Lifting the Curse on the Ground (Genesis 3)

Genesis 3 tells a story of woe in idyllic paradise. After the sneaky snake tempts the woman, both she and the man eat fruit from the tree that Yahweh God had forbidden to them. Consequently, the couple now find themselves with the stark realisation of their nakedness, and dread over what the deity will think of them. And so, when they hear his steps in the garden which they are supposed to tend, they hide in fear and shame.

After a quick interrogation, Yahweh God determines the guilt of all involved, and issues curses upon them—on the snake, the woman, and the man.

The curse on the man involves a curse on the ground:

“Damn the ground on your account!
With hardship will you eat of it
all the days of your life.
Both thorn and thistle will it sprout for you,
so that you must eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your nose will you eat bread,
until your return to the ground.
Since you were taken from it
—for dust is what you are—
then to dust will you return.”

— Genesis 3:17b–19 (my translation)

As a result of this curse, the man and the woman are expelled from the paradise garden they were tending, with its variety of fruit-bearing trees. They are sent out into a barren world (cf. Gen 2:5–6), in which the ground is their enemy. Their efforts at toiling no longer yield them the lush fruits of paradise, but the thorns and thistles of frustration. They are forced to work harder than they ever have before, with the sweat of their exertion pouring down their nose. Even then, they will collapse into the hostile ground, or earn the measliest of crusts that will send them foraging for any wild plant in the open field that they can find. And in the end they will die a miserable death.

This sorry situation explains why God found Cain’s offering of the “fruit of the ground” despicable (Gen 4:3–5). Cain could not cultivate anything meriting the status of an offering. He simply brings to the altar whatever he finds sprouting from the ground, rather than what he works to produce. Abel, on the other hand, evidently figures out a way to earn a crust while the curse is in effect: don’t eat the grass, but rather raise and eat the animals that eat the grass. And of these, he offers the firstborn of his flock—the most significant product of his personal work. For this entrepreneurial and respectful effort, he earns Yahweh’s favour.

Yet, the curse on the ground remains, and life for humanity is bitterly harsh. It is a wretched existence that, generations later, leads Noah’s parents to wish (or prophesy) of their son,

“May this one give us relief from our work,
from the hardship of our hands,
from the ground that Yahweh damned.”

—Genesis 5:29 (my translation)

I’ve often heard preachers say that we still live with the effects of this curse today. After all, the curse on the ground was just one of several that Yahweh pronounced. Snakes still slither along the ground, as the curse upon the snake stipulated; women give birth in the most horrendous pain, as the woman was cursed in the garden; and the grave is the destiny of us all, as the man’s curse promises. So the earth is also cursed, and the frustration and futility of work are reflective of this.

However, this is not quite right.

To think that the curse on the ground is indicative of our reality today is actually a mistake. For when we read on in Genesis, we find that Yahweh lifts the curse on the ground. After the “uncreation” of the flood, Noah emerges from the ark into a renewed, pristine world, and offers Yahweh a sumptuous sacrifice.

Noah now built an altar to Yahweh, and took some of all the clean animals and some of all the clean birds, and offered them as incinerations on the altar. Yahweh now smelled the appeasing aroma, and Yahweh said in his heart, “I no longer curse the ground on account of the man, even though the intent of the man’s heart be evil from his youth. And I no longer strike down all life as I have just done.”

— Genesis 8:20–21 (my translation)

The lifting of the curse on the ground means that the earth no longer functions as a source of utter frustration for humanity. On the contrary, the earth begins to respond to human cultivation as fruitfully as it did in Eden. Humanity’s agricultural pursuits no longer yield unpalatable brambles. Instead, with human endeavour, the ground can explode in fecundity, allowing humanity to continue the task for which Yahweh originally employed the man in the paradise garden: cultivating the ground. No longer are humans forced to forage for the odd wild plant. The hardship of the past is gone.

Just to underscore the point, with the curse now lifted, Noah decides to become a novice farmer. Evidently, the earth responds to his rookie efforts a little too well:

Noah now began to be a man of the ground. He planted a vineyard, drank some of the wine, and got drunk.

— Genesis 9:20–21a (my translation)

The wish of Noah’s parents, that he give them relief from the hardship of the curse, came true. Accordingly, from Noah onwards, humanity pursues agricultural farming and pastoral farming with great success.

From this, there are three implications I’d like to reflect on.

