Genesis - Chapter 03 - Line 00073

Contemplative Summary

And to the man He said, “Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it,’ cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat from it all the days of your life.”

The divine word turns again — this time toward the one who tilled the soil. The Hebrew shamata leqol — “you listened to the voice” — reveals the heart of the shift: hearing redirected, resonance altered. What was once harmony between Creator, human, and earth now vibrates in dissonance. Arurah ha’adamah ba’avurekha — “cursed is the ground because of you” — does not describe punishment but reflection; the soil mirrors the human condition, its fertility bound to inner coherence. The act of eating, once delight, now becomes labor — the same root akal repeating as both gift and burden.

Here, the ground becomes teacher. To draw life from it now demands participation in its ache, awareness through effort. Pain (be‘itzavon) is the new rhythm of sustenance, the measure of distance between will and trust. Yet even in the curse, relationship endures: the earth still yields, the breath still calls, life continues through toil.

To contemplate this line is to sense the intimacy of consequence — how creation itself responds to our inner tuning. Every misalignment echoes through the field that feeds us. Still, beneath the ache lies invitation: to re-listen, to realign, to let the ground become again a mirror of peace rather than of pain.