the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt He in wait for her heel.”
To Eve[1] He said: “In sorrow and pain shalt thou bring forth thy children. Thou shalt be subject[2] to thy husband, and he shall have dominion[3] over thee.” And to Adam[4] He said: “Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee, that thou shouldst not eat, cursed is the earth[5] in thy work, with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. In the sweat[6] of thy face thou shalt eat bread, till thou shalt return to the earth, out of which thou wast taken; for dust [7] thou art, and into dust thou shalt return.”
Then “the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skin and clothed them. . . . And He cast Adam out of the
- ↑ To Eve. The sentence of punishment which Almighty God pronounced on Eve did not apply only to her, but to all women after her.
- ↑ Subject. Eve was subject to Adam before the fall, as a wife must always be to her husband. But this subjection only implied good order, not any hardship or any abuse on the part of man. It was different after the fall. Subjection became servitude and liable to all sorts of abuses.
- ↑ Dominion. Among pagans women were and still are very degraded, and cruelly treated. It is only since the Incarnation and the rise of Christianity that the treatment of women has improved.
- ↑ To Adam. The sentence that now follows was pronounced on Adam and all men after him.
- ↑ Cursed is the earth. Adam, the lord of the earth, having sinned, the curse upon him extended to all nature. As a consequence of the curse, the beasts which, before the fall, were attached to man, have become either shy and intractable, or positively ferocious towards him. Even the elements and forces of nature are very often hostile to him, and destroy the work of his hands. Moreover, the devil has obtained a certain dominion over them , and can injure man through them.
- ↑ In the sweat, i. e. it will be only by the most severe toil that you will be able to obtain bread, or, in other words, what is necessary for the life of yourself and your family. Thoms, thistles, and all kinds of weeds grow naturally from the earth, but com, which is the chief staple of man’s food, can only be made to grow by means of the cultivation bestowed by man on the ground; and this cultivation requires very severe toil.
- ↑ Dust. Man’s body is made of the earth. The name Adam means “made of earth”. He lost the gift of the immortality of the body when he lost sanctifying grace. From henceforth his body was to be subject to death and to the diseases which are the precursors of death. When he dies, his body turns to dust, mingling itself with the earth.
