MOST ABLE-BODIED PEOPLE aren’t afraid of good, hard work — with one proviso. According to the core beliefs of the American Dream, hard work is supposed to pay off. It’s supposed to be rewarded with success of some kind. And often, it is.

But not always. Many live in a cycle of poverty they can’t dig themselves out of. It’s like running on a fast treadmill: you have to keep up the pace to avoid getting thrown to the ground, but no matter how long and how hard you run, you’re still in the same place.

It reminds me of the story in Genesis 3. Genesis 2:15 tells us that Adam wasn’t sitting around binge-watching Netflix; he had work to do tending the garden. I imagine that it was fruitful work, all the things people love about gardening and then some. But then, through Eve, he fell for the lies of the serpent and came under God’s curse for his sin:

Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
    since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
    and to dust you will return. (Gen 3:17-19, NIV)

Note that the curse isn’t work itself; it’s needlessly difficult work, the pain and frustration of fruitless toil. We can already hear in the curse the attitude that would later permeate the book of Ecclesiastes: Life is nothing but work, work, work — and then you die. Have a nice day.

And we might hear in it also the later and worse curse against Judah in Micah 6. Through the prophet, God has brought a lawsuit against his people for their continual unfaithfulness to the covenant. He has given evidence of the rampant social and economic injustice that plagues Jerusalem and the rest of the kingdom. And now, it is time to pass sentence:

Therefore, I have begun to destroy you,
    to ruin you because of your sins.
You will eat but not be satisfied;
    your stomach will still be empty.
You will store up but save nothing,
    because what you save I will give to the sword.
You will plant but not harvest;
    you will press olives but not use the oil,
    you will crush grapes but not drink the wine. (Mic 6:13-15)

In Micah’s day, secular nations would sometimes enter into covenant agreements with each other. Built into these were both positive and negative consequences, blessings and curses. Those who faithfully honored the agreement would enjoy the benefits of the relationship, but curses would befall those who dishonored it. And some of these curses took the form of predicting how futile life would become for the unfaithful party.

That seems to be the picture painted here. The references to destruction and the sword may be dark reminders of the continual threat of Assyria and, depending on the timing of the prophecy, what they already did or soon would do to Samaria and the northern kingdom. War, invasion, and siege bring a life of hardship and futility to the victims, including food shortages in which people would “eat but not be satisfied.”

The Hebrew of the next couple of lines is ambiguous. The NIV’s translation, “your stomach will still be empty,” certainly makes sense given the previous prediction that people wouldn’t have enough to eat. But the Hebrew can be translated more literally as “emptiness in your inward parts,” and some translators take this in a darker direction than mere hunger. To them, the message is that wombs will be mostly empty, meaning that the people will be mostly childless, and even those children who are born will fall to an enemy sword.

This is the mirror opposite of promises of blessing. Children were understood as a blessing, as those who would carry on the family line. But the curse is that these would never be born or would be taken away. Likewise, in an agricultural society, blessing is often framed in terms of abundant and fruitful crops, vineyards, and olive groves (e.g., Deut 6:11; 28:4). But the curse for disobedience undoes the blessing that has been so thoughtlessly taken for granted. Listen, for example, to Deuteronomy 28:38-41:

You will sow much seed in the field but you will harvest little, because locusts will devour it. You will plant vineyards and cultivate them but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes, because worms will eat them. You will have olive trees throughout your country but you will not use the oil, because the olives will drop off. You will have sons and daughters but you will not keep them, because they will go into captivity.

All their efforts come to little or nothing. Their crops are decimated by locusts, their vineyards are eaten by worms, the olives drop from the trees, their children are taken captive. To those familiar with the words of Moses, the curses pronounced by Micah should sound eerily familiar. He had warned them, just before entering into the Promised Land, not to take God for granted, not to forget who brought them there, not to abandon their covenant promise.

But they had forgotten. They brought the curse upon themselves with their unrepentant and unjust ways. And as Micah concludes the oracle, he will remind them that this has been going on for a long time.