Genesis 3:17 And to Adam he said, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree, of which I commanded you, saying… No man in his senses will venture to assert that man is today just as man originally was. He is a dismantled fane, a broken shrine, still lingering about him some gleams of the departed glory sufficient to give an idea of what he once was, and probably left as faint prophecy of what he will again be. But notwithstanding this, man is a changed, and fallen, and degenerate creature. Nothing we know explains this seemingly inexplicable phenomenon, except the Word of God, which tells us that man sinned, and fell, and has become what we now find him. The gold, in the language of a prophet, is become dim, and the crown is fallen from his head. He has exchanged the beautiful, the fertile, the happy Eden which earth once was, for the desert and the bleak and blasted condition in which we now find it. He must now water it with the tears of his weeping eyes, and fertilize it with the sweat of his aching brow, in order to gather bread from it. This was a penal and just retribution, and yet it embosomed the hope of an ultimate and sure deliverance. (Dr. Cumming.) Parallel Verses KJV: And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; |
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