Dr. Jorstad's 'The Ground That Opened Its Mouth'

“The Ground That Opened Its Mouth: The Ground’s Response to Human Violence in Genesis 4”, written by Duke University’s Mari Jorstad, is a scholarly article that covers the idea that the ground and the early humans did indeed have a connection. Furthermore, Dr. Jorstad’s thesis appears to be that the ground is responsive to God’s will, and thus opposes human rebellion and brutality. In other words, the ground reflects God’s will and this often times clashes with humans and their behavior. Dr. Jorstad, in her article, discusses examples that exemplify her point from the Book of Genesis, specifically in relation to Cain, Adam and Noah. To start, Dr. Jorstad establishes that herself, as well as many other scholars, have interpreted the ground as its own being when talking about early Genesis stories. She then moves her focus onto Genesis 4:1-16, looking at the connection between Cain, Adam and Noah. The story of Adam contains Adam being formed out of the ground, and he will eventually end up back in the ground. The word “Adam” itself has roots that go back to the word “ground”, and Genesis links humanity to the ground by saying that humans essentially need to take care of the ground. This is shown in the case of Cain. Cain is a tiller of the ground, and Noah is a man of the ground, thus

Jorstad focuses on Cain. She dissects a quote from Genesis and it does not appear to have much relevance to her argument. The main thing to take away from this paragraph is that she quotes the Bible in saying “cursed are you from the ground that opened its mouth to take the blood of your brother from your hand”. She brings up a good point and describes the fact that the ground physically opens up to take the blood from Cain. This is significant because the ground opens up its mouth seemingly with joy, as if it was happy to accept the blood of Cain. In other situations, the ground acts in accordance with God and his will similar to what happened with