1. The earth is not cursed. It is, rather, a source of wellbeing for humanity, and it is a human responsibility to care for it. The current environmental issues we face on the planet are not because of God, but because of our own irresponsibility.
2. Work is not a curse. When Yahweh put the man in the paradise garden of Eden, he commissioned him to work it. There was no sense that the man simply had to snap his fingers to achieve his work goals. There was, rather, the expectation of hard work, but with commensurate reward. As the man cultivated the earth, so it would yield to him, and reward his efforts. The curse that God placed on the man was that the earth would no longer yield to him, making his work futile (“the sweat of your nose” could also be translated as “the sweat of your frustration”). But this situation was temporary, as the Noah narrative indicates. Work is part of God’s good intention for humanity, and decent reward for decent effort should be the way we operate. Indeed, as Abel’s example demonstrates, God is pleased when we work well and honour him.
3. We need to stop preaching that the earth is cursed. This includes rethinking the meaning of passages like Romans 8:18–21:

For I think that the sufferings of our present time are not equal to the future glory that is to be revealed to us. For the expectation of creation is awaiting the revelation of the sons of God. For creation was subjected to aimlessness, not willingly, but by the one who subjected it, in the hope that that same creation will be liberated from its servitude to decay into the liberation of the glory of the children of God.

— Romans 8:18–21 (my translation)

This passage is often preached with reference to Genesis 3, and it’s not hard to see why. But if Paul knew his Bible (and he most certainly did—especially the early chapters of Genesis!), he was probably not arguing that the earth continued to be cursed into his own day. Perhaps Paul was specifically looking at the curse on the earth in a typological manner—a precedent, rather than an ongoing reality. Or perhaps Paul saw creation as having an inherent nature of aimlessness—cycles of life and decay, which imbue it with a metaphorical desire to break out of the cycle—to attain an eternal destiny that can only be achieved in God’s greater purposes in Christ. Perhaps there is another explanation. Either way, I don’t think it’s tenable to view Paul as arguing that the curse on the earth was ongoing.

All this is not to suggest that humanity and the world is not “fallen.” Once sin entered the world, it could not be taken back, and we continue to live with the consequences of sin—our own, as well as that of others. Rather, it’s simply to say that we should read the Bible more closely than we do, and base our theology on its entire witness, not just parts of it. As we read Genesis, we see God lift the curse on the ground, and so we should distinguish that curse from the evident tendency to death and decay that we (still) see in the world around us.

Genesis 1–2

I’m in the process of putting together a seminar on the first two chapters of Genesis for an event that will look at how the Bible and science relate. Crucial to the task is understanding the text of Genesis 1–2 well. I’ve been largely dissatisfied with many translations of these chapters, as they often shape the text in unhelpful ways that seem motivated by a particular agenda. While complete objectivity in translation is impossible, I believe we can do better than we have. Much better!

So I thought I’d post up my own translation of Genesis 1 and 2. My aim in this translation is not to align the text with a previously held view of origins or how the chapters do or don’t relate. Rather I want to convey in fluent modern English a sense of what an ancient person would have heard as the text was read in Hebrew. That’s also why I’ve deliberately left out verse markers: I’m aiming for ease in reading and less subconscious disjunction. I have, however, put larger gaps between paragraphs where I have determined the Hebrew text has a clear structural markers. I’ve also aimed to bring out a clearer sense of how the Hebrew verbs work in the text.

So without further ado, here’s my translation of Genesis 1–2.

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GENESIS 1–2

At first, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was disorder and disarray, with darkness over the surface of the ocean, and God’s wind swirling over the surface of the water.

Then God said, “Let there be light.”

And there was light.

God saw that the light was good, so God differentiated between the light and the darkness. God called the light ‘day’, while the darkness he called ‘night’.

Evening came and morning came: Day One.

 

Then God said, “Let there be a ceiling in the midst of the water, and let there be a differentiation between bodies of water.”

So God made the ceiling and he differentiated between the water underneath the ceiling and the water above the ceiling.

And that’s how it was.

God called the ceiling ‘heavens’.

Evening came and morning came: a second day.

 

Then God said, “Let the water under the heavens pool together in one place, so dry land may appear.”

And that’s how it was.

God called the dry land ‘earth’, while the pooling of water he called ‘seas’. God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation across the earth: seed-bearing plants, and fruit-producing trees, each with its own variety of fruit with its own seed inside it.”

And that’s how it was.

The earth brought forth vegetation: a variety of seed-bearing plants, and a variety of fruit-producing trees with its own seed inside it. God saw that it was good.

