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BY THE SWEAT OF YOUR BROW
All Scripture references are to the New International Version, UK edition (1984) unless stated otherwise.
Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of 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.
– Genesis 3: 17-19
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IN HIS FIRST speech in the House of Commons as Prime Minister, May 13,
1940, Winston Churchill promised the British people ʻblood, toil, tears and
sweatʼ in the war against Germany. The phrase
has since entered the language and is quoted often. In addition to conjuring up memories of the
extraordinary efforts exerted by the nation on the battlefield and the home
front, the words are reminiscent of the forecast of general human experience
found in the book of Genesis.
The text describes the penalty which God inflicted on a rebellious Adam when he and his wife were expelled from Eden. The composition of the soil outside the garden apparently resisted easy cultivation. ʻIt will produce thorns and thistlesʼ shorthand for the work involved in tilling the land and removing stubborn and unwanted growth. ʻCursed is the ground because of youʼ carries more than one meaning.
First, the implication that Adam was to blame for the imposition of the Curse and its consequences. The cursing of the ground would be the most obvious, for Adam and his wife had lived in a region of the earth where drudgery was unknown.
Second, the cursing of the ground, and its resulting complications, would be to his detriment, making life harder, wearing him out and eventually killing him.
Third, the lessons learned by Adam and his descendants under such a life-and-energy-sapping regime would be to their eternal benefit. The aptly-named ʻpermission of evilʼ under which mankind has laboured for thousands of years, has taught them lessons which will at length inform their understanding of sin versus righteousness when Christ's kingdom is set up on earth and the curse is rolled back. This beneficial use of the expression ʻfor your sakeʼ is illustrated by the following texts: Gen. 12: 10-16; 18: 26; 26: 24; 1. Chron. 17: 19.
Man A Copy of the
Creator
God made Man the species, male and female in His ʻimage and likenessʼ. The term suggests inherited traits, and also implies that Man was a semblance of the divine on earth, with free moral agency and rulership (sway) over the earth (Gen. 1: 26, 27; compare 5: 3: ʻAdam had a son in his own likeness, in his own image . . .ʼ). Adam and Eve after him were created perfect, morally and biologically. Being perfect their genes coded for life, not death they could have gone on forever. Once they chose to disobey God, the process was disrupted, and they passed the defect on to all their offspring, along with an ever-shortening life span.
In the Genesis narrative Adam is the one on whom the Curse is pronounced, because he bears the principal responsibility for the defection. From now on he would have to slog his way through a difficult existence, cultivating the ground to feed himself and his family, wearing himself out and dying from the exertion. We can only dimly comprehend the regrets and anxieties which plagued him.
The statement in Gen. 3: 18 that ʻyou will eat the plants of the fieldʼ, has sufficient latitude for us to conjecture what man's intended diet might have been had he remained perfect. Regardless, the curse of dying and death was passed on through the DNA to the entire human race. The ages-long struggle for the basic necessities of life food, comfort, shelter and happiness proves this is so. In her translation, At the Start: Genesis Made New (Doubleday; 1993), Mary Phil Korsak renders Gen. 3: 19, ʻsoil you are and to the soil you shall returnʼ. This is tantamount to saying that Adam was condemned to dig his own grave.
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Man . . . who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law –
Though Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shrieked against his creed.
– Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92) –
Forfeiting his perfect life in paradise, Adam emerged into a landscape of perspiration, and all aspects of life have been thorny and thistley ever since. Man formed in the image of God was reduced to competing with the animals for food and battling the vagaries of climate and weather. Quite a come-down for the fresh-faced, wholesome being of whom Hebrews 2 remarks:
6 . . . [God] made him a little lower than the angels; 7 [God] crowned him with glory and honour 8 and put everything under his feet. In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him. [Emphasis added.]
Now, after thousands of years of decline and much diminished, Man must appear from the heavenly perspective a rather pathetic figure, far removed from the glory of his creation. At his fall, life became complicated at many levels, not least in an incessant daily struggle for the basic requirements of habitation, health and security of the person. This state of affairs has been ameliorated in modern times at least for certain swathes of the world's population through advances in hygiene, education and technology. But the elimination of death itself remains an impossible goal.
