Genesis 3:17

But to Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened to the word of thy wife, and hast eaten of the fruit of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it, accursed is the ground, in that it did not show thee thy guilt; in labour shalt thou eat (of) it all the days of thy life.

כי שמעת לקול אשתך, by attributing to G’d such negative characteristics as lying and jealousy.

ותאכל מן העץ, thereby rebelling and causing yourself death as you had been warned about. Because you listened and accepted the argument to think of G’d as imperfect, ארורה האדמה, the earth will not continue to put its potential at your disposal without your having to exert yourself by hard labour. Furthermore, also because you rebelled and violated My command,

ולאדם אמר..מן העץ, the words מן העץ must be understood as “from the fruit of the tree.”

ארורה האדמה, the earth would be deprived pf part of its goodness. It would not respond to Adam’s efforts to cultivate it in full measure, i.e. many of the seeds he would plant would fail to germinate and grow. Bereshit Rabbah,20,8, quoted by Rashi, writes that instead of producing useful plants, the earth would henceforth also produce weeds and harmful plants. Not only that, but that these plants would germinate certain parasites.

בעצבון תאכלנה, you will have to work the soil until you will be able, finally, to eat its produce, whereas up until now you did not have to toil in order to assure yourself of your food supply. All you had to do was to pluck the fruit from the trees in Gan Eden. When the Torah had spoken of Adam’s task in Gan Eden being לעבדה ולשמרה, (2,15) the amount of physical work required to attend to that task was minimal. Now he would have to work intensively, as illustrated by the metaphor “you will eat your bread in the sweat of your brow” (3,19).

תאכלנה, a reference to the harvest. We have similar constructions, where at first glance one might think that the text refers to eating what is inedible. Adam was not meant to eat אדמה, soil, anymore that the people who sat at King Solomon’s table were meant to eat the table. (Kings I 2,7) באוכלי שולחנך, refers to the people mentioned in that verse, eating from the food served on the king’s table. We find more such examples, such as Isaiah 36,16,ואכלו איש גפנו ואיש תאנתו, where the reference is not to people consuming their vineyard and their fig tree, but the fruit of their vineyard and the fruit of their fig tree, although the prophet mentions only the source of that fruit. We have elaborated on this in our volume on Hebrew grammar מכלל in the first section of that book.

כל ימי חייך, as long as the human species will exist on earth.

ארורה האדמה בעבורך, “the earth will henceforth be cursed on your account.” [Seeing that the expression בעבור is usually understood as introducing a positive result, our author wanted to justify its use here. Ed.] He understands the earth being cursed as the result of Adam not having been able to resist his powerful craving to taste the forbidden fruit. He cites the use of the expression עבור as being used in a similar sense when the Israelites for the first time, instead of eating bread that descended from heaven. i.e. manna, eating bread that had originated from earth, something that they had on occasion longed for even in the desert. (Numbers chapter 11 and 21) Compare Joshua 8,11-12 where the Israelites eating normally grown food is described as עבור הארץ, according to our author as something they craved as having grown from the earth. The fact that G–d tells Adam that the earth will bring forth thorns and thistles instead of “bread,” shows that the punishment fits the crime, as thorns and thistles are certainly not what Adam craves in response to his working the soil.