ABSTRACT
In mediaeval Europe a considerable iconographic and socio-ideological tradition grew up round the theme of the labours of Adam and Eve after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden:
This presumably owes its origin to the common exegetical tradition that finds expression in the usual translations of Genesis 3:23, where the Hebrew lacabo¯d ’etha¯ ’ada¯mâ is rendered ’eryalesQai tnv ynv by the LXX, ut operaretur terram by the Vulgate, and similarly, in the sense of a final clause, in all subsequent versions. The meaning which appears to be understood in every case is that Adam and Eve, on expulsion from a Paradise in which work was unnecessary, were henceforward required to scratch a living from a reluctant soil. The obvious authority for this is the latter part of Yahweh’s curse addressed to Adam in 3:19:
But this passage is at odds with the immediately preceding verses which begin the curse, for while ‘food’ as something from the soil is presumably to be understood in terms of cereals, implying agriculture and therefore the tilling of the soil which is understood in v. 23, vv. 17-18 refer in more general terms to the cursing of the ground, but in specific terms to food as ‘brambles and thistles’ – that is, berries and wild plants not involving agriculture. It is a matter not of the hunter-gatherer against the farmer so much as of a life under a curse, without the benefits of civilization implied in the organized way of life of the farmer. However, the agricultural sense of v. 19, which is implicit in the translations referred to, is so only in an exegetical tradition which is familiar with the verse coming a moment later to the effect that Adam goes out hoe in hand to till the soil. At the same time, the understanding of v.
