As the result of man's disobedience to God, the creation suffered a curse and began to deteriorate.195Having been thrice blessed by God (1:22, 28; 2:3) the creation now experienced a triple curse (3:14, 17; 4:11).
"In the Bible, to curse means to invoke God's judgment on someone, usually for some particular offense."196
Nevertheless God also began recreation with the promise of the seed, the land, the dominion, and the rest for trust in His powerful word.
God's judgment on each trespasser (the snake, the woman, and the man) involved both a life function and a relationship.197In each case the punishment corresponded to the nature of the crime.
"Curses are uttered against the serpent and the ground, but not against the man and woman, implying that the blessing has not been utterly lost. It is not until human murder, a transgression against the imago Dei, that a person (Cain) receives the divine curse . . ."198
1. The snake had been crafty (Heb. arum), but now it was cursed (Heb. arur). It had to move on its belly (v. 14). Some commentators take this literally and conclude that the snake had legs before God cursed it.199Others take it figuratively as a reference to the resultant despised condition of the snake.200
2. It would eat dust (v. 14). Since snakes do not literally feed on dust, many interpreters take this statement figuratively. Eating dust is an expression used in other ancient Near Eastern writings to describe the lowest of all forms of life. In the Bible it also describes total defeat (cf. Ps. 72:9; Isa. 49:23; 65:25; Mic. 7:17).201
However, God revealed later through Isaiah that serpents will eat dust during the Millennium (Isa. 65:25). Presently snakes eat plants and animals. Perhaps God will yet fulfill this part of what He predicted here in Genesis concerning snakes in the millennial kingdom. This is a literal interpretation. If this is correct, then perhaps we should also take the former part of the curse literally, namely, that snakes did not travel on their bellies before the Fall. Alternatively Isaiah may have meant that serpents will continue to suffer the curse pronounced on them here even after God lifts the curse on creation generally in the Millennium.
3. There would be antagonism between the serpent and human beings (v. 15a). This obviously exists between snakes and people, but God's intention in this verse seems to include the person behind the snake (Satan) as well as, and even more than, the snake itself.
4. Man would eventually destroy the serpent, though the serpent would wound man (v. 15b). This is a prophecy of the victory of the ultimate "Seed"of the woman (Messiah) over Satan (cf. Rev. 19:1-5; Gal. 3:16, 19; Heb. 2:14; 1 John 3:8).202Most interpreters have recognized this verse as the first biblical promise of the provision of salvation (the protoevangeliumor "first gospel").203The rest of the book, in fact the whole Old Testament, proceeds to point ahead to that seed.
"The snake, for the author, is representative of someone or something else. The snake is represented by his seed.' When that seed' is crushed, the head of the snake is crushed. Consequently more is at stake in this brief passage than the reader is at first aware of. A program is set forth. A plot is established that will take the author far beyond this or that snake and his seed.' It is what the snake and His seed' represent that lies at the center of the author's focus. With that one' lies the enmity' that must be crushed."204
"The text in context provides an outline that is correct and clear in pattern but not complete in all details. Numerous questions are left unanswered. When Christ died on the cross and rose from the dead, the details of the climax were filled in and specified, but the text does not demand to be reinterpreted. Nor does it demand interpretation in a way not suggested in context."205
Another dispensationalist has also warned against reading this verse in the light of later revelation.
"We should be careful not to attribute to the understanding of the recipients of the text a concept that only emerges later. An example here is Genesis 3:15, what some call the first hint of the Gospel,' the protoevangelium. This understanding argues that God predicts that Eve's seed, Jesus, will crush the Serpent, Satan. Now in the context of the development of the theme of Adam's seed in the Bible, this meaning does eventually emerge from the text and is a legitimate reading of the passage. However, it is too specific for the original audience of Genesis. First of all, the early Jewish readers of the text could never have known that Messiah's name would be Jesus. What is more, in the context of the Pentateuch, the coming ofa regal figure for the nation of Israel is at best only alluded to as a minor point (Gen. 49:10). Third, the specific identification of the serpent with Satan is not transparent within the Pentateuch. All these connections emerge only later in the Scripture.
"So what did the text originally mean? It simply pointed to the introduction of chaos into the creation as a result of sin. Nature would now be in conflict with man. A snake, now limited by God's curse to crawl on the ground, would nip at man's heel. Meanwhile, as man attempted to defend himself, he would seek to crush the head of the serpent. Of course, this emphasis fits with the message of Genesis, explaining why God raised up Israel--a nation of grace and promise--through whom He would bless all nations. Such a message also prepares for the New Testament point of the reversal of Adam's work in the second Adam, Jesus Christ."206
God cursed all animals and the whole creation because of the Fall (Rom. 8:20), but He made the snake the most despicable of all the animals for its part in the Fall.
