Good question Jay. It is certainly interpreted that way most of the time. However, is it God who cursed the ground, or is it now man that curses the ground? In Eden, the earth freely gave up the good fruit for consumption, and was a something to be thankful for, but now outside of Eden, man is forced to sweat and dig in the soil as he moves to an agricultural based existence, to feed all the babies being born, or moves the livestock to new pastures when the grass gives out of the old as he herds. The earth is no longer something the freely gives forth, but something that must be worked. Might make Adam curse a little.
my thought is that the ground was not changed, but Adam was, and that change in worldview made the ground cursed.
Hi Jay
I have three approaches to this currently, so here goes.
(1) The curse itself is a curse only on the ground (adamah), which is the soil that’s tilled for agriculture, as opposed to the uncultivated “field” (sadeh), with which it’s contrasted in 2.4-6. As far as thorns and thistles are concerned, its productivity is actually increased! In effect the dust that Adam came from appropriately turns against him - the text suggests nothing else is affected at all. It was never a curse on the whole realm of nature, and since nature remains completely obedient to God, it should not be seen as any kind of corruption of its good.
(2) There’s a direct parallel with the covenant blessings and curses for Israel in Lev 26 and Deut 28. What God promises for Canaan is a kind of partial antitype of Eden. For the most part these consist of God’s commanding “nature” (as his obedient servant) either to bless or curse Israel, depending on their faithfulness to covenant. Nature is not corrupted here, but used as God’s instrument in “policing” the covenant. I suggest by analogy that the curse on Adam was of the same kind - a good creation used in punishment.
(3) Although I know many commentators disagree, I can’t help noticing the parallel between Gen 3.17-19, Gen 5.29 and Gen 8.21. Lamech pronounces the kind of fatherly blessing on Noah that is usually prophetic, and yet Noah’s main task is apparently to be the sole survor (with his offspring) of the flood while everyone else dies - cold comfort, surely. Yet God puts some kind of limitation on a curse on the ground (which is never how the Flood is described), which seems to me a fulfilment of Lamech’s promise. It seems to me that the text suggests the curse on the ground is spent after those generations through Noah (though the greater curse, death, remains of course to be dealt with). If that is not the correct interpretation, I find it hard to make Lamech’s words anything but superfluous and wrong, uniquely for biblical “paternal blessings”.
I find some possible support for this understanding of the curse in the Mesopotamian Atrahasis, in which before the gods send the flood as their “final solution” to the problem of mankind, they try starving him out by famine first. I conjecture both accounts may reflect a time of particular hardship lasting a number of generations, though of course that’s beyond a simple interpretation of Scripture.
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[quote=“bill_wald, post:12, topic:35779, full:true”]
I suppose if God creates a new heaven and new earth then all the water will be fresh until it ages a billion years.
The moral of the koan, if you like lobster, clams, oysters, shrimp, rockfish, flounder . . . eat them while you can. Nothing in prophecy specifically mentions pork chops and bacon in the next life.
[/quote]I think we will all be vegetarian in the next life. No worries - as long as there is coffee!
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Vegetarian zeal, to avoid the “sexual taint” of eating meat, was brought to the West by the Persian emissaries…
When people try to assess the origins of the Essenes, or the Therapeutae, they never think of the Persians … or the Hindu missionaries they brought with them… but the whole routine where they hide their “bathroom hole” from the rays of the Sun is a dead giveaway that the Persian metaphysics are at work here.
And in fact, I think the term “Maccabees” ultimately comes from this as well.
Most Greek students know that Maccabee is a reference to a hammer. But they don’t usually notice that the hammer in question is one that makes holes in leather and in sheet metal.
When they talk about the Maccabees, it could very well be word play: yes… they are hammerers … but they are also “the hole makers” … because of the great number of Essenes in the guerilla forces…
But, yes, I digress…
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