The word *cursed* falls twice in this passage. It lands on the serpent, 14"Cursed are you above all livestock," and on the ground, 17"cursed is the ground because of you." It never lands on Adam or Eve. Their judgment is severe, with pain multiplied in childbirth, sweat and thorns, and a return to dust. Yet the two people made in God's image walk out of this scene under hard consequences without being called cursed themselves.
At the center of the serpent's sentence, judgment turns into promise. An offspring of the woman will strike the serpent's head, and the serpent will strike his heel. The two wounds are unequal. A heel wound hurts and heals. A head wound ends the fight. This promise comes as a verdict against evil before the book offers any other word of hope. Paul tells the church in Rome that "the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet" (Romans 16:20), a clear echo of the verse in the life of believers.
The woman's sentence has the same double shape. Her pain in childbearing is multiplied, and childbearing is the road by which the promised offspring will come. The place where the curse lands becomes the place hope has to pass through. Adam seems to sense it. Having just heard that he is dust and will return to dust, he names his wife Eve, 20"because she was the mother of all living." No child exists yet. He names her for a future he cannot see, because God has just promised one.
Then comes a detail easy to read past: 21"the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them." Their sewn fig leaves were never going to be enough. Skins imply an animal's death, and the story does not linger there, yet every sacrifice that follows carries the same shape. Something else bears the cost so that a person does not have to stand exposed.
The expulsion reads at first as pure loss. God posts cherubim and a flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life, and the reason he gives is 22"lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever." It reads as a hard mercy, keeping two people who have chosen death from living forever in the condition death has produced. The door opens again. In Revelation's last chapter the tree of life stands again at the center, and the invitation is open: "Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life" (Revelation 22:14).
If you feel east of some garden of your own, shut out of something you lost, remember that this passage is full of small mercies. The curse landed on the serpent, the promise was spoken, the skins were provided, and the way back was guarded.
Prayer
Father, thank you that the sentence on our first parents carried a promise inside it, a head to be crushed before a day of history had passed. Thank you that our own coverings were never enough and that you clothed us at a cost we did not pay. Where we feel shut out of something we lost, remind us this morning that in Christ the way back has been opened. In Jesus' name, amen.