Genesis 3:17

3:17 But to Adam ¹  he said,

“Because you obeyed ²  your wife

and ate from the tree about which I commanded you,

‘You must not eat from it,’

cursed is the ground ³  thanks to you; ⁴ 

in painful toil you will eat ⁵  of it all the days of your life.

Genesis 36:6

36:6 Esau took his wives, his sons, his daughters, all the people in his household, his livestock, his animals, and all his possessions which he had acquired in the land of Canaan and went to a land some distance away from ⁶  Jacob his brother

Genesis 38:14

38:14 So she removed her widow’s clothes and covered herself with a veil. She wrapped herself and sat at the entrance to Enaim which is on the way to Timnah. (She did this because ⁷  she saw that she had not been given to Shelah as a wife, even though he had now grown up.) ⁸ 

Genesis 50:11

50:11 When the Canaanites who lived in the land saw them mourning at the threshing floor of Atad, they said, “This is a very sad occasion ⁹  for the Egyptians.” That is why its name was called ¹⁰  Abel Mizraim, ¹¹  which is beyond the Jordan.

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¹ tn Since there is no article on the word, the personal name is used, rather than the generic “the man” (cf. NRSV).

² tn The idiom “listen to the voice of” often means “obey.” The man “obeyed” his wife and in the process disobeyed God.

³ sn For the ground to be cursed means that it will no longer yield its bounty as the blessing from God had promised. The whole creation, Paul writes in Rom 8:22, is still groaning under this curse, waiting for the day of redemption.

⁴ tn The Hebrew phrase בַּעֲבוּרֶךָ (ba’avurekha) is more literally translated “on your account” or “because of you.” The idiomatic “thanks to you” in the translation tries to capture the point of this expression.

⁵ sn In painful toil you will eat. The theme of eating is prominent throughout Gen 3. The prohibition was against eating from the tree of knowledge. The sin was in eating. The interrogation concerned the eating from the tree of knowledge. The serpent is condemned to eat the dust of the ground. The curse focuses on eating in a “measure for measure” justice. Because the man and the woman sinned by eating the forbidden fruit, God will forbid the ground to cooperate, and so it will be through painful toil that they will eat.

⁶ tn Heb “from before.”

⁷ tn The Hebrew text simply has “because,” connecting this sentence to what precedes. For stylistic reasons the words “she did this” are supplied in the translation and a new sentence begun.

⁸ tn Heb “she saw that Shelah had grown up, but she was not given to him as a wife.”

⁹ tn Heb “this is heavy mourning for Egypt.”

¹⁰ tn The verb has no expressed subject and so it may be translated as passive.

¹¹ sn The name Abel Mizraim means “the mourning of Egypt.”