‘Therefore the Lord God expelled him from the plain of Eden to serve the ground from which he was taken.'
Man not only loses the tree of life, but all the trees in the plain of Eden. He is sent out into a place where he must eat ‘herbs of the field', scrabbling among the weeds to obtain his food, and scratching at the surface of the ground in hope that it will increase its production. He had been raised above it by God, but now he returns to it, a reminder of his new situation.