Is Work the Result of the Fall?

I was re-reading some articles by one of my professors at GCTS, Dr. Gordon Hugenberger.  He wrote a fantastic, short piece called: "Is Work the Result of the Fall: A Note on Genesis 2:15," which I commend to your reading.  Here is a summary of his points:

Note the tension produced by the following two texts in Genesis, the first before the Fall and the second after.  Was work before or after the Fall?

1. The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. - 2:15
2. The LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. - 3:23

To resolve this tension, some scholars translate Genesis 2:15 as "to worship and obey Him" by re-pointing the vowels of the Hebrew words, and they use at least four arguments for that position.

1. The gender of "garden" does not match the pronouns attached to these verbs
2. These two verbs, when used together, are often used in religious contexts
3. A few manuscripts have a similar reading
4. Some later rabbinical writings indicate this reading

Hugenberger noted problems with this worship-obey reading, however:

1. The gender of "garden" can match the gender of the verbs' pronouns 
2. The form of the verbs required by the worship-obey reading is not attested 
3. The Septuagint (and other translations) reads, "work it and keep it"
4. The worship-obey reading does not make sense of textual critical work on the last consonant
5. That reading does not account for two qualifications: a. "obey" is used only with direct objects or with an infinitive explanation; and b. in the context of Genesis 2:15 "serve" and "guard" are used several times in their normal senses (never as worship and obey!).
6. A plausible reading of Genesis 3:23 is that work was frustrated, not commenced, after the Fall.

His conclusion:

The Fall introduced an element of frustration into the process, as the ground would now yield thorns and thistles and so resist man's efforts at cultivation (Genesis 2:17-19), but the underlying mandate to work was unchanged. This understanding finds support in an analogy with the other effects of the curse with respect to mankind.  It is apparent that procreation was not a result of the fall, but pain in the process was.

I found Hugenberger's article carefully written and persuasive (especially his arguments in numbers 1, 3, and 5 above).