Could this mean God cursed the ground with man’s dominion over the earth? That it is fallen man that is the curse on all that he comes into contact with? And that God will not ‘hurt’ the soil any longer for man’s transgressions? But man will just get it directly?

What is your take on the nature of ‘curse?’ It seems YHWH may have made a shift here, from considering man’s environment as the option in which to affect the children of Adam, to one of just human society itself.

In a way, YHWH left the earth for us to curse ourselves, instead of by divine fiat. If we were given the earth to be in charge of, as our little piece of Creation to see if we can handle it as well as YHWH in greater Creation, then it flows from there. Can we create our own heaven from knowledge, like the heaven of wisdom that Adam rejected?

It also points to YHWH’s regard for non-human life. In our artificial modern lives, we have only our pets to connect us to non-human life on a regular basis. So it is more difficult for us to perceive non-human life like those ancients who took it for granted, and had a language that related to the natural world that is lost to our modern security of suburbs and grocery stores.

A subtle shift. But its interesting how our regard for the objective matter we live in still holds today.