GENESIS 3:17

Q: Do you think that God might have cursed only the ground that Adam was to “farm” and not the ground from then on? (He created the ground and said it was “good.” Did He then curse His own creation forever? Seems improbable.)

1. Since the punishment for Eve applied to all her subsequent descendants, we can infer that the punishment for Adam also applied to all his descendants. Thus, the ground would be cursed wherever they happened to work the soil.

2. Remember that the creation was originally “good.” That is precisely the import of Genesis 3 in explaining why creation today is not as “good” as it was in Gen. 1. The cursing of the ground obviously affected more than just Adam's immediate surroundings since hundreds of years later Lamech states in Gen. 5:29 that the ground was still cursed and hopes that the birth of Noah will remove the curse. This does indirectly come about after God cleanses the earth with a flood and announces afterward in Gen. 8:21 that He will not take any such drastic measures in the future due to man's sins. You could perhaps make the argument that the original curse on the ground due to Adam's sin was removed at the same time, but I have never seen that argument in print before.

3. At a much later date, Paul writes that all creation is "subjected to futility...its bondage to decay." (Romans 8:18-23) This is an apt description of the Law of Entropy -- everything is winding down.