Evening came and morning came: a third day.

 

Then God said, “Let there be luminaries in the ceiling of the heavens to differentiate between the day and the night, serving as signs, holidays, days, and years, and serving as luminaries in the ceiling of the heavens to shine on the earth.”

And that’s how it was.

God made the two large luminaries—the bigger luminary in charge of the day, and the smaller luminary in charge of the night—as well as the stars. God put them in the ceiling of the heavens to shine on the earth, to have authority over the day and the night, and to differentiate between the light and the darkness. God saw that it was good.

Evening came and morning came: a fourth day.

 

Then God said, “Let the water teem with teeming wildlife, and let birds fly over the earth across the ceiling of the heavens.”

So God created the great monsters and all the wriggling wildlife with which the water teems, in all their varieties, and every variety of winged bird. God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fertile, proliferate, and fill the water in the seas. And let the birds proliferate on the earth.”

Evening came and morning came: a fifth day.

 

Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth a variety of wildlife: animals that walk and animals that wriggle—a variety of land-based life.

And that’s how it was.

God made a variety of wildlife: the varieties of walking animals, and all the variety of animals that wriggle across the earth. God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let’s make humanity in our image, just like us, so they may rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, the animals that walk, and the whole earth, and every animal that wriggles across the earth.”

So God created humanity in his image.
In the image of God he created it.
Male and female he created them.

God blessed them. God said to them, “Be fertile, proliferate, fill the earth, master it, and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, and all life that wriggles across the earth.”

Then God said, “There! I’ve given you every seed-bearing plant on the surface of the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it. It’s yours for food. For the land animals, the birds of the heavens, and anything that wriggles across the earth that has the breath of life I’ve given all the green plants for food.”

And that’s how it was.

God saw all that he had made. And there it was: very good!

Evening came and morning came: the sixth day.

 

So the heavens, the earth, and their entire array were completed. God completed the work he had done on the seventh day. So he stopped all the work he had done on the seventh day. God blessed the seventh day and made it special, because on it God stopped all the work he had created by making.

 

These are the narratives of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

On the day Yahweh God made the heavens and the earth, before there was any bush of the field on the earth, before any plant of the field had sprouted (for Yahweh God had not yet made it rain on the earth), and there was no man to work the ground, a spray would come up from the earth and water the entire surface of the ground.

Yahweh God now formed the man with mud from the ground, and blew the breath of life into his nostrils. So the man now became a living being.

Yahweh God now planted a garden in Eden over in the east, and there he put the man he had formed. Yahweh God now made the ground sprout with every tree that was beautiful in form and good for food. The Tree of Life was in the centre of the garden, and the Tree of Knowing Good and Bad. A river came out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it split, becoming four branches. The name of the first was Pishon—that’s the one that goes around the entire land of Hawilah, where there is gold (and the gold of that land is good—there is fragrant resin and onyx stone there!). The name of the second river was Gihon—that’s the one that goes around the entire land of Nubia. The name of the third river was Tigris—that’s the one that runs along the east of Assyria. And the fourth river was the Euphrates.

Yahweh God now took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to look after it. Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “You may eat from any tree of the garden, but from the Tree of Knowing Good and Bad you must not eat, for the day you eat from it you will die.”

Yahweh God now said, “It’s not good for the man to be on his own. I’ll make him a helper to match him.”

So Yahweh God now formed out of the ground all the wildlife and all the birds of the heavens, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. Whatever the man would call the living being, that was its name. So the man now named all the animals, the birds of the heavens, and all the wildlife. But no helper was found to match the man.

So Yahweh God now made a deep slumber fall over the man so that he fell asleep. Then he took one of his ribs and closed it up with flesh. Yahweh God then built the rib he had taken from the man into a woman and brought her to the man. The man now said,

“This time, this is bone from my bones,
and flesh from my flesh.
This will be called ‘woman’,
for from a man this was taken.”

This is why a man leaves his father and mother, bonds with his wife and they become one flesh.

Both of them were now naked—the man and woman—but they were not embarrassed.

“A Man after God’s Own Heart”

I’ve written an article for the Journal for the Evangelical Study of the Old Testament (JESOT 2.2) titled, ‘“A Man after God’s Own Heart’: David and the Rhetoric of Election to Kingship’. Here’s the abstract:

The anticipation of David as a “man after Yahweh’s own heart” in 1 Sam 13:14 is to be understood as a statement about Yahweh’s election of David to kingship, rather than about David’s own moral qualities. Comparison of similar phrases in Akkadian texts shows that the phrase is part of the rhetoric of divine election to kingship. The focus on divine election does not mean David has no positive attributes. On the contrary, he is depicted as a man with clear leadership qualities. The phrase serves the Davidic apologia in distinguishing David from Saul as Yahweh’s personal choice for king.

