And unto Adam he said,
Because you have listened unto the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree, of which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat of it: cursed is the ground for your sake; in sorrow shall you eat of it all the days of your life;
All Commentaries on Genesis 3:17 Go To Genesis 3
John Chrysostom
AD 407
l know that you are wearied by the excess of words, but stir yourselves a little, I beseech you, lest we leave the sentence incomplete and depart while the judge is still sitting. We are in fact close to the end now. So let us see what he says to the man after the woman, and what kind of punishment he inflicts on him. "Whereas to Adam he said: 'Because you listened to your wife's words and ate from this one tree I told you not to eat from, accursed shall be the soil as you till it. In pain may you eat from it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles let it yield you, and you are to eat the grass of the field. In the sweat of your brow may you eat your bread until you return to the soil whence you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you are to return." [ Gen 3:17, Gen 3:18, Gen 3:19 ] Great is the Lord's care and beyond all telling displayed here for the human being but let us listen precisely to each word spoken. "Whereas to Adam he said: 'Because you listened to your wife's words and ate from this one tree I told you not to eat from." Since you listened to your wife, he is saying, and ate from the tree, and put the advice from her ahead of my command and weren't prepared to keep away from this one single tree which I told you not to eat from (surely, after all, I didn't bid you keep away from many? one only and yet you couldn't keep away from that, but forgot my commands and were overborne by your wife). Hence you are to learn through your very labors how much evil you have committed.
Let men give good heed, let women give good heed the former, that they may have nothing to do with those people advising evil actions, and the latter, that they may ad vise nothing of the sort. I mean, if Adam shifted the blame on to his wife and was still considered incapable of any excuse, what kind of defense could anyone offer in the claim, "It was on account of my wife that I sinned in this way and that, and committed this sin and that "? After all, the reason that she came under your dominion and you were declared her master was that she should follow your lead, not for the head to follow the feet. Frequently, however, it is possible to see the opposite occurring, that the one who is supposed to be in the position of head doesn't even keep to the position of the feet, whereas she who is in the position of the feet is installed in the position of head. Hence also blessed Paul, the world's teacher, foresaw all this and cried out, "How, after all, can you be sure, wife, whether you will save your husband? And how can you be sure, husband, whether you will save your wife?" [ I Cor 7:16 ] Still, let a husband be very much on his guard so as to resist his wife's inducement to harmful behavior, and let a wife keep fresh in mind the punishment Eve received for plying her husband with harmful advice, and not presume to offer such advice nor imitate Eve, but rather bring him to his senses by her example and encourage him to that kind of behavior that will discharge herself and her husband of any punishment or penalty.
But let us return to the text before us. "Whereas to Adam he said: 'Because you listened to your wife's words and ate from this one tree I told you not to eat from.'" Because, he is saying, you displayed such indifference about keeping the command given by me, and neither fear nor my intervening to decree the punishment liable to happen to you for eating the fruit was of any benefit, but in fact you ran headlong into such terrible wickedness that you were unable to keep away from that single tree despite such great enjoyment, accordingly "'accursed shall be the soil as you till it.'" See the Lord's loving kindness, how he punishes the serpent one way and this rational being a different way: to the former he says, "'Accursed are you beyond the earth,'" whereas in this case he doesn't speak in that way. What, then? "'Accursed shall be the soil as you till it.'" Appropriately, too. You see, since the soil had been produced for the sake of the human being so that he might thus be able to enjoy what sprang from it, accordingly in turn he places a curse on it on account of the human being's sin; because the curse on it impairs in turn the human being's relaxation and tranquillity, he says, "Accursed shall be the soil as you till it."
"accursed" means, he added, "'In pain may you eat from it all the days of your life.'" See how each punishment is extended for a lifetime, so that not only may they personally be the better off for it, but that those destined to follow in future may learn from these very events whence the source of this punishment derived in their case: "'In pain,'" he says, "'may you eat from it all the days of your life.'" Then, to teach us more precisely the kind of curse and the cause of the pain, he added, "Thorns and thistles let it yield you." [ Gen 3:18 ] Behold the reminders of the curse: thorns it will bring forth, he says, and thistles so as to give rise to great labor and discomfort, and I will ensure you pass the whole time with pain so that this experience may prove a brake on your getting ideas above your station and you may instead have a thought to your own makeup and never again bear to be deceived in these matters.
