3:19 By the sweat of your brow 1 you will eat food
until you return to the ground, 2
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust, and to dust you will return.” 3
10:9 Remember that you have made me as with 4 the clay;
will 5 you return me to dust?
10:10 Did you not pour 6 me out like milk,
and curdle 7 me like cheese? 8
34:15 all flesh would perish together
and human beings would return to dust.
104:29 When you ignore them, they panic. 9
When you take away their life’s breath, they die
and return to dust.
12:2 Many of those who sleep
in the dusty ground will awake –
some to everlasting life,
and others to shame and everlasting abhorrence. 10
1 tn The expression “the sweat of your brow” is a metonymy, the sweat being the result of painful toil in the fields.
2 sn Until you return to the ground. The theme of humankind’s mortality is critical here in view of the temptation to be like God. Man will labor painfully to provide food, obviously not enjoying the bounty that creation promised. In place of the abundance of the orchard’s fruit trees, thorns and thistles will grow. Man will have to work the soil so that it will produce the grain to make bread. This will continue until he returns to the soil from which he was taken (recalling the creation in 2:7 with the wordplay on Adam and ground). In spite of the dreams of immortality and divinity, man is but dust (2:7), and will return to dust. So much for his pride.
3 sn In general, the themes of the curse oracles are important in the NT teaching that Jesus became the cursed one hanging on the tree. In his suffering and death, all the motifs are drawn together: the tree, the sweat, the thorns, and the dust of death (see Ps 22:15). Jesus experienced it all, to have victory over it through the resurrection.
4 tn The preposition “like” creates a small tension here. So some ignore the preposition and read “clay” as an adverbial accusative of the material (GKC 371 §117.hh but cf. 379 §119.i with reference to beth essentiae: “as it were, by clay”). The NIV gets around the problem with a different meaning for the verb: “you molded me like clay.” Some suggest the meaning was “as [with] clay” (in the same manner that we have “as [in] the day of Midian” [Isa 9:4]).
5 tn The text has a conjunction: “and to dust….”
6 tn The verb נָתַךְ (natakh) means “to flow,” and in the Hiphil, “to cause to flow.”
7 tn This verb קָפָא (qafa’) means “to coagulate.” In the Hiphil it means “to stiffen; to congeal.”
8 tn The verbs in v. 10 are prefixed conjugations; since the reference is to the womb, these would need to be classified as preterites.
9 tn Heb “you hide your face, they are terrified.”
10 sn This verse is the only undisputed reference to a literal resurrection found in the Hebrew Bible.