Why does the ground suffer for the sins of people? And what about Abel? Why is his life cut short?
First the serpent deceives the woman. She picks forbidden fruit, eats, gives to Adam, and he eats.
- For this act, the deceiver is cursed to crawl in the dust.
- Eve is magnetized to desire her husband. While multiplying and becoming fruitful, she suffers pain in childbirth.
- Adam is sentenced to hard labor.
- And the ground gets cursed. Is the ground withholding fruitfulness from Adam?
God curses the ground, not the humans. Why?! So Adam can live out his days toiling, sweating, and staring at the dust to which he will return.
God clothes Adam and Eve and sends them off. Later outside the garden, the first firstborn kills the second-born. Why????!!!
Up from the ground cries his brother’s “bloods” (damim in Hebrew, plural for all of Abel’s lost generations). Cain is cursed to wander the earth. He fills it with evil and violence. He gets away with murder … until judgment falls during the Days of Noah. Ten more generations pass while the humans try to take heaven by force at Babel.
Then God starts over, building His family once again. He names Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to live in the Land that He swore on oath to give to these fathers and their seed. These Patriarchs hear, believe, receive, and welcome God’s covenant.
This promise gives their seed an everlasting name, backed by an oath that the sons of Israel will inherit covenant blessings. In fact, through them is a path to blessing for all the families on earth:
“And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Gen 12:2-3 LSB).
So God establishes His covenant with parents—parents who are destined to build a holy family, a clan, a people set apart. Set apart, why?? God’s purpose is to make a holy, set-apart family to bring blessing to all the families of earth!
© Jeffrey Enoch Feinberg. JEF says the dirt got cursed through no fault of its own, but it’s our own choice to enter the blessing.