"You are to eat of the grass of the field. In the sweat of your brow may you eat your bread." See how after his disobedience everything is imposed on him in an opposite way to his former life style: My intention in bringing you into the world, he is saying, was that you should live your life without pain or toil, difficulty or sweat, and that you should be in a state of enjoyment and prosperity, and not be subject to the needs of the body but be free from all such and have the good fortune to experience complete freedom. Since, however, such indulgence was of no benefit to you, accordingly I curse the ground so that it will not in future yield its harvest as be fore without tilling and ploughing; instead, I invest you with great labor, toil and difficulty, and with unremitting pain and despair, and I am ensuring that everything you do is achieved only by sweat so that under pressure from these you may have continual guidance in keeping to limits and recognizing your own makeup. Nor will this continue for a short period or a brief space of time: it will last all your life. "In the sweat of your brow may you eat your bread until you return to the soil whence you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you are to return." [ Gen 3:19 ] You will endure this as long as the span of your life is extended and you decompose into the material you were formed from. You see, even though in my loving kindness I endowed you with a bodily nature, yet your body being from the earth will in turn revert to the earth. "For dust you are, and to dust you are to return "' After all, to pre vent this happening I said, "'Do not touch the tree," explaining that "on the day you eat of it you will truly die." You see, this was not my intention; on the contrary, everything on my part was carried through, but you appropriated it for your self so don't attribute the blame to anyone else, but put it down to your own indifference.
At this point, however, a further question arises for us, which, if you don't mind, we'll dispose of immediately at this stage and bring the sermon to a close. God said, the text tells us, "On the day you eat from it you will truly die;" yet they are shown living for a great number of years after the disobedience and tasting the food. This seems to pose a problem for those who read the subject matter superficially; if however you give your attention to it in the proper spirit, the verse is clear and offers no problem to the student. You see, even if they lived a long time, nevertheless from the time they heard the words, "Dust you are, and to dust you are to return," and received the sentence of death, they became liable to death and you would say front that moment they were dead. So this is what Scripture is also implying when it says that "on the day you eat, you will truly die" that is to say, receive the sentence of being mortal from now on. I moral, just as in the case of human tribunals, when someone receives the sentence of beheading and is cast into prison, even if he stays there a long time his life is no better than that of dead people and corpses, being already dead by reason of his sentence, in just the same way they, too, from the day they received the sentence of mortality were dead by reason of their sentence, even if they lasted a long time.
I know that our words have been numerous and the thread of our teaching has been drawn out to great length. Hence, since by the grace of God and to the extent of our ability we have proposed everything to you and brought to a Conclusion the subject matter we read about, let us at this point close the sermon. It would, in fact, have been possible for us to propose other matters, illustrating further that the imposition of that very punishment and their being made liable to death was a mark of great depths of loving kindness. But in case we smother your thinking with a great surfeit of words, come now, let us encourage you as you leave here not to give your time to brainless gatherings or to improper gossiping; instead, reflect privately and rehearse with one an other what has been said, reminding yourselves of what the judge said in reply, what defense the guilty made, how the man shifted the blame on to the woman and she shifted it to the serpent, how God punished that creature and the fact that he inflicted on it the punishment that would be constant and lasting for all time, that in its regard he delivered a severe denunciation and thus demonstrated his care for those deceived. You see, from the fact that he punished their deceiver it is clear that he had practiced his deception on people very dear to God. Next recall from this text the sentence on the woman and the punishment inflicted on her, or rather the admonition and thus recall the words addressed to Adam, remembering the sentence, "Dust you are, and to dust you are to return;" find cause for wonder in this at God's ineffable love, that we, though coming from dust and decomposing into it, are deemed worthy, should we wish to embrace virtue and shun evil, of those unspeakable good things prepared for those who love him, "which eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor have they entered man's heart." [ I Cor 2:9 ]
Consequently, we ought to pay the Lord abundant thanks for his so generous favors and never consign them to oblivion; instead, through good works and careful avoidance of foul deeds let us win his approval and render him well disposed to us. I mean, how could we avoid the appearance of ingratitude if, while he who is God and immortal does not decline to take on himself our mortal nature and earthly character, free us from the ancient curse of death, lead us to highest heaven, honor us with his ancestral home and deem us worthy of being honored by all the heavenly host, whereas we are not ashamed to requite him in just the opposite way, glueing our immortal soul (so to say) on to our body and thus ensuring that it becomes earthly, perishable and impotent? Let us not, I beseech you, be so ungrateful to such a constant benefactor of ours; let us rather keep his laws and perform what he has decided and is well pleasing to him, so that he may declare us worthy also of eternal goods. May we all be judged deserving of such goods, thanks to the grace and love of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit be glory, power and honor, now and forever for ages of ages. Amen.
