Genesis 3:17

The context

After the transgression, God questions the man, who blames the woman and then God for giving her to him. The judgments that follow address the serpent, the woman, and the man in turn. The man's sentence concerns the ground and the toil by which he will eat from it.

What it establishes

It establishes that the consequences of the act reach the man's work and the soil he works, and that the man is addressed as responsible rather than as a bystander to someone else's fault.

What it does not establish

It does not make every crop failure a punishment. The verse describes human labor under a curse, not a system for reading disasters as retribution. Nor does it absolve the woman or indict her here; she is addressed in her own sentence, and the man's blame-shifting is reported, not endorsed.

Short note, first pass, October 2026. Corrections welcome.

Cited in these answers

• If the world was created by all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving God, why does he permit evil, pain and suffering in nature? Why does he allow disease, parasites, brutality, handicaps and natural disasters to persist?

Part of Scripture, Opened — the exegetical layer behind every citation on this site. Scripture quotations are from the ESV.