Adam's sentence, in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:17), includes an unusual charge. "Accursed is the ground, in that it did not show thee thy guilt; in labour shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life."
Why is the ground cursed? Because, the Targumist explains, it should have warned Adam. Creation had an obligation to speak. When the first man reached for the forbidden fruit, the soil under his feet should have trembled or cried out or refused to accept his step. It did not. It stood silent. And so it too bears responsibility.
This is a startling piece of moral theology. Silence in the face of sin is a failure. The Targumist extends this logic even to the earth itself. A bystander — even a non-sentient one — that watches a transgression unfold without protest shares in the consequence. Every generation after Adam, when we struggle against thorns and thistles, we are feeling the earth's punishment for a silence it should not have kept.