Prior to the Fall, only plants that were either useful for food or beautiful to the eye grew from the earth; now it was to produce “thorns and thistles” also (6T 186). The increased labor necessary to the cultivation of the soil would increase the misery of man’s existence. He was to learn by bitter experience that life independent of God can at best be one of sorrow and affliction.

 See on ch. 1:11, 29. The divine punishment provided also a partial change in diet. We evidently are to conclude that the quantity and quality of grains and nuts and fruits originally given to man were, as a result of the curse, reduced to such an extent that man would be required to look to the herbs for a portion of his daily food. This change may also have been due in part to the loss of certain elements from the tree of life, to a change in climate, and perhaps most of all to man’s sentence to hard labor in the process of earning a livelihood.