Why did God curse the ground? What is this "cursed earth"?
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,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from 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.”
Genesis 3:17 - 19
ESV - 17 And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. 18 Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.
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Asked October 02 2019
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Jack Gutknecht
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Tim Maas
In my opinion, the nature of the curse that God placed on the ground as a result of humanity's fall into sin is indicated in the passage cited in the question. If humans had not sinned, the ground would have brought forth vegetation for them to eat without the various adverse factors that contribute to the difficulty of agriculture (infertility, weeds, insect and animal pests, and so on). Humans may still have worked in that regard (as when God intended Adam and Eve to care for the garden in which they had been placed (Genesis 2:15)), but the work would have been a joyful labor with no difficulty at all. Instead, because of the curse, the ground would bring forth thorns and thistles, and humans would obtain food from it only "by the sweat of [their] brow" (Genesis 3:19).
char e
Yes, it is my opinion that we inherited not only imperfect bodies once Adam and Eve sinned, but also, the Earth became imperfect, and was no longer a paradise that it once was, and the way God intended it to be. Psalm 116:16 brings out that the heavens belong to God, but the Earth he has given to mankind, and I believe that he intends to restore it back to a paradise eventually.
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