Is the ground still cursed?

[Verifyveritas76]

This idea was brought up in another thread, that the curse of the ground to Adam was still in effect. In Genesis 8, God states that the curse on the ground is lifted though obviously the rest of the curse is still in effect as to labor pains and sweating in labor.

As I was studying this morning, I came across this in the Babylonian Talmud, Kethuboth 111b. It’s very interesting as it literally describes a land flowing with milk and honey from eye witnesses

It was taught: R. Joseph41 related: It once happened to a man42 at Shihin43 to whom his father had left three twigs of mustard that one of these split and was found to contain nine kab of mustard, and its timber sufficed to cover a potter's hut.

R. Simeon b. Tahlifa44 related. Our father left us a cabbage stack and we45 ascended and descended it by means of a ladder.46

And of the blood of the grape thou drankest foaming wine.47 It was inferred: The world to come is not like this world. In this world there is the trouble of harvesting and treading [of the grapes], but in the world to come a man will bring one grape48 on a wagon or a ship, put it in a corner of his house and use its contents as [if it had been] a large wine cask, while its timber49 would be used to make fires for cooking.50 There will be no grape that will not contain thirty kegs51 of wine, for it is said is Scripture, And of the blood of the grape thou drankest foaming wine,52 read not 'foaming'53 but homer.54

When R. Dimi came55 he made the following statement: What is the implication in the Scriptural text, Binding his foal56 unto the vine?57 There is not a vine in the Land of Israel that does not require [all the inhabitants of] one city58 to harvest it; And his ass's colt59 into the choice60 vine,57 there is not even a wild61 tree in the Land of Israel that does not produce a load of [fruit for] two she-asses.62 In case you should imagine that it contains no wine, it was explicitly said in Scriptures, He washes his garments in wine.57 And since you might say that it is not red it was explicitly stated, And of the blood of the grape thou drankest foaming wine.63 And in case you should say that it does not cause intoxication it was stated, His vesture.64 And in case you should think that it is tasteless it was expressly stated, His eyes shall be red65 with wine,66 any palate that will taste it says, 'To me, to me'.67 And since you might say that it is suitable for young people but unsuitable for old, it was explicitly stated And his teeth white with milk;66 read not, 'teeth white'68 but 'To him who is advanced in years'.69

In what [sense] is the plain meaning of the text70 to be understood?71 — When R. Dimi came72 he explained: The congregation of Israel said to the Holy One, blessed be He, 'Lord of the Universe, wink to me with Thine eyes,73 which [to me will be] sweeter than wine, and shew74 me Thy teeth which will be sweeter than milk'.73 [This interpretation] provides support for R. Johanan who said; The man who [by smiling affectionately] shews75 his teeth to his friend is better than one who gives bins milk to drink, for it is said in Scriptures, And his teeth white with milk,70 read not 'teeth white' but 'shewing the teeth'.76

R. Hiyya b. Adda77 was the Scriptural tutor of the young children of Resh Lakish. [On one occasion] he took a three days' holiday78 and did not come [to teach the children]. 'Why', the other asked hiss when he returned, 'did you take a holiday?' 'My father', he replied, 'left me one espalier79 and on the first day I cut from it three hundred clusters [of grapes], each cluster yielding one keg. On the second day I cut three hundred clusters, each two of which yielded one keg. On the third day I cut three hundred clusters, each three of which yielded one keg, and so I renounced my ownership of more than one half of it'. 'If you had not taken a holiday [from the Torah]', the other told him, 'it would have yielded much more'.80

Rami b. Ezekiel once paid a visit to Bene-berak81 where he saw goats grazing under fig-trees while honey was flowing from the figs, and milk ran from them, and these mingled with each other. 'This is indeed', he remarked, '[a land] flowing with milk and honey'.82

R. Jacob b. Dostai related: From Lod83 to Ono84 [is a distance of about] three miles.85 Once I rose up early in the morning and waded [all that way] up to my ankles in honey of the figs.

Resh Lakish said: I myself saw the flow of the milk and honey of Sepphoris86 and it extended [over an area of] sixteen by sixteen miles.

Rabbah b. Bar Hana said: I saw the flow of the milk and honey in all the Land of Israel

 

[Pacman]

In Genesis 8, God states that the curse on the ground is lifted

Not completely on board with this statement.

Genesis 8:21-22
And the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.

Notice that word "again" would it not make sense to say that God was thinking he would not add to the curse that was already in place. We obviously still have thorns and thistles. An isolated instance of a land flowing with milk and honey is clear evidence of the blessings of God on that particular place at a particular time in history. It does not seem to be a proof that the "original" curse on the ground is removed.

