soul that sins, it shall die …

Adam and his wife, they should have died on the spot. People say, “Well, there’s certainly no grace in the Old Testament.” There certainly is. There’s plenty of grace in the Old Testament. You want to hear something? There is as much grace in the Old Testament as there is in the New Testament – because sinners live. That’s common grace, mercy.

Henry also discusses God’s mercy here:

But observe a mixture of mercy in this sentence. (1.) Adam himself is not cursed, as the serpent was (v. 14), but only the ground for his sake. God had blessings in him, even the holy seed: Destroy it not, for that blessing is in it, Isa 65 8. And he had blessings in store for him; therefore he is not directly and immediately cursed, but, as it were, at second hand. (2.) He is yet above ground. The earth does not open and swallow him up; only it is not what it was: as he continues alive, notwithstanding his degeneracy from his primitive purity and rectitude, so the earth continues to be his habitation, notwithstanding its degeneracy from its primitive beauty and fruitfulness. (3.) This curse upon the earth, which cut off all expectations of a happiness in things below, might direct and quicken him to look for bliss and satisfaction only in things above.

God told Adam that the ground would produce thorns and thistles for him and that he would eat the plants of the fields (verse 18).

Henry elaborates:

His habitation is, by this sentence, cursed: Cursed is the ground for thy sake; and the effect of that curse is, Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth unto thee. It is here intimated that his habitation should be changed; he should no longer dwell in a distinguished, blessed paradise, but should be removed to common ground, and that cursed. The ground, or earth, is here put for the whole visible creation, which, by the sin of man, is made subject to vanity, the several parts of it being not so serviceable to man’s comfort and happiness as they were designed to be when they were made, and would have been if he had not sinned. God gave the earth to the children of men, designing it to be a comfortable dwelling to them. But sin has altered the property of it. It is now cursed for man’s sin; that is, it is a dishonourable habitation, it bespeaks man mean, that his foundation is in the dust; it is a dry and barren habitation, its spontaneous productions are now weeds and briers, something nauseous or noxious; what good fruits it produces must be extorted from it by the ingenuity and industry of man. Fruitfulness was its blessing, for man’s service (ch. 1 11, 29), and now barrenness was its curse, for man’s punishment. It is not what it was in the day it was created. Sin turned a fruitful land into barrenness; and man, having become as the wild ass’s colt, has the wild ass’s lot, the wilderness for his habitation, and the barren land his dwelling, Job 39 6; Ps 68 6. Had not this curse been in part removed, for aught I know, the earth would have been for ever barren, and never produced any thing but thorns and thistles. The ground is cursed, that is, doomed to destruction at the end of time, when the earth, and all the works that are therein, shall be burnt up for the sin of man, the measure of whose iniquity will then be full, 2 Pet 3 7, 10.

As God cursed Eve’s sphere of the family, He cursed Adam’s sphere, which was work — toiling the ground: Adam versus adamah.

God concluded his curse on Adam by saying that he would eat food by the sweat of his brow and this would continue until he returned to the ground — death — since from it he was taken; ‘for dust you are and to dust you will return’ (verse 19).

MacArthur explains:

The man suffers the effects of the curse in the field, the place of his life and labor. For her, the pain comes in a relationship between her children and her husband; for him, the pain comes in relationship with the ground as the battle for bread is waged.

… The man engages in the battle for the food and support of the family. Man’s life is not going to be easy. Not only is he personally sinful, depraved, fallen, decaying, and headed toward death, but he’s going to have another problem, he’s going to find that the very ground which provides for him his life and sustenance for himself and his family is not going to willfully submit to him. Life becomes for him hard work. The joy of paradise is gone.

You know, once, when he was in the garden, there was just everything there – everything for him to eat, back in chapter 2. It was all pleasing, verse 9. It was all good for food, and he could just enjoy it. Oh, he needed to do a little cultivating but he expended no energy, he just plucked its wondrous fruits. And now all of a sudden the ground becomes his enemy and he has to subdue it. He becomes subordinate to the dirt. There’s a permanent rupture in man’s easy relationship to the life that God had originally given him in paradise …

You remember back in chapter 2 of Genesis that Eden was well watered. There were actually four rivers, a river flowing out of Eden and splitting into four parts, incredibly fertile land. It was productive and it was free from weeds, free from thorns and thistles, free from drought. And all a man needed to do was just pick its treasures and enjoy them without exerting himself.

