Genesis 3 - The Fall of Man (Part 5)
…continued from Genesis 3 - The Fall of Man (Part 4)
After disciplining the serpent, then Eve, God now turns to Adam, whom God had interrogated first on the matter…
 17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’
      “Cursed is the ground because of you;
      through painful toil you will eat of it
      all the days of your life.
Now this is harsh. God had given him a garden, in which he had all the food he ever needed. Of course, it did require tending, enough so that Adam even required a helper. However, the trees were already there. The fruit was already growing. Adam only needed to maintain it. What God pronounces in this verse is of an entirely different nature.
Not not only would the ground not produce food for Adam without a lot of work, the toil required would hurt… and it would hurt for the rest of his life. Harsh. Harsher than the pain of childbirth; harsher than the sorrow that comes with bringing a child into a sinful world. This is pain that must be borne every single day if you hope to survive… if you hope for your family to survive. And Adam lived to be over 900 years old! I’ll say it again… harsh. And as if tilling the field was not enough…
 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
      and you will eat the plants of the field.
Thorns and thistles. “Those trees didn’t produce thorns and thistles. Grumble, grumble.”
 19 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.”
Now, what does a literal interpretation of these verses mean? How can Adam farm until he literally returns to the ground from which he was created? Answer: he cannot. He can only farm until he dies. Has his body actually returned to the dust? No. What if Eve buries him? He still died before he was buried, and in any case, he still isn’t actually dust. Not yet anyway, and he sure wasn’t farming during his decomposition process!
So, let me ask an honest question here. When Genesis 2:7 says, in part, that “the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground”, why must that mean that Adam was literally form directly from dust? 3:19 isn’t literal after all, even though God said that Adam will farm until he returns to the dust.  God clearly meant until death, which is when the body begins to go back to the dust. So, it is in that vein that I believe 2:7 refers to Adam’s birth, when he finished coming from the dust. If evolution is true (with God involved), then God started with dust 4.5 billion years ago, pushed the earth through the evolutionary process, and led up to the birth of Adam through an unbroken chain of transformations, recorded at least partially by the fossil record.
Well, I do see a difference between 2:7 and 3:19. One is that we see death; we have seen a body decompose. We have never seen God create a universe. But, I suggest that if we had witnessed God’s creation in Genesis, we just might have seen God start with dust, then lead up to Adam’s natural birth. Just imagine this, and that you watched it. Then, you read that “the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground.” You would say, “Of course He did!” but you would also know that the process took 4.5 billion years, and that God was not saying he formed Adam directly from dust in an instant. And how would you know? The same way you understand Genesis 3:19; because have seen the process, and the verse was a clear allusion to it.
Now it is unfortunate that we did not watch God form the world. However, we have the next best thing… scripture. And we have the other next best thing… the fossil record. And both say that God started with dust and created mankind… only the fossil record is a bit clearer on the timeline. Combine the two, and it’s almost like we were there.
It is connections like these, that for me, make the scriptures come alive.