²⁴ Genesis 3:17-19 makes clear how: “And to Adam he said: ‘Because you listened to your wife’s voice and took to eating from the tree concerning which I gave you this command, “You must not eat from it,” cursed is the ground on your account. In pain you will eat its produce all the days of your life.

27. To what part of the earth did the cursing of the ground apply, and what did Adam’s working cursed ground mean for him and Eve?

²⁷ The wording of God’s sentence upon Adam, especially the words about the “cursed . . . ground,” meant that Adam was to lose Paradise. He did. Paradise was not cursed because of the transgression of Eve and Adam; it continued to be a place of life, still having within it the “tree of life.”