Hang on, hang on…I thought we were arguing in another thread that verbal-plenary inspiration matters to how we translate and understand scripture. The original words, the very words…didn’t think a concern about the actual words was subjecting ‘words to picayune distinctions’! (please insert here a playful wink rather than furious keyboard warrior-ing!)
The question asked in this thread is about the original words. And the answer to that question is indeed yes, it is true that the word ‘curse’ is not given to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3. It’s simply not there. It’s not even there in chiastic structure or in poetic parallelisms! I’m not denying the existence of the curse, the reality of the curse, or the personal nature of the curse to Adam and Eve and each and every one of their descendants - in fact I affirmed all of these and referenced other scriptures that further explain these themes! But if verbal-plenary inspiration matters over there, it also matters here. It matters both in what is written and in what is not written.
The original question also asked why it matters. Here’s a pre-critical commentary (ie not modern squishiness) giving what I think is a very good cash value of what God is communicating by the words He’s inspired in these verses:
‘As justice and mercy were combined in the divine sentence; justice in the fact that God cursed the tempter alone, and only punished the tempted with labour and mortality, mercy in the promise of eventual triumph over the serpent: so God also displayed His mercy to the fallen, before carrying the sentence into effect. It was through the power of divine grace that Adam believed the promise with regard to the woman’s seed, and manifested his faith in the name which he gave to his wife’ (Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, 1.66).
P.S: isn’t the earth also included in the removal of the curse as well as Adam’s race in the very verses you’ve referenced?
I don’t think I’m actually disagreeing with the theology you’ve given, just the exegesis. Is there something I’m missing? Some reason for concern in the answers I’ve given?