"Words possess power. God's words of blessing and of curse are most powerful. They determine our lives."207
1. Eve would experience increased pain in bearing children. There evidently would have been some pain in the process of bearing children before the Fall. Eve and her daughters would experience increased pain. The text does not say that God promised more conception as well as more pain.208"Pain"and "childbirth"is probably another hendiadys in the Hebrew text meaning pregnancy pain.
2. Their desire would be for their husbands. There have been several different interpretations of what the woman's "desire"would be.
a. The phrase "your desire will be for your husband"means that a woman's desire would be subject to her husband's desire.
"Her desire, whatever it may be, will not be her own. She cannot do what she wishes, for her husband rules over her like a despot and whatever she wishes is subject to his will."209
b. The woman will have a great longing, yearning, and psychological dependence on her husband.
"This yearning is morbid. It is not merely sexual yearning. It includes the attraction that woman experiences for man which she cannot root from her nature. Independent feminists may seek to banish it, but it persists in cropping out."210
c. The woman will desire to dominate the relationship with her husband. This view rests on the parallel Hebrew construction in 4:7.
"The curse' here describes the beginning of the battle of the sexes. After the Fall, the husband no longer rules easily; he must fight for his headship. The woman's desire is to control her husband (to usurp his divinely appointed headship), and he must master her, if he can. Sin had corrupted both the willing submission of the wife and the loving headship of the husband. And so the rule of love founded in paradise is replaced by struggle, tyranny, domination, and manipulation."211
d. The woman would continue to desire to have sexual relations with her husband even though after the Fall she experienced increased pain in childbearing.
". . . the woman's desire for the man and his rule over her are not the punishment but the conditions in which the woman will suffer punishment. . . . It may be concluded that, in spite of the Fall, the woman will have a longing for intimacy with man involving more than sexual intimacy. . . .212
This view takes this statement of God's as a blessing rather than a curse.
1. Adam would have to toil hard to obtain a living from the ground (vv. 17-18). Adam already had received the privilege of enjoying the garden (2:15), but this did not require strenuous toil.
"As for the man, his punishment consists in the hardship and skimpiness of his livelihood, which he now must seek for himself. The woman's punishment struck at the deepest root of her being as wife and mother, the man's strikes at the innermost nerve of his life: his work, his activity, and provision for sustenance."213
"These punishments represent retaliatory justice. Adam and Eve sinned by eating; they would suffer in order to eat. She manipulated her husband; she would be mastered by her husband. The serpent destroyed the human race; he will be destroyed."214
"In drawing a contrast between the condition of the land before and after the Fall, the author shows that the present condition of the land was not the way it was intended to be. Rather, the state of the land was the result of human rebellion. In so doing, the author has paved the way for a central motif in the structure of biblical eschatology, the hope of a new heaven and a new earth' (cf. Isa 65:17: [sic] Ro 8:22-24; Rev 21:1)."215
2. He would return to dust when he died (v. 19). Rather than living forever experiencing physical immortality, people would now die physically and experience physical mortality.
"Genesis 3:19 does not attribute the cause of death to the original composition of the human body, so that man would ultimately have died anyway, but states merely one of the consequences of death: Since the human body was formed from the dust of the earth, it shall, upon death, be resolved to earth again."216
Verse 18 shows the reversal of the land's condition before and after the Fall. Verse 19 shows the same for man's condition.217
"Adam and Eve failed . . . to observe the restrictions of the Edenic covenant [1:26-31; 2:16-17]. Innocence was lost and conscience was born. . . .
"Having failed under the Edenic covenant, human beings were then faced with the provisions of the Adamic covenant [3:14-19]. That covenant was unconditional in the sense that Adam and Eve's descendants would be unable by human effort to escape the consequences of sin. . . .
"A ray of light is provided, however, in the Adamic covenant because God promised that a redeemer would come [3:15]. . . . This is the introduction of the great theme of grace and redemption found in the Scriptures. . . .
"Unless tempered by the grace of God and changed by subsequent promises, people continue to the present time to labor under the provisions of the Adamic covenant."218
Adam and Eve accepted their judgment from God and did not rebel against it. We see this in Adam's naming Eve the mother of all living (v. 20). He believed life would continue in spite of God's curse. This was an act of faith. He believed God's promise that she would bear children (v. 16). His wife's first name, "woman"(2:23), looked back on her origin whereas her second name, "Eve,"anticipated her destiny.219
1. Note that before God sent them out into a new environment He provided them with clothing that was adequate for their needs (cf. Rom. 3:21-26). Their own provision (v. 7) was not adequate.
". . . he [Adam] had to learn that sin could be covered not by a bunch of leaves snatched from a bush as he passed by and that would grow again next year, but only by pain and blood."220
2. Furthermore, God prevented Adam and Eve from living perpetually in their fallen state (vv. 22-24).