 

[Jim an Apostle]

A funny thing about curses and blessings that we usually miss is that they can coexist. One does not eliminate the other. They can work side by side. maximum effect is achieved when one or the other is eliminated from the equation. God had already cursed the ground. Redemption by Christ was the only real way to remove it. We may enter into a realm of blessing that can out produce the curse. In some cases personal curses can be removed. Some curses have a limited life span. The curses given by God in the garden are removed in the spirit by Christ. although we still die in the flesh. during the millennial reign the curse will be removed in the physical realm although death will not be taken away until the end. interestingly the curse upon the serpent remains even in the next age of the New Heaven and the New Earth. When Adam was created he was just a mud ball so to speak until God blessed them then sin enters and then God cursed him. The blessing of being fruitful and multiplying was still in effect (this is why sinners still have children) now the blessing and the curse are in conflict. Through faith we can strengthen or weaken the blessings in our life. The ultimate removal of all curses will come in the New heaven and the New Earth. (except for the serpent crawling on its belly.)

 

[Verifyveritas76]

Not completely on board with this statement.

Genesis 8:21-22
And the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.

Notice that word "again" would it not make sense to say that God was thinking he would not add to the curse that was already in place. We obviously still have thorns and thistles. An isolated instance of a land flowing with milk and honey is clear evidence of the blessings of God on that particular place at a particular time in history. It does not seem to be a proof that the "original" curse on the ground is removed.

That’s a good question and probably deserves a more in depth response than I have time to address. There is much that we do not know about in antediluvian history, including the seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter and day and night. We all have a vague conception about some of this but thats all we have to my knowledge. We really don’t know exactly how the cursed ground affected the nuts and bolts of planting and harvest and summer and winter etc. There is a vast amount of conjecture, but not a lot of knowledge.

From Genesis 3 we know: Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread

It is not clear here whether or not Adam even tills the ground and plants or just harvests voluntary herbs from the field. It could be that if Adam plants anything, that it will bring forth thorns and thistles. It could be that if he plants anything, it will produce with thorns and thistles and so harvest will be extremely laborious.

Either way, we really don’t know what the curse was exactly or how it worked. We only know what we have now and very limited info from Biblical History about conditions and harvests. It doesnt seem logical that God would lift the curse for some areas and not for others unless He was doing it conditionally depending on obedience, just as He did for Adam. If this is His reasoning, then it would also make sense for Him to lift the curse for a family that was considered righteous by God and examples obedience and sacrifice as soon as they disembarked from the Ark.

 

[FollowingHim]

Genesis 4:10-14 is worth considering also - the curse on Cain. Cain's curse was very specifically that the ground would no longer yield crops for him individually. Clearly the land did still yield crops well enough to be able to give a further curse to Cain that it would not yield good crops for him, and this was different from the usual situation.
The curse is different, in that in Adam's case we read "cursed is the ground", while in Cain's we read "now art thou cursed from the earth". Cain's curse was against him as a person, not against the ground itself. But it's useful context.

 

[FollowingHim]

Another very important context is the fossil record. We know that before the flood both animals and plants grew to much larger sizes than they do today. Both giant extinct animals (such as dinosaurs), and giant versions of animals that are still alive (turtles, sloths, dragonflies etc) clearly existed. Such creatures could only be supported by an environment that allowed extremely lush plant growth. These animals no longer exist, likely because the climate is different.

I really don't want to get into an old-earth young-earth debate here, it's a bit off-topic, so I'm just going to present a young-earth based explanation of this that is relevant to the discussion at hand. Please take it or leave it, let's not go down that rabbit-hole. But it's valuable explanatory context for those who see it this way, or who are not sure which perspective is correct.

Most critically, before the flood there would have been a very high atmospheric CO2 content. Today we have enormous reservoirs of carbon buried in oil and coal. These are the preserved remains of sea creatures and plants that lived in the past, buried in massive deposits (most obviously by the flood) and now converted to oil and coal. After the flood, new vegetation and animals grew - but the carbon to build these had to come out of the atmosphere. This would have resulted in a rapid reduction in CO2 following the flood as plant-life regrew. CO2 is the most important plant nutrient, and even small increases in CO2 give large increases in plant production. This one factor would have resulted in plants being far easier to grow, and growing far more lushly, before the coal and oil deposits were produced. Scientists have clearly shown that past CO2 contents were higher than today (although they don't necessarily agree with the biblical timeline). Today, we live in an atmosphere with depressed CO2 levels that limit plant growth. Interestingly, as we burn that coal and oil, we are gradually returning that CO2 to the atmosphere and slowly fixing the environment...

Also, the standard young-earth model for where the floodwaters came from includes a hypothesised water vapour canopy (being the source of the rain), which would have resulted in a global greenhouse effect that would have given a relatively stable, temperate climate over much of the globe, and greatly facilitated plant and animal growth in several ways.

Basically, from both a geological and a theoretical perspective, the pre-flood world appears to have been much more lush than today. There is little evidence of a general curse on the ground in the fossil record, rather we see the opposite.

