Cursed Ground and Coming Seed: Genesis 3:14-24

So the LORD God said to the serpent: "Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life."

The serpent—once perhaps the most cunning of creatures—was cursed to the lowest. Crawling in the dust, despised among animals. The sentence was permanent.

But then came the first gospel, buried in a curse:

"And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."

Her offspring. A coming one. Someone who would crush the serpent's head even while the serpent struck his heel. Victory through suffering. Triumph through wound. The promise of a champion hidden in the pronouncement of judgment.

To the woman he said: "I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

The relationship that had been harmony became struggle. Childbirth—the very means of bringing forth the promised seed—would come through agony. The marriage that had been partnership would be marred by competition and domination.

To Adam he said: "Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, You must not eat from it, cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."

The ground cursed. The garden work that had been joy became toil. Thorns and thistles—resistance, frustration, the earth fighting back. And death: dust returning to dust, the breath that had animated clay returning to the One who gave it.

Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.

Even in the curse, hope. She would bear children. Life would continue. The seed would come.

The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

Fig leaves would not do. God killed an animal—the first death in Scripture—to cover their shame. Blood shed, skin taken, nakedness clothed. A sacrifice provided before they could earn it.

Then the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to eat also from the tree of life and live forever." So he banished them from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

Banished. The gates closed. Paradise lost. Not as a final punishment but as a mercy—if they ate from the tree of life in their fallen state, they would live forever in sin, forever broken, forever dying without death to end it.

After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

The cherubim stood watch. The sword blazed. The way back was barred.

But the way forward remained. A seed was promised. A head would be crushed. Somewhere beyond the exile, hope waited.