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God, Jonah, and the Benefit of Hebrew

Many of us know the beginning of the Jonah story well: God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach against it, but Jonah has other ideas. Instead of going to Nineveh in the heart of Assyria (modern day northern Iraq), Jonah gets on a ship bound for Tarshish (probably the Atlantic coast of Spain). But on his voyage to the other side of the known world, God catches up with Jonah, sending a storm that threatens to sink the ship. Jonah realises that God is chasing him and so offers himself as a placation to the stormy seas. He is thrown overboard by the frightened sailors, and just when we think Jonah is going to drown, he is swallowed up and preserved by a giant fish. Jonah’s life is saved and he is eventually spat up onto shore for ‘take two’.

Well, that’s at least how the story seems to run when you read an English Bible. According to our English translations, Jonah tries to outrun God, but God manages to chase him down. However, the Hebrew text of Jonah 1 actually suggests a slightly different storyline. And it all comes down to two particular types of verb that Hebrew uses in the narrative.

You see in Biblical Hebrew, the main job of the verbs is to get you to look at actions in particular ways, rather than simply tell you when the actions occur. It’s as though the Hebrew language drops you into the story itself to walk around and experience the action directly. And the Jonah narrative is no different.

The first verb relevant to our discussion is what we call the wayyiqtol (a.k.a. the ‘consecutive preterite’). This verb type is commonly found in narratives and helps drive a narrative forward. It lets you watch an action as though it were happening live. So every time you get a wayyiqtol verb in Hebrew, you are watching an action unfold right in front of you. Most of the verbs in Jonah 1 happen to be wayyiqtol verbs, and these help push the storyline along. And, as is custom in English, when you tell a story, you use the past tense:

• The word of Yahweh came to Jonah… (v.1)
• So Jonah got up to flee… (v.3)
• He went down to Joppa… (v.3)
• he found a ship… (v.3)
• he paid the fare… (v.3)
• he boarded it… (v.3)

As you can see, the narrative has a fairly brisk pace in v.3, as it relates Jonah’s hurried attempt to run from his divine commission.

However, in v.4, we encounter a different type of verb—what we call the qatal (a.k.a. the ‘perfect). Rather than depict an action happening live, it presents an action as a simple, established fact. When you come across a qatal verb in a narrative it usually serves to halt the narrative momentum by bringing something else to your attention. In this particular case it focuses on God’s action:

• But Yahweh had hurled a huge wind into the sea… (v.4)

You will notice that this action indicates a past tense. Since English convention usually tells stories in the past tense, it is often difficult to distinguish the significance of this particular qatal verb from the previous wayyiqtol verbs. Most English versions translate both types of verb with a simple past tense. However, the shift in verb usage here is quite significant. The story stops and we do not watch Yahweh hurl a huge wind into the sea. Rather, the narrator tells us that this action is already an established fact. In other words, it seems that Yahweh had already performed this action beforehand. The narrative then resumes the live action with a wayyiqtol verb:

• …and it became a huge storm at sea… (v.4)

What does all this mean? It seems that the narrator wants us to understand that Yahweh is in complete control of the situation. Although Jonah is on the run, trying to avoid his divine commission, Yahweh has already taken pre-emptive action, seemingly knowing that Jonah would be on his way to Tarshish rather than Nineveh. Yahweh is, therefore, not chasing after Jonah, as though Jonah might get away from him. And the storm at sea is not Yahweh’s Plan B. Rather, Yahweh had already placed the storm at sea, knowing full well that Jonah would be heading that way instead of heading to Nineveh. God had ‘snookered’ Jonah in advance.

In addition to the type of verbs the narrator uses, it is interesting to note the order in which the narrator describes the actions. We are left to discover the fact of God’s pre-emptive storm placement at the same time Jonah does. Thus, our picture of God develops gradually throughout the book, as we learn about his supreme sovereignty as well as, later in the story, his supreme compassion on a foreign enemy. We discover things about God in a way that allows us to critique Jonah’s presumption in ch.4.

Who said it isn’t worthwhile learning Biblical Hebrew? There’s gold in them there verbs!