My point being, the curse appears to be specifically about crops performing poorly for humans and being difficult to manage, and not a general curse on all of the ground affecting all plant growth.

 

[Jim an Apostle]

It also fits that some or most of the fossil was Gen. 1:2 flood and we must remember the curse did not remove the blessing and it took time for the DNA to absorb the curse, in plants animals and humans. After the sentence of death the blessing was so strong it still took Adam 930 years I die.

 

[Jim an Apostle]

my friend worked on a golf course for several years he noticed it seemed increasingly difficult to grow the grass. New bugs (bacteria) and fungi keep requiring new chemicals and new techniques.

 

[FollowingHim]

my friend worked on a golf course for several years he noticed it seemed increasingly difficult to grow the grass. New bugs (bacteria) and fungi keep requiring new chemicals and new techniques.

That's very common and to be expected. But the reason isn't what you suggest.
The reason is that a golf course (or lawn) is an incredibly unnatural environment - a monoculture of grass, mown weekly. Grass was never designed to live like that, and being treated that way stuffs both it and the soil, in the long term.
After mowing or grazing, grass grows leaves for several weeks, then appears to slow down or stop growing taller. At this stage it is still growing, but has moved to growing roots, which it focusses on for the next few weeks. Through those roots, it feeds sugars to the soil biology, which release nutrients from the soil. Diseases are kept away because the plants and soil are healthy and not susceptible to them.
If you mow the grass every week (or graze too frequently), you prevent it from developing deep roots, or feeding the soil biology. So you have to constantly drip-feed it water (irrigation) and nutrients (chemical fertiliser), or it goes yellow and dies. And when pests and diseases come, as they will because the plants are unhealthy, you have to hit them with more chemicals to get rid of them. And because grass was never designed to survive where it is continually mown short, but God did design other plants that can cope with it, the system will naturally be taken over by such plants. But groundskeepers call them 'weeds' and poison them because they've been told to grow grass, so even this natural soil regeneration is prevented...
The longer this continues, the worse it gets, simply because the entire plant-soil ecosystem is more degraded every year, so new issues keep appearing. And if you're just fighting the symptoms, you'll buy more and more chemicals in a vain attempt to fix them. But ultimately the problem is that the entire system is unnatural, it's not that there really are new problems that new chemicals are needed for.

There are ways of managing agriculture and landscape gardening that actually use the systems God has made, working with Creation rather than against it. It is possible to grow extremely lush crops even today, and even repeat it year-on-year without any need for external inputs. But still not as easy as it would have been pre-flood in a high CO2 environment...

It also fits that some or most of the fossil was Gen. 1:2 flood

If such a flood & additional pre-flood world existed (I'm biting my tongue because I am convinced it is fictitious but promised I wouldn't go down that rabbit-trail... ), then it would undermine my point somewhat. If the coal and oil deposits were formed prior to the creation week, then there was a low-CO2 environment at the time of Adam, and plant growth was already limited when God said "it is very good", before the fall. So if that were the case, then yes there was a period where plants could grow well, but that was not in the antediluvian world experienced by Adam etc. That would mean that it was entirely plausible that plant growth was severely retarded pre-flood, there is no evidence that it was lush, so the point I was making is null and void because the curse could very well have been a general curse of all the ground and not just a curse on agricultural production.

So if the earth is young (ie began at creation week), then we know for certain that the curse was not a general curse on all the ground but only on agricultural production. If the earth is old (ie the fossil evidence may predate that), then we are none the wiser as either could be true.

 

[PeteR]

This idea was brought up in another thread, that the curse of the ground to Adam was still in effect. In Genesis 8, God states that the curse on the ground is lifted though obviously the rest of the curse is still in effect as to labor pains and sweating in labor.

Context is king....

The curse spoken of in Genesis 8 :21 is clearly not the curse of Genesis 3... What God is referring to is clearly the flood and the destruction it wreaked. The pieces are evident in the verse itself, but connected with the language of Gen 6:5 'every intent was only evil continually' followed by 'I will never again destroy every living thing'.... then followed by covenat in Genesis 9, specifically v 10, 12, 15, and 16. Common phrase tying them together is 'every living thing'...

The curse of Genesis 3 is here until the Millennium and only then much reduced. It will not be entirely reversed until the New Heavens and Earth.

 

[Verifyveritas76]

Context is king....

The curse spoken of in Genesis 8 :21 is clearly not the curse of Genesis 3... What God is referring to is clearly the flood and the destruction it wreaked. The pieces are evident in the verse itself, but connected with the language of Gen 6:5 'every intent was only evil continually' followed by 'I will never again destroy every living thing'.... then followed by covenat in Genesis 9, specifically v 10, 12, 15, and 16. Common phrase tying them together is 'every living thing'...

The curse of Genesis 3 is here until the Millennium and only then much reduced. It will not be entirely reversed until the New Heavens and Earth.

