Adam Dreads Eating Like a Beast and Finds Comfort in Bread

"Because you listened to the voice of your wife" (Genesis 3:17). "To the words of your wife" is not written here, but "to the voice," [meaning] she began to wail over him: do you think I am dying [and you will take another], and so on, as above. "And you ate from the tree which I commanded you" to warn the wild beast and the cattle; and it was not enough that you did not warn them, but you even gave to them and they ate. "Cursed is the ground for your sake" (Genesis 3:17), that it should raise up for you cursed things such as gnats, fleas, and flies; and let it raise up a camel for him, in that too there is benefit, for he sells it and benefits from its price. "In toil you shall eat of it" (Genesis 3:17): sustenance is twice as hard as childbirth, and so on, as above. Rabbi Yitzchak said: to what may the matter be compared? To a king who said to his servant: do not taste the dish until I come from the bathhouse. His wife said to him: taste this dish, so that it not be lacking either salt or brine. The king came and found him tasting it with his lips. The king said to him: did you listen to my maidservant more than to me? So too the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Adam, "and from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat" (Genesis 2:17). What did Eve do? She fed it to him. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: did you listen to Eve more than to Me? Immediately he was driven out, "and He drove out the man" (Genesis 3:24). Three entered for judgment and four came out condemned: Adam, Eve, and the serpent entered for judgment, and the earth was cursed along with them, and so on, as above in section five. Reish Lakish said: at the hour the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Adam the first man, "thorns and thistles it shall sprout for you" (Genesis 3:18), his eyes shed tears. He said before Him: Master of the world, shall I and my donkey eat from one trough? But when He said to him, "by the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread" (Genesis 3:19), his mind was set at ease. Reish Lakish said: happy are we if we had stood by the first [decree], and even now we have not escaped it, for we eat the grass of the field.