Is the ground still affected by the curse of Genesis 3:17-19?

⮜ Answered Questions

Background facts

To begin with, here are some facts which form a background context to this question, which I hope can be accepted by most readers:

1. Human "work" -- even hard work -- is good, a blessing from God, and integral to the tasks which he gave mankind from the beginning:28 God blessed them. God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1:28WEB
   5 No plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up; for YHWH God had not caused it to rain on the earth. There was not a man to till the ground, Genesis 2:5WEB
   15 YHWH God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it. Genesis 2:15WEB
2. The second law of thermodynamics -- entropy and related processes -- was operating prior to the Fall/Gen.3:17 curse, and is a good part of God's creation.
3. Natural "decay" processes, (such as bacterial and fungal growth, oxidation/rust) and nutrient recycling were designed by God and operating prior to the Fall. They are a good part of God's creation.
4. A "weed" is simply a name for a plant which we don't want to use at that time, which is growing in or near a place which makes harvesting a wanted plant take a bit more time and effort. Weeds are usually plants that grow aggressively after the stable ground biome is disturbed in some way, such as by animal overgrazing, wild pig rooting, natural fires, plowing, etc. The (so-called) weed species are quick to germinate and quickly begin "healing" the disturbance, creating a protective vegetative/root system cover which reduces topsoil erosion and moves that local soil disturbance back towards the natural productive balance for that particular biome. This is a beautiful part of God's creation, and is analogous to the complex process which God designed into the human body to heal wounds. I submit that "weeds" are very good, and I have no doubt that they were designed into creation and operating before the Fall. I focus so much time on this, because I want to show how God cares for his creation through things like weeds and decay processes which men often dismiss as some type of "evil" (either because they haven't studied the creation thoroughly, or they only focus on a limited, "human convenience" perspective).
5. Thorns are a good part of God's creation. They serve the well-known function of physically deterring animals from eating a plant. These plant defensive measures are important features maintaining a balance between plants and animals in the natural symbiosis. Blackberries, for example, grow on my land. When I pick them, I sometimes get poked by the thorns, because I choose not to wear gloves. And I thank God for thorns on blackberries, because I am able to harvest more blackberries than I would if they didn't grow thorns.

The curse on the ground

Let's look at our "inciting verses": 17 To Adam he said, “Because you have listened to your wife’s voice, and have eaten from the tree, about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ the ground is cursed for your sake. You will eat from it with much labor all the days of your life. 18 It will yield thorns and thistles to you; and you will eat the herb of the field. 19 You will eat bread by the sweat of your face until you return to the ground, for you were taken out of it. For you are dust, and you shall return to dust.” Genesis 3:17-19WEB

The reference to "thorns and thistles" suggests that Adam's relationship with his primary working environment (the land) would be much more adversarial than what he experienced in the Garden. He could still get food from it, but it would take a lot more work. Thistles are actually edible plants, if you are motivated by a subsistence lifestyle. Let's compare this curse on the ground with a related curse which happened many years later. YHWH was speaking to Cain:

11 Now you are cursed because of the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 From now on, when you till the ground, it won’t yield its strength to you. You will be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth.” Genesis 4:11-12WEB

In this case, the murderer Cain was individually cursed, and this curse cut him off completely from the sustenance of the ground. It would no longer yield him anything, and he was forced to beg or trade for food (forcing him to rely completely upon other image-bearers for the rest of his life). This is the most extreme alienation which a man could experience from the earth/ground, and Cain recognized this:

13 Cain said to YHWH, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. 14 Behold, you have driven me out today from the surface of the ground. I will be hidden from your face, and I will be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth. Whoever finds me will kill me.” Genesis 4:13-14WEB

Returning our focus to Adam's curse, the Reformed Baptist interpreter John Gill (who was also a Hebrew scholar) commented on the "thorns and thistles" in v. 18:

Not for his advantage, but to give him more trouble, and cause him more fatigue and sorrow to root them up: these include all sorts of noxious herbs and plants, and troublesome weeds, which added to man's labour to pluck up, that those more useful might grow and flourish: and Rabbi Eliezer was of opinion, that if there had not been a new blessing upon the earth, it would have brought forth nothing else, as that which is rejected and nigh unto cursing does, ( Hebrews 6:8 ) and this curse continued, at least it was not wholly removed, until the times of Noah, (Genesis 8:21) which made it hard and difficult to the antediluvian patriarchs to get their bread. [emphasis added]

Why would John Gill suggest that this curse was removed by the Flood?

Post-Flood removal of the curse

Gill cites Gen. 8:21, so let's look at that verse: 21 YHWH smelled the pleasant aroma. YHWH said in his heart, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake because the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. I will never again strike every living thing, as I have done. Genesis 8:21WEB

On this verse, John Gill writes:

I will not again curse the ground for man's sake, or drown it for the sin of man, as he had cursed it for the sin of Adam, and which continued till this time; but now was taken off, and it became more fruitful, and very probably by means of the waters which had been so long upon it, and had left a fructifying virtue in it, as the waters of the Nile do in Egypt ... [emphasis added]

This verse records YHWH's reaction to the sacrifice ("smelled the pleasant aroma") which Noah made right after coming out of the ark. Literally, the Hebrew of this phrase is "restful savour". The Hebrew root here is linguistically related to both the name of Noah and the description of the ark coming to "rest" on the mountains of Ararat (Gen. 8:4).