I’m listening and trying to follow this, so bear with me please. If this is not referring to the Genesis 3 curse, how did the cataclysm of the flood curse the ground? Are you referring to Genesis 6:13 & 17? As in God literally destroyed everything in the earth that wasn’t in the Ark? If this is the case, then the dove brought back a cursed branch to show that there was new life? Not sure that presents the best symbolism but ?

I havent thought of this before so bear with me while I try to look at all angles. Very interested in your perspective on this.

 

[windblown]

Interesting to note that the word curse in ch. 8 is a different word from that in ch.3.

 

[Pacman]

Interesting to note that the word curse in ch. 8 is a different word from that in ch.3.

I noticed that as well. My study recourses give the same definition for both. Anyone have more info on that?

 

[Verifyveritas76]

I’d noticed it too.

Based on its usage in Gen 12:3 it seems to be very similar if not interchangeable but I haven’t really looked into it too much

And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

Both words for curse is represented above. Perhaps one is a divine curse and one is a human IDK

 

[Verifyveritas76]

This might shed more light on it or muddy the waters further

Genesis 5:29. son:
And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed.

Seems prophetic to me and it seems to be referring to Adams curse which would negate my earlier idea that it was more of a specific curse on Adam but would apply more directly to the Genesis 8 passage

 

[rockfox]

So if the earth is young (ie began at creation week), then we know for certain that the curse was not a general curse on all the ground but only on agricultural production.

I know of no indication as to how much time passed between the creation and the fall. There could have been time to grow abundant enough forage and life to set down the oil and coal fields.

However, one should take the abiogenic origin of hydrocarbons theory into account.

 

[Jim an Apostle]

one indication that it wasn't long after the creation till the fall is that man was commanded to multiply and before conception happened the fall occurred.

 

[The Revolting Man]

one indication that it wasn't long after the creation till the fall is that man was commanded to multiply and before conception happened the fall occurred.

Except that there were men for Cain to be afraid of and women for him to marry. I think they were in the garden a long time.

 

[FollowingHim]

I know of no indication as to how much time passed between the creation and the fall. There could have been time to grow abundant enough forage and life to set down the oil and coal fields.

True. But no catastrophic event that would bury them and turn them into coal and oil, so they would need to remain in that lush state for the next 1600 years (or whatever it was) until the flood despite the curse on the ground. That's a stretch in my mind. It's simpler to see the curse as on agriculture specifically, and not on all growth from the ground.
Good point re non-biological hydrocarbons, but we had better avoid that tangent as we're already sidetracked enough!

Except that there were men for Cain to be afraid of and women for him to marry. I think they were in the garden a long time.

I doubt it, Cain would likely have had many younger siblings by the time of the murder and simply married one of them and was afraid of the rest, and all that reproduction could easily happen after leaving the garden. Simplest explanation - I'm not saying it's proof, just saying there's no reason here to believe they were in the garden for a long time, because it works with a short garden stay also.

This might shed more light on it or muddy the waters further

Genesis 5:29. son:
And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed.

Seems prophetic to me and it seems to be referring to Adams curse which would negate my earlier idea that it was more of a specific curse on Adam but would apply more directly to the Genesis 8 passage

I agree it's talking about Adam's curse. But the result of the curse is also specifically "our work and toil of our hands", it's only agricultural. So it's a curse that makes agriculture difficult, not necessarily anything broader.

 

[FollowingHim]

An interesting historical context regarding easy to farm ground: In New Zealand, before European settlement, the Maori could grow crops extremely easily. The country was mostly forest, and there were few grasses or other such open-ground plants that compete with crops as "weeds". This meant that the Maori could clear some soil, plant their kumara (sweet potato), and it would grow easily. They didn't have to constantly weed it, but could just leave the crop from planting to harvest. They had a very easy lifestyle in many ways - I have read of men planting the crops, then walking hundreds of kilometres barefoot through the bush for several months to attend meetings with other tribes, wearing only a shirt and carrying no provisions, returning home in time for harvest. Or (sadly in other cases) planting the crop then going to war, and stopping fighting in time for harvest.

European settlers brought grasses for grazing animals, and other such plants, and the environment completely changed. Now the same crops are more difficult to grow as there are so many more weeds to control.

I see the ground in Eden as similar to the forest soils of early New Zealand - fertile, weed-free, and easy to crop. The curse was largely the introduction of weeds (illustrated by thorns and thistles, but possibly including others), that turned agriculture into back-breaking labour for Adam and his descendents. The curse could have been the spreading of such seed.

Maybe God is saying that He will not curse agriculture by spreading weeds deliberately? That would mean that man today will still generally be dealing with the residual effects of that curse (the existence of weeds), but in some cases may find or create a situation where they are eliminated and agriculture becomes easy again. Such as this.