Genesis 3:18 Commentary and Bible Study

This was clearly something new which Adam had not seen before. Previously all the plants that grew were beneficial in some way, either as food or as objects of usefulness or of beauty. But now would come from the earth plants that hurt man and made his work hard and interfered with the growth of fruitful plants. It would require much effort to make the earth bring forth food, and Adam would realise that there was something profoundly wrong when the very earth opposed him. We do well to remember the original state of things in case we conclude that it has always been this way, and fail to learn the lessons God intends from the current state of nature. The years which was originally able to support a world full of human life now had this blessing withdrawn and God curse the soil so that men now struggle to make a living from it. Work was not introduced for the first time at the fall, but work became for the first time a painful laborious matter, lacking its own reward and that sense of purpose that made it a joy to do.At the same time there were great changes to creation, so that one animal began to feed on another animal at the same time as death came into the world. For in nature the vast majority of deaths occur not from old age but from predator activity.