A cursed ground is the opposite, then. Lack of water, problems with the soil, problems with weeds, problems with the elements, problems with the weather, problems with destructive animals, problems with destructive birds, problems with destructive organisms and insects. Those are all the problems that plague the ground. The earth will yield enough, it’ll yield its bounty. In fact, the earth will yield a rich and wonderful variety for man to enjoy, but in order for that to happen, it’s going to take a tremendous effort to get that bounty out of the ground.

MacArthur discusses a life of toil:

Toil is itstsabon in Hebrew, it means misery, it means sorrow, or it can be translated as here, toil. Human labor is in view, and it’s not just agriculture, it’s more than that. It’s all the work in which man engages. The ground is representative of man’s sphere. In that day it was only agrarian work. Psalm 127:2 says, “The bread of sorrows, the bread of anxious toil.” For us to eat, for us to provide food and a place to live for our families calls for a life time of work, toil, effort.

Proverbs 5:10, “Let strangers be filled with your strength and your hard-earned goods go to the house of an alien.” Again, goods are hard earned. It takes a lifetime of work. In chapter 10 of Proverbs, verse 22, we find that it is the blessing of the Lord that makes rich, but everywhere else in Proverbs, it is associated with hard work. It says in that verse, “It is the blessing of the Lord that makes rich and He adds no sorrow to it.” The work part has the sorrow built into it; God adds no sorrow to the things that He graciously gives us. In Proverbs 24, verse 23, again it’s a similar thing and you find it in Isaiah 63.

So the realm of man’s life is a place of toil, a place of sorrows. I love that, Psalm 127:2, “He eats the bread of sorrow.” Men will eat and he will provide for his family, just as children and husbands will be a blessing to their wives and their mothers but not without great effort and not without great toil and not without great pain. The earth yields, but it yields only with immense effort.

A worker’s appetite (Proverbs 16:26) urges him on, works for him, because of his hunger. If he wants to eat, he has to work. That’s the way it is. In Proverbs 27, “Know well the conditions of your flocks,” verse 23, “pay attention to your herds.” You better do that because if you don’t take care of what you have, you’re going to lose it. So we live in a life of work.

It has taken centuries for man to be able to produce copious amounts of food, be it vegetables or meat.

MacArthur contrasts French food production in the 1700s versus American production in the year 2000, when he delivered these sermons:

… in the eighteenth century, for example, in France, you would find that eighteenth-century French farming produced about 345 pounds of wheat per acre. Modern American farmers produce about six times as much, about 2,150 pounds of wheat per acre. Early fifteenth-century French farmers produced about 2.7 to 3.7 pounds of wheat per man hour, and the rate fell by about half over the next two centuries. Modern American farmers produce about 857 pounds per man hour as compared to 2.7, about 230 up to 310 times as much as their French counterparts.

French farmers worked very hard just to barely eke out a living. As the great French historian Fernand Braudel pointed out, “It became very difficult to sustain life when productivity in wheat fell below 2.2 pounds per man hour. But for most of the 350 years from 1540 to 1890, productivity was well below that level.”

I mean if you go back to the French Revolution, that’s partly why there was a French Revolution. People were starving to death. That’s how it has been for most of the world for most of human history, and you can look at the television from time to time and see the emaciated millions of masses in Africa who are still living out that sad scenario, trying to eke out an existence and mothers having myriad babies who perish before they ever reach adulthood.

This explains why earlier generations spent most of their time and most of their resources on food alone. Compare that with the United States. Under six percent of total consumer expenditures in the United States are for food – under six percent. We have 94 percent of our money going somewhere other than to feed us. Now, in other nations today and in past history, almost everything went just to provide a meal for your family. And life was very hard. I don’t know if you’ve studied any of that history. It fascinates me and whenever I have the opportunity, I read as much as I can about it.

MacArthur walks us through modern advances in technology in general, bearing in mind that most of these are relatively recent in the overall timeline of history:

We have had some amazing developments, folks, such as the invention of glass because glass admits light and heat but excludes cold and pests. That made a huge difference in the world. And then somebody invented screens to admit fresh air and exclude disease-bearing insects. And somebody else came along and developed ways to purify drinking water and process sewage. And then came mechanical refrigeration to prevent food spoilage and the consequent waste of food and also disease. Then came inventions that made work safer and travel safer and sanitary medical practices and antibiotics and so forth and so forth and so forth, modern surgical techniques.

Now, you might think you would like to be Louis XIV or Louis XVI, you might think you would like to have been Henry VIII and lived in a palace. But if that were the case for you, even at best, you would just be doing everything you could to make sure you ate, your family ate, and all your subjects had enough food so they didn’t starve to death, and that your army was strong enough so that it could at least fight if another army engaged it.

