Genesis 3:14-24: the implications of the fall

So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

    “Cursed are you above all livestock
       and all wild animals!
    You will crawl on your belly
       and you will eat dust
       all the days of your life.
    And I will put enmity
       between you and the woman,
       and between your offspring and hers;
    he will crush your head,
       and you will strike his heel.”

To the woman he said,

    “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
    with painful labour you will give birth to children.
    Your desire will be for your husband,
    and he will rule over you.”

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.
    It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field.
    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.”

Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.

The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

In this second part of Genesis 3, we see God's pronouncement on the effects of the fall - and they are wide-ranging, even just from this 'summary' we see here.  I'm going to take the themes in reverse order to how they occur in the chapter.

Relationship with the Earth

So, firstly (or lastly), our relationship with the earth is broken.  It is striking here that the language is completely passive - not  I will curse the ground because of you, but cursed is the ground because of you - the emphasis is on the fact that the ground is cursed because of the actions of human beings.  Even those of us who are not farmers do not need to look far in the news to see the devastating effect that humans have had on the earth, and the way that this, in turn causes the suffering of human beings, making it hard to create the food we need.  Added to this is the fact that it is the unfair distribution of food, wealth and resources that is more often the culprit, rather than the total amount of productive land available, behind poverty and food insecurity: it is because of the sin of humanity that some people do not have enough to eat.

However, I think it is fair to say that we can also apply this more generally to the sphere of work.  We undertake many kinds of work of 'cultivate' the earth, whether motivated by serving God or serving ourselves: this includes paid employment, voluntary work, but also shopping, budgeting and creating food for our families.  As the cost of living crisis accelerates and incomes fail to put food on the table, I'm sure there are many that are feeling the truth of the words by the sweat of you brow you will eat your food.  And, although the world's economic problems are endlessly complex and people have wildly different views on how to fix it, at the heart of the problem is greed and selfishness.

I want to be clear here that I believe strongly that this tangled mess of fallenness is corporate and complicated.  John writes: if we say we are without sin then we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8.  Individually, none of us are innocent of deliberate sin; deliberate turning away from God.  But the impacts we feel as a result of sin may not always be the ones related to our own actions.  There are numerous references in the Bible not only to the 'poor' but to the 'oppressed' (implying that many suffer due to the actions of others).  Furthermore, we all find ourselves in a situation where we cannot help but take part in actions that perpetuate the mess we're in - supporting irresponsible industry because it's the only way we can access food we can afford; emitting carbon dioxide because we need to drive to work and can't afford a Tesla.  This mess is more than just about guilt and punishment; the implications of humanity's rebellion against God are inescapable, and we need saving from more than just those actions for which we'd be found guilty in a court of law.

Our relationships with each other

God designed us to live in family and in community, in particular making male and female equal but different, living in a partnership that was not only necessary for procreation but also for cultivating the earth.  Our relationships are clearly not limited to those between men and women, and indeed our family structures not limited to the nuclear family the two can, in the right circumstances, create.  However, the equal but complementary pattern that characterises God's designed society starts here, and in God's words to the woman, we learn about how this becomes tainted.

God's last words to the woman are: Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.  There are many, many different angles to this statement.   Desire for the husband (or the man in general) has been interpreted as desire to rule over him, as well as desire to please him.  In this statement we see the situation that feminists have been lamenting - violence and oppression towards women due to the desire of men to 'rule over' them, but also the socialisation of women to act in ways that please men and also enable them to keep their power, reinforcing that rule.  This is in contrast with a God-orientated and equal 'helper' role.

We see from elsewhere in the passage the working out of this pronouncement: they no longer trust one another and feel vulnerable in their nakedness, and when God asks Adam what he has done, bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh becomes the woman you put here with me (Genesis 3:12) and the object of Adam's blame.

Mistrust, blame and desire to either rule over each other or make idols of one another have characterised society ever since - I don't need to look any further than my own behaviour to those closest to me to know that.

Our bodies

Finally, I'm going to draw together aspects of God's pronouncements to both Adam and Eve into the general theme of our bodies, and the way in which they do not work as they should as a result of fallenness.

We have already discussed the impacts of the fallen relationship with the earth as set out in God's pronouncement to Adam.  However, the further implication here is that our bodies will suffer.  Some people can't get enough to eat, and the rest of us struggle to eat the right things, get worn down by work ('by the sweat of your brow') and suffer accidents and injuries.  

For the woman, there is a further blow - the immense pain of childbirth and childrearing.  This is a multifaceted pain: first there is menstrual pain that fertile women experience, which can be anything from moderate to debilitating (and that's not even to mention the stigma around it that limits girls and women - particularly those who don't have access to sanitary products and those girls who have to give up school when their periods start).  Then there is the pain and danger of childbirth itself - even a 'straightforward' birth is excruciatingly painful, but childbirth can cause lifelong injuries or even death.  And finally, there is heart-wrenching pain of those who want children but either are unable to conceive them or lose them in pregnancy or infancy.   Bearing children was an enormously important part of the work of 'cultivation' that God made his people to do, and this is tainted as much as the more direct cultivation of the world around us alluded to in the words to Adam.

What is challenging about verse 16 is that for at least the first sentence of God's words, it's definitely in first person: I will make your pains in childbirth very severe.  But if we try and ignore this and simply put the pain around childbearing down to the natural consequences of a society divorced from God's rule and guidance, it will explain some things (stigma, medical negligence and lack of interest/understanding of conditions such as endometriosis, in some cases the 'over-medicalisation of pregnancy (although a possible increase in birth injuries due to this may be negated by a reduction in deaths), it does not explain the biological fact that, in contrast with other mammals, human females have periods, and long protracted labour of relatively premature infants with enormous heads.

So this is God's just judgement on humanity, but why?  I think the most compelling reason is that because of our rebellion and resulting destruction, human strength, lifespan and reproductive ability had to be curtailed: maybe otherwise we'd end up destroying the earth and/or ourselves. At the end of the chapter, God says: The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever. (Genesis 3:22).  And we read in verse 19 of the death that will come to us all: to dust you will return.   I think it's clear from what else we learn of God's character and plan elsewhere in the Bible that this is not an individual judgement - it is not those who have sinned more than others or trusted God less who miscarry, suffer infertility, or meet their death prematurely.  The pain is real, and whilst we can attribute it to God's necessary actions, we should mourn with those who suffer.  (And in terms of motherhood, the story doesn't end here - see my post on motherhood, for example).

There could be so much more to say, but this post is too long already!  So I will finish now with the one piece of hope that, despite everything, God already had a plan to conquer sin and death, when he said to the snake - the emissary of Satan, if not Satan himself:

And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
(Genesis 2:15)

Satan merely struck at the heals of Jesus, but it was all in vain, but in sending Jesus God would, and will, crush Satan once and for all.

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