Virgil, a couple of notes on the meaning of Gen. 5:29 (‘Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands’: ESV).

With all respect to your Jewish friends (you don’t think there might be some anti-Christian polemic at work there?), I don’t see anything in this verse that suggests that the curse pronounced on the ground in Genesis 3:17 is revoked. A literal translation would be something like: ‘This one comforts / consoles us on account of our work and on account of the toil of our hands, on account of the ground which YHWH has cursed (the same word as in 3:17).’ It looks to me as though this says merely that the son will relieve the ageing father of the hard work of producing food from the land: YHWH has cursed the ground so our work is painful, but Noah will help us in the work and relieve our suffering.

It is interesting that following the flood God says, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done’ (Gen. 8:21). But the word translated ‘curse’ here in the ESV is not the same word that is used in 3:17 and 5:29. It probably means something more like ‘treat with contempt’ or ‘dishonour’. The distinction is clear in Genesis 12:3: ‘him who dishonors you I will curse’. The point is not that the curse on the ground has been lifted (it remains hard, painful work to produce food) but that God will never again dishonour or ruin the land in this way, just as he will never again destroy all living creatures.

I accept that we can overstate the significance of the cursing of the ground, which may well be, in effect, a cursing of human labour rather than a cursing of the ‘environment’ as such. There remains, however, a strong link between human behaviour and the condition of the earth in the prophets that probably should not be understood as merely poetic: after all, warfare could have a devastating impact on the environment. I don’t see how creation’s ‘bondage to decay’ can be interpreted in purely spiritual terms (Rom. 8:21): Paul always uses phthora in a material sense to refer to the perishability or decay of physical things (cf. 1 Cor. 15:42, 50; Gal. 6:8; Col. 2:22). And, as I said before, there must be some reason for John’s vision of a new heaven and new earth in which there is no more wickedness, suffering and death - rather than simply of a new humanity.