YHWH promises "I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake," despite acknowledging that "the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth." YHWH had already cursed the ground, making it very difficult for Adam and his descendants to get food. I assert (agreeing with John Gill) that YHWH's statement should be understood in the context of the previous "curse on the ground" having been removed, and that part of this Noahic promise was that he would never again do what he did in Gen. 3:17-18. Nothing about man's "evil" nature had changed, when YHWH restarted humanity with Noah and his family. But YHWH's promise seems to be responding to two things:

1. the cleansing of the corruption (Gen. 6:11-13) of the earth by the Flood event
2. the acceptable sacrifice of Noah

Here, Noah's sacrifice is probably functioning as a type of Christ's sacrifice (which removed the curse of death).

What about other scriptural evidence for this interpretation? Let's look at a prophecy which was spoken when Noah himself was born:

28 Lamech lived one hundred eighty-two years, then became the father of a son. 29 He named him Noah, saying, “This one will comfort us in our work and in the toil of our hands, caused by the ground which YHWH has cursed.” Genesis 5:28-29WEB

The word commonly translated "comfort" in this verse is a wordplay on the name "Noah."

But there is another clue in the verse which ties Lamech's prophecy to Adam's curse. Robert Alter explains:

Most translations render this as "our toil, our work," or something equivalent. But the second term itsavon, does not mean "labor" but rather "pain," and is the crucial word at the heart of Adam's curse, and Eve's. Given that allusion, the two terms in the Hebrew — which reads literally, "our work and the pain of our hands" — are surely to be construed as a hendiadys, a pair of terms for a single concept indicating "painful labor." It should be noted that the "work of our hands" is a common biblical collocation while "pain of our hands" occurs only here, evidently under the gravitational pull of "work" with which it is paired as a compound idiom. Equally noteworthy is that the word itsavon appears only three times in the Bible (other nominal forms of the root being relatively common) — first for Eve, then for Adam, and now for Noah.

Noah's father thus prophesied that his son would give "us" (referring, obviously, to "mankind" generally, because only Noah and his descendants would survive the Flood) "comfort" from the effect caused by the curse. Comfort is a direct reversal of this curse. This prophecy fits perfectly with the interpretation that the curse was removed by the Flood (possibly in combination with Noah's post-Flood sacrifice).

Possibly related facts

Here are some interesting facts which might be related to this issue:

1. According to the Gen. 5 chronology, Noah's sons were the tenth generation after Adam. It seems to be a conceptual parallel that 10 generations are the limitation given in Deut. 23:2-3 for an Ammonite, Moabite, and a child of a forbidden union to "enter the assembly of YHWH". This might suggest a typical limitation which YHWH chooses to place upon the generational effects of sin.
2. According to the Gen. 5 chronology, Noah was the first man born after Adam's death.
3. After the Flood, Noah is presented as a kind of "new Adam", being re-issued the dominion mandate (Gen. 9:1-3).

None of the above facts prove the thesis that the curse on the ground was removed by the Flood. But they fit well, structurally, with it.

The empirical evidence of the removal of the curse

It is clear that the curse on the ground -- affecting the pre-Flood generations -- substantially reduced the productivity of the land, relative to God's original design, and what we are accustomed to now. I say "accustomed to", knowing that most of my readers do not even work with the land to any large degree. Most of us (in the wealthier nations, where we have the time and resources to read internet wikis) have been nearly completely disconnected from food production. Even if we have our own gardens, we do not even come close to experiencing the type of "pain of our hands" (toil and relatively unproductive labor) experienced by Adam and the pre-Flood generations.

Consider a modern farmer, sitting in his air-conditioned tractor. This tractor is computer-controlled, and it nearly drives itself. It multiplies the labor of the farmer immensely, allowing him to plow, plant, and harvest enough food to feed thousands.

Where is the pain of the farmer's hands? Where is the sweat? Did we, through our advanced technology, somehow make a mockery of God's curse? Or did God -- mercifully and graciously -- allow us to advance to the point where one man can feed thousands without breaking a sweat? Even in places where we see famine nowadays, it is not so much an issue of land productivity. It is an issue of corrupt civil governments, price controls, and failure to follow Biblical law by punishing evildoers (warlords and gangs).

If God mercifully and graciously allows us to live in a world where most of us do not have to involve ourselves in food production, then we can be pretty sure that the "curse on the ground" of Gen. 3:17-19 was removed by the Flood. This doesn't mean that God will never curse the "produce of the ground" (Deut. 28:18) when he deems it necessary to temporally punish mankind. But this will have been in response to our own sins, not to the sin of Adam.

There is actually something important lost in the extremity of the modern agricultural division of labor. Many of us have been mentally disconnected from the land, the weather upon which it depends, and the produce from it (upon which we all depend!). This "self-alienation" from the land is not good.

Every Christian should plant a garden, however small. It will help you to understand better certain things in scripture (like experiencing the meaning of YHWH sending rain upon both the just and the unjust [Matt. 5:45]).

Remember God's blessings and mercy, the next time you plant a carrot, and no thorns come up instead.