17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’(A)

“Cursed(B) is the ground(C) because of you;
    through painful toil(D) you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.(E)

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20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it,(A) in hope 21 that[a] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay(B) and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.(C)

22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning(D) as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

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Footnotes

  1. Romans 8:21 Or subjected it in hope. 21 For

29 He named him Noah[a](A) and said, “He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the Lord has cursed.(B)

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Footnotes

  1. Genesis 5:29 Noah sounds like the Hebrew for comfort.

The earth is defiled(A) by its people;
    they have disobeyed(B) the laws,
violated the statutes
    and broken the everlasting covenant.(C)
Therefore a curse(D) consumes the earth;
    its people must bear their guilt.
Therefore earth’s inhabitants are burned up,(E)
    and very few are left.

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22 What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun?(A) 23 All their days their work is grief and pain;(B) even at night their minds do not rest.(C) This too is meaningless.

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33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.(A) In this world you will have trouble.(B) But take heart! I have overcome(C) the world.”

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In vain you rise early
    and stay up late,
toiling for food(A) to eat—
    for he grants sleep(B) to[a] those he loves.(C)

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Footnotes

  1. Psalm 127:2 Or eat— / for while they sleep he provides for

23 but I gave them this command:(A) Obey(B) me, and I will be your God and you will be my people.(C) Walk in obedience to all(D) I command you, that it may go well(E) with you. 24 But they did not listen(F) or pay attention;(G) instead, they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts.(H) They went backward(I) and not forward.

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17 All their days they eat in darkness,
    with great frustration, affliction and anger.

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14 “Mortals, born of woman,(A)
    are of few days(B) and full of trouble.(C)

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19 Now we know that whatever the law says,(A) it says to those who are under the law,(B) so that every mouth may be silenced(C) and the whole world held accountable to God.(D)

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26 “His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? 27 Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

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17 “Yet how often is the lamp of the wicked snuffed out?(A)
    How often does calamity(B) come upon them,
    the fate God allots in his anger?(C)

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For hardship does not spring from the soil,
    nor does trouble sprout from the ground.(A)
Yet man is born to trouble(B)
    as surely as sparks fly upward.

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16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;(A) 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,(B) for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”(C)

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22 “His master replied, ‘I will judge you by your own words,(A) you wicked servant! You knew, did you, that I am a hard man, taking out what I did not put in, and reaping what I did not sow?(B)

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45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’(A)

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Toil Is Meaningless

17 So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.(A)

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11 Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done
    and what I had toiled to achieve,
everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind;(A)
    nothing was gained under the sun.(B)

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13 I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens.(A) What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind!(B) 14 I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.(C)

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