You might think you would like to have been an eighteenth or nineteenth century king, but you would have had to do without electricity and all its powers, lights, telephones, radio, television, refrigerators, air conditioners, fans, VCRs, x-rays, MRIs, computers, the Internet, printing presses, and all other industrial automation. You would have had to do without internal combustion engines and all that they power (cars, trucks, buses, planes, farms, construction equipment, trains, ships, et cetera). And every other synthetic thing like plastic, nylon, orlon, rayon, vinyl, and thousands of other products from grocery bags to pantyhose and everything in between, compact discs – and you can go on and on.

There wouldn’t be any artificial body joints and organ donations, and you couldn’t enjoy air conditioning. You couldn’t enjoy a cold drink because there wasn’t any ice, unless you lived in the winter where there was ice on the ground. You couldn’t have talked with anybody other than have a conversation with them. In those days, it didn’t make much sense to write a letter to somebody because you would have to deliver it – you might as well just go there and talk because the letter wouldn’t get there any faster than you because the only way the letter would get there would be if somebody took it there.

There was no way until telegraphy to send a message, the advent of the telegraph in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Prior to that, you couldn’t communicate at a distance in writing any faster than you could if you just went there and said whatever was on your mind. You couldn’t have listened to recorded music. You couldn’t have viewed photographs or television, as you know, or motion pictures or whatever – whatever. And when you think about what they endured in terms of trying to survive with medicine the way it was….

I was reading something I really didn’t know about. In the eighteenth century, there was a process – there was no antiseptic until half a century after that – the doctor was more likely to kill you than he was to cure you because he had two techniques typically that he used, at least in Europe. One of them was bleeding you. When you went in and you had some kind of a problem, they just started sucking blood out of you. The very opposite of what anybody would do today. The other thing was called laudable pus. They had the idea that pus was a curative, and so you took pus from one patient and spread it around to the others – and you wonder why there were epidemics and plagues and all of that.

Hard for us to identify with some of that, isn’t it? Now, it’s just a little tiny piece of time that we live in over the last 150 years when we’ve had the kind of things that we’ve had slowly developing.

Henry looks at the second half of verse 19:

“Thou shalt return to the ground out of which thou wast taken; thy body, that part of thee which was taken out of the ground, shall return to it again; for dust thou art.“ This points either to the first original of his body; it was made of the dust, nay it was made dust, and was still so; so that there needed no more than to recall the grant of immortality, and to withdraw the power which was put forth to support it, and then he would, of course, return to dust. Or to the present corruption and degeneracy of his mind: Dust thou art, that is, “Thy precious soul is now lost and buried in the dust of the body and the mire of the flesh; it was made spiritual and heavenly, but it has become carnal and earthly.” His doom is therefore read: “To dust thou shalt return. Thy body shall be forsaken by thy soul, and become itself a lump of dust; and then it shall be lodged in the grave, the proper place for it, and mingle itself with the dust of the earth,” our dust, Ps 104 29. Earth to earth, dust to dust. Observe here, (1.) That man is a mean frail creature, little as dust, the small dust of the balance—light as dust, altogether lighter than vanity—weak as dust, and of no consistency. Our strength is not the strength of stones; he that made us considers it, and remembers that we are dust, Ps 103 14. Man is indeed the chief part of the dust of the world (Prov 8 26), but still he is dust. (2.) That he is a mortal dying creature, and hastening to the grave. Dust may be raised, for a time, into a little cloud, and may seem considerable while it is held up by the wind that raised it; but, when the force of that is spent, it falls again, and returns to the earth out of which it was raised. Such a thing is man; a great man is but a great mass of dust, and must return to his earth. (3.) That sin brought death into the world. If Adam had not sinned, he would not have died, Rom 5 12. God entrusted Adam with a spark of immortality, which he, by a patient continuance in well-doing, might have blown up into an everlasting flame; but he foolishly blew it out by wilful sin: and now death is the wages of sin, and sin is the sting of death.

I thought about God’s curses on Adam and Eve all week. The Bible, being inspired by the Holy Spirit, does not go into detail on other things affecting the human condition in a personal sense, but I cannot help but wonder if everything unpleasant, e.g. body odours and bodily functions, most of which smell sulfurous (like hell), arose from Original Sin.

One day, as we enjoy our heavenly rest, we might find out. I posit that Eve originally smelled divine, like attar of roses, and Adam exuded a fragrant scent of sandalwood. After Original Sin, hell set in and perfume was sorely needed.

The story of Adam and Eve continues next week.

Next time — Genesis 3:20-21