Legends of the Fall

There is a fascinating juxtaposition of verses from Genesis concerning the consequences of the fall of man. The curse for the man involved a cursing of the ground, so that he would have to toil for every scrap of food, working hard for the rest of his life simply to eat. This is confirmed by Lamech’s comments, the father of Noah:

28 When Lamech had lived 182 years, he had a son. 29 He named him Noah and said, "He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed."

The actual curse from Genesis 3 is as follows:

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."

After the flood, when Noah, son of Lamech, came out of the ark, God said in Genesis 8:

20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.

So then, is the curse of the fall toward the man lifted? It certainly seems so from the context. History would also confirm this, because most of us, though having to work for a living, have an overabundance of food, and the ground is incredibly productive, allowing few of us to be farmers, and all of us to fulfill God’s desire to “fill the earth” with people.

So what now of the curse to the woman? Pain in childbirth can certainly be lessened by modern medicine, though childbirth for most women in the world is still the most dangerous experience of their lives. What of the rest of the curse from Genesis 3?:

16 To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

One has to ask the question, ‘Of all the consequences in the human experience mentioned in the curses from the fall, is the curse of the husband ruling over his wife the only one not to be lifted from the shoulders of mankind?’ Clearly we are not referring to the consequence of sin that fell upon all mankind through the first Adam, and was lifted at the cost of the suffering of the second Adam. I conclude that any sense of a man or husband ruling over a woman or wife can only be seen to be a curse, and not God’s plan or desire. We are redeemed people, and we should live as such, co-heirs with Christ.