Or HaChaim on Genesis 3:17/אור החיים על בראשית ג׳:י״ז

1 ולאדם אמר. And G'd had said to Adam. We need to understand why G'd mentioned Adam's "listening to the voice of his wife;" It would have sufficed to say: "because you ate from the tree, etc.;" Besides, why did the Torah add the word "to the voice?" Could the Torah not simply have said "because you listened to your wife, etc.?" Having in mind that we explained that Adam had not been aware at the time he ate that the fruit he ate was from the tree of knowledge, it would not have been appropriate for the Torah to simply say: "because you ate from the tree, etc." since in fact he did not eat from the tree knowingly but inadvertently. The Torah therefore had to spell out that Adam's sin was accepting the words of his wife without checking them. As a result of his failure to investigate his wife's words more closely, he "ate from the tree." The reason the Torah refers to the "voice" of Adam's wife is to alert us to the fact that Adam was satisfied that it was his wife talking; he did not bother to analyse what she was saying. When she told him: "take and eat," this is what he did. He did not ask where the fruit came from. The Torah alludes once more to Adam's error in not giving Eve precise instructions when it says: "from the tree which I told you not to eat from." Adam had only told Eve not to eat from the fruit of the tree. The lack of adequate information at the time Adam relayed G'd's command to Eve was a major cause of the tragedy.

2The reason G'd cursed both the earth and Eve but not Adam is due to the earth's failure on the third day of creation to produce trees exactly as G'd had commanded. Had the earth produced only trees whose trunk were edible, or only trees whose trunks were not edible, Eve could not have made the error she made. It was only because the tree of knowledge was different in this respect that made Adam's failure to warn her not to eat from this tree result in tragic consequences. G'd therefore cursed the earth as the cause of all that had happened. Since G'd expelled Adam from the garden and made him toil the unresponsive earth, Adam was punished for having accepted his wife's urgings without checking. He had greedily indulged his desire, and as a result he would forever more remain in a state of sadness that he could not earn his livelihood without hard work. He would now eat grass of the field in lieu of the fruit of the trees of the garden for which he did not have to toil. In future when he would have to labour to secure his food supply he would know exactly where it came from.