Genesis: Crime and Curse

    Although God placed the man and his wife in a bountiful garden, the LORD restricted them from one tree, ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ (2:16–17). The penalty for transgressing God’s only law was death. In the garden the serpent impugned the goodness of God and promised the woman that she and her husband could obtain divine wisdom through the forbidden fruit. In consequence of the woman’s deception and the man’s rebellion, they ate of the tree and unlawfully obtained wisdom (3:1–7, 22). By their sin the human couple jeopardized the blessing and disrupted the good creation. Now, the relationship they had enjoyed with God was fractured; their own relationship as husband and wife became competitive; and their dominion over the earth was resisted.

Punishment (blessing)
    The LORD declared three judgments against the culprits (3:14–19). He spoke a curse against the serpent, condemning it to a life of humiliation. As for the woman and the man, God brought sorrow upon them in the exercise of their primary roles as childbearer and farmer. The woman faced pain in childbirth and difficulty in her relationship with her husband. The man encountered a field that was cursed and produced thorns and thistles which he had to control in order to reap an edible crop. Also, he was condemned to the ultimate punishment for his crime; he returned to the dust from which he was made.

Deliverer (seed)
    Although the serpent was ‘cursed’ by God (3:14), the man and the woman were not. The LORD cursed the ground from which the man was formed (3:17), but there was no curse relating to the woman. This reflected the value the woman held as God’s instrument for preserving the blessing for the human family. This blessing would be effected by the victory of the woman’s ‘seed’ over the serpent (3:15). Therefore it was not made obsolete by the couple’s sin; rather, God graciously preserved them, ensuring procreation and promising a deliverer. That the promise of a deliverer had implications for the future was indicated by the language of the judgment oracles against the serpent and the man which speak of ‘all the days of your life’ (3:14, 17). The future struggle between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman (3:15) was first manifested by wicked Cain’s murder of righteous Abel (4:8). When the evil of the Cainites became pervasive in the earth (6:1–13), God purged it by the waters of a flood. And again God in his grace preserved the blessing, for the family of Seth and through the deliverer Noah (5:29–32; 6:8–9), who offered atoning sacrifice (8:20) and whose son Shem fathered the chosen line of Abraham (9:26–27; 11:10–26). However, a complete victory over sin awaited a future deliverer, for the human heart remained inclined towards sin (8:21) as was shown by Noah’s son, Ham (9:22–25).

Exile and death (land)
    Since the man and woman had transgressed the law of God, the LORD imposed upon them the penalty of death, as he had forewarned by expelling them from the garden. Their exile barred them from access to ‘the tree of life’ which provided the means for the renewal of life (3:22–24). Although the LORD graciously delayed their death, the refrain ‘and he died’ in the genealogy of Adam shows that Adam and his descendants experienced the penalty (5:1–32). That the sin of Adam condemned all his offspring was shown not only by his death and that of his descendants, but also by the murder of Abel by his brother, Cain (4:8). As the sin of his parents in the garden had meant banishment to the east (3:24), Cain’s deed resulted in a divine curse, a further breakdown in his relationship with the ground, and his further exile from the land and from the ‘presence of the LORD’ towards the east (4:11–16). Nonetheless, God’s grace continued in the life of his human creatures as shown by the gift of Seth (4:25), their increased numbers (5:4), and the hope afforded by Enoch’s translation (5:24).