Translation
Both thorns and thistles it will cause to sprout
Go to footnote numberfor you, but you will eat the foliage
Go to footnote numberof the field.
Paraphrase
It will produce both thorns and thistles for you, but nonetheless, you will have to find a way to get your food from the green plants grown in the ground.
Footnotes
1
“sprout”: When you want useful things to sprout up, unusable, troublesome things will sprout up instead. Have you ever noticed that weeds don’t seem to have trouble growing in any condition of weather or soil, but desirable plants are usually more delicate and less hardy?
2
“foliage”: This word means “herbage, foliage, grass.” It comes from a root meaning “to glisten, or to be green.” It is fairly general, and was used of any plant that served as food for either animals or humans. The reason this is included is that the plants grown in the ground were man’s only source of food before the world-wide flood, after which God allowed man to eat animals as well. Because of Adam and Eve’s sin, God cursed the only source they had for food, making it difficult to get what we need from it.
If my theory is correct, prior to being shunned from the garden they had access to, and ate from the tree of life which supplied everything they needed. It was easy; it required no work. After being sent from the garden the tree of life was not available to them, and their only source of food (the ground) was cursed.