As for Adam... (Gen 3:17-19)

¹⁷ To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of 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."

I want you to take note of what gets cursed. The ground. Not Eve. Not Adam. The earth suffers the curse for man's disobedience. We see this repeated throughout Scripture. Blood pollutes the land. Sexual immorality defiles the land and causes the land to spew out its inhabitants. The earth suffers for our disobedience. And ultimately, this will cause us to suffer as well since we are dependent upon the earth for our very lives.

"Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree ...." Are we to take from this that a man ought not to listen to his wife? On the contrary, pay attention to your wife and see if what she says conforms to what God says. The crime was not in listening to Eve; it was in doing what she said. She said to eat from the tree; God said don't.

And the result of the curse is that man must now get his food through painful toil. Eating from the tree of knowledge was easy. I presume that getting food before this sin was easy. Why else would God emphasize "painful toil" and "thorns and thistles" and "the sweat of your brow"? I would submit that prior to this sin, getting food involved none of these things. Before, getting food was easy. Now, it will be hard. This is way before there were farmers and butchers and shepherds and grocery stores and refrigeration and food preservation and so many other things we take for granted that make our getting food relatively easy. Adam had to plant the seeds and water the plants and pull weeds and drive the animals away that would eat his produce and then he had to harvest and separate the wheat from the chaff and he had to grind and make flour and do all the work involved just to get a piece of bread. I don't know if he had any tools to help him. I don't know if he could have used animals to help him plow and harvest. It truly was by the sweat of his brow that he was able to get any food.

This ought to give me some perspective. I might complain about having to take a couple hours out of the day to go grocery shopping. As if I have to do painful toil. I can get into my car and drive to the store and select whatever food I want and put it in a cart and pay for the food and bring it back home. I had nought to do with the preparation of any of the food. There was no painful toil. I did not have to deal with thorns and thistles. I did not sweat to produce this food. It's all very conveniently grown and harvested and packaged and placed on the shelves or bins and just waiting for me to pick it up. The hardest work I have to do is lifting the groceries. How easy I have it compared to Adam. And I think because getting our food is so easy now as compared to what Adam had to do we are wont to forget the curse on the earth.

"until you return to the ground...dust ... to dust..." The earth reclaims us. We were formed from the dust of the ground and to the dust we return. We like to think that we are mighty and superior to the earth and the other living creatures that inhabit it. After all, we were given dominion over the earth and over the fish and the birds and the land animals. We were told to fill the earth and subdue it. And what a job we have done. And still, we all of us must eventually go back from whence we came. It ought to give us pause.