The Calvinistic doctrine of ʻtotal depravityʼ is largely correct in asserting that there is no aspect of the human condition left undamaged by the Curse of sin and imperfection. Which is to say, we are unable to recommend ourselves to God or win salvation on our own merit. Even our free will is impinged on by the perverse tendencies of the fallen nature, scuttling one's best intentions. As St. Paul puts it ʻI have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it outʼ (Rom. 7: 18).
Nonetheless, varying degrees of nobility, integrity, compassion, common sense, logic, etc., remain, so that the human condition is not one of total despair. This measure of optimism is what we would expect from a God whose chief interest is not in obliterating the race, but in saving it, albeit through a tough type of love, necessary to the end in view.
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Life is a foreign language: all men mispronounce it
Christopher Morley (1890-1957)
The effects of the Adamic Curse are wide-ranging, penetrating every aspect of personal life our bodies, minds, and even the environment in which we live. To the careless observer, this sends false cues as to the original intention, spawning distrust and contempt for the Creator, as if He could be so narrowly weighed and judged.
It is not possible to arrive at unadulterated truth in any field, secular or religious. Believers and non-believers alike will only ever arrive at an approximation of it, like a Moses viewing the Promised Land from afar but forbidden to set foot in it. Most people, under the effects of the Curse, veer off into shades of religious indifference, confusion or agnosticism. Some take refuge in atheism, which offers freedom from the need to acknowledge a Divine Mind.
The materialistic complexion of Science is not surprising, considering that some of the religious explanations on offer have proved to be untenable or unsatisfactory to practical minds. Intelligent people seek rational and testable explanations for the way things are and will naturally pursue other avenues than those dependent on faith. Unfortunately, most scientists deny there is a Maker, and since they are wedded to faulty assumptions about origins, they tend to overlook the obvious. No longer ʻthinking God's thoughts after himʼ (Kepler), they have substituted their own ideas. Nonetheless, God's truth, like rain, falls on both ʻthe righteous and the unrighteousʼ (Matt. 5: 45), and they will arrive at the right conclusions eventually, but by a circuitous route.
The atheistic perspective has cascaded into all disciplines and most scientists and researchers now adopt as fact the notion of undirected human evolution. Because it assumes very long ages for the development and progression of life in general, such a view crashes head on with the Bible on the origin of humankind, the length of time humanity has existed, and the ultimate goal of civilisation.
Sunshine On the Horizon
Faith is not an easy quality to sustain, and even those who do believe are often plagued with doubts. This, too, is an effect of the Curse; for God's loving purposes are obscured by clouds of ignorance and misunderstanding. In addition, faith is often attached to the wrong object. Religion which does not have Jesus at its centre worships a falsehood and can never grasp the full implication of Man's fall and his alienation from God or the permission of suffering and evil. Everyone has need of a Redeemer, who is Christ alone. But in this matter consensus is hard to achieve. The thorns and thistles of doubt and ambiguity, and the hard graft needed to root up prejudice against ʻreligionʼ, deters many from making the effort.
Belief in Christ is the only prescribed way to salvation. However, not everyone is able to exercise a saving faith under present conditions, the push and pull of other attractions and forces being too strong, disillusion too deep. For such people the majority their opportunity for salvation must wait until Christ's return and the establishment of His kingdom on earth, when faith will give way to sight and all questions will be answered.
Using the figure of a mountain to represent this kingdom, Isaiah 25: 7 tells us that
On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations: . . .
The word ʻsheetʼ is from the Hebrew word for molten, a term also used in connection with the golden calf-image of Ex. 32: 4. More or less impenetrable, this figurative cover has overshadowed humanity, filtering out the light of truth.
In that day of worldwide deliverance, not only will errors and misunderstandings be resolved, but the human family will come to know that their experiences with sin and suffering have brought them everlasting benefits, and they will rejoice to see a bright future opening up. Verse 8 continues:
He will swallow up death for ever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth. The LORD has spoken.
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February 2014. Author rights asserted, except that you may redistribute this article without permission. As a courtesy, please acknowledge the source.