In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. "Bread" is here put for all that contributes to human sustenance; and since all classes of mankind are dependent on the soil for the necessaries as well as luxuries of life, the words of this clause intimate the source from which they were to derive their food, as well as the condition of hard, persevering, laborious exertion in which that food was to be obtained. The whole tenor of the context implies a great deterioration in man's condition. "The sweat of the face" was to be substituted for a light and pleasant pastime; "the herb of the field" for the delicious fruit trees of Eden; or, at all events, the grain and vegetables fit for the nourishment of man were no longer spontaneously produced, but were to be reared by careful and patient culture; while weeds and thorns, that would prevent the growth of esculent plants, would spread everywhere, unless the industry of man were constantly on the alert. Such was the sentence of labour pronounced upon man on account of his sin; and it was expressly added, at the moment of passing it, that it was not to be a temporary punishment, a corrective discipline, from which, on his evincing a spirit of true repentance, he should eventually be relieved; but one of which there should be no suspension, no mitigation, no end, so long as he continued an inhabitant of this world. Painful, harassing labour was henceforth to be the unalterable law and condition of his fallen nature, and never should he cease to be subject to this law, or to groan under the burden of this heavy yoke, 'until he returned to the ground.'
Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return. Physiologists tell us that all organized beings are subject to eventual dissolution; and consequently man, whose bodily frame comes under that description, would have been no exception to this physical law, but for the sustaining power of God conveyed to him, probably through the virtue imparted to the tree of life, by the leaves or fruit of which he was preserved from the inroads of decay. But this means of perpetuated life and vigour being immediately after the fall withdrawn, man became mortal; although he did not die the moment that he ate the forbidden fruit, his body underwent a change, or, rather, was left to the exhausting operation of natural causes. This sentence of death which was pronounced upon Adam included Eve also, and, through him, as the progenitor and representative of mankind, it fell in effect upon all his posterity (Romans 5:12-14; 1 Corinthians 15:21). For his eating the forbidden fruit 'brought death into the world, and all our woe.' Death, indeed, is known to have taken place all along, in the pre-Adamite world, among the various orders of the inferior creatures; but man, in his primeval state, was exempted from its operation; and though his body, with its exquisitely formed nervous system, was capable of receiving pain from injuries, as well as, being made of dust, was liable, through the processes of nature, to resolve into dust again, it would have been preserved, had he remained innocent, in perpetual youth, health, and vigour, by the special grace and favour of God. But on his disobedience in eating the forbidden fruit, this supernatural privilege was forfeited: the first man, deprived not of an original and inherent property of his nature, but of a distinguishing token of the Creator's favour, which would have secured him the continued enjoyment of life, was, by a righteous doom, left to those laws of mortality to which all other creatures on earth are naturally subject; and his children, born under these altered circumstances, inherit, according to the established course of Providence, the mortal condition as well as the fallen nature of their parents.
Such were the sentences pronounced on the three parties connected with the temptation in Eden. While the Tempter, whose conduct was instigated by deliberate malice and wickedness, was doomed to an irremediable curse, the human criminals, who had been the victims of his seductive arts, were mercifully treated. The one having sinned in ignorance, and the other through weakness, were cheered with the hope of recovery from their lamentable fall; and while they were severely punished, the penalties inflicted on them tended, in their altered circumstances, to be virtually blessings to mankind.
Thus, the various acute and often protracted sufferings of woman during the time of child-bearing tend to draw out the affections of the female breast more strongly toward her offspring; while her subjection to her husband, though a memorial of the first transgression, yet, when softened and regulated by Christianity, renders her conduct as a wife a daily expression of delighting and delightful duty.
The toilsome labour to which man has been subjected is a needful discipline, which, though not good in itself, is yet good for his present condition, and what he could not do without. It is the means of developing the faculties of the mind, and of exercising the virtues and graces of the heart; of keeping man in constant wholesome employment, and so of leading him to fulfill the great end of his being by active diligence in the service of God. Again, the thorns and briers which desolate the ground are not only marks of divine wisdom and goodness, but admirably calculated to promote the general good. Nay, the whole tribe of weeds which infest the ground, and are prejudicial to the growth of roots, and vegetables, and grain, though they are to be regarded as part of the curse which the ground inherits for the sin of man, and are in reality a punishment, have been converted by the wise and merciful Creator into the means of producing important benefits to man. By the plentiful existence of these, and the imperative necessity of destroying them, industry is stimulated, ingenuity exercised, patience increased, the productive powers of the soil are augmented by the processes of labour, and thus the general good of society promoted.
Lastly, the goodness and mercy of God are displayed even in that part of the sentence which doomed man to 'return to the dust.' After he had fallen into a state of sin and misery, and been condemned to a life of toil and sorrow, what a dreadful aggravation of his punishment would it have been if his life had been protracted to an indefinite duration! But his life is short, and though it is probable, as the early records of the Bible seem to indicate, that the abridgment was gradual, yet, in mercy to man, his days, if they were to be full of labour and sorrow, were to be comparatively few. Death puts an end to all his labour. But since the promise of a Saviour was graciously given before that doom was pronounced, a cheering light was shed on the dark future of man, while the certainty of his dissolution, together with the uncertain period of its arrival, tends to keep alive in his mind the hope of another and better world, where sorrow and care, labour and pain, are unknown. In regard to these sentences pronounced on the human pair, infidels and Rationalists deny that they are punishments at all, and maintain that they are not real evils, but are the direct effects of those appointments of nature which God has established in the material world. But the obvious tenor of this passage, confirmed and illustrated by the inspired comments upon it which the later Scriptures contain, does represent the pain and labour, the sorrow and death, to which mankind are subjected as the penal consequences of sin; and since there is a difficulty in reconciling this Biblical account with what is the established course of the natural world, the true explanation seems to be, that God, foreseeing the fall of man, resolved from the beginning to adapt the state of the world for being the abode of a fallen yet redeemable race of creatures. While man, if he had continued in unbroken innocence and integrity, would have retained the happiness of primeval Eden, the earth would have worn one universal aspect of smiling beauty, and brought forth her fruits with rich and inexhaustible fertility, as did the virgin soil of the primeval garden-the Creator, anticipating that he would abuse his moral freedom by the commission of sin, transferred him from his paradisiacal state to the earth at large, which had been prepared, under deteriorated conditions, to be the temporary residence of such imperfect beings: and thus, while the present economy of the world is carried on according to the established laws of nature, the mixed character of natural and moral evil it exhibits is an arrangement to which it has been subjected as the penal consequence of man's transgression.