Psalms 22:15

22:15 The roof of my mouth ¹  is as dry as a piece of pottery;

my tongue sticks to my gums. ² 

You ³  set me in the dust of death. ⁴ 

Psalms 44:25

44:25 For we lie in the dirt,

with our bellies pressed to the ground. ⁵ 

Isaiah 65:25

65:25 A wolf and a lamb will graze together; ⁶ 

a lion, like an ox, will eat straw, ⁷ 

and a snake’s food will be dirt. ⁸ 

They will no longer injure or destroy

on my entire royal mountain,” ⁹  says the Lord.

Matthew 16:23

16:23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me, because you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but on man’s.” ¹⁰ 

Romans 7:22-24

7:22 For I delight in the law of God in my inner being. 7:23 But I see a different law in my members waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that is in my members. 7:24 Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

Philippians 3:19

3:19 Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, they exult in their shame, and they think about earthly things. ¹¹ 

Colossians 3:2

3:2 Keep thinking about things above, not things on the earth,

¹ tc Heb “my strength” (כֹּחִי, kokhiy), but many prefer to emend the text to חִכִּי (khikiy, “my palate”; cf. NEB, NRSV “my mouth”) assuming that an error of transposition has occurred in the traditional Hebrew text.

² tn Cf. NEB “my jaw”; NASB, NRSV “my jaws”; NIV “the roof of my mouth.”

³ sn Here the psalmist addresses God and suggests that God is ultimately responsible for what is happening because of his failure to intervene (see vv. 1-2, 11).

⁴ sn The imperfect verbal form draws attention to the progressive nature of the action. The psalmist is in the process of dying.

⁵ tn Heb “for our being/life sinks down to the dirt, our belly clings to the earth.” The suffixed form of נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, “being, life”) is often equivalent to a pronoun in poetic texts.

⁶ sn A similar statement appears in 11:6.

⁷ sn These words also appear in 11:7.

⁸ sn Some see an allusion to Gen 3:14 (note “you will eat dirt”). The point would be that even in this new era the snake (often taken as a symbol of Satan) remains under God’s curse. However, it is unlikely that such an allusion exists. Even if there is an echo of Gen 3:14, the primary allusion is to 11:8, where snakes are pictured as no longer dangerous. They will no longer attack other living creatures, but will be content to crawl along the ground. (The statement “you will eat dirt” in Gen 3:14 means “you will crawl on the ground.” In the same way the statement “dirt will be its food” in Isa 65:25 means “it will crawl on the ground.”)

⁹ tn Heb “in all my holy mountain.” These same words appear in 11:9. See the note there.

¹⁰ tn Grk “people.”

¹¹ tn Grk “whose end is destruction, whose god is the belly and glory is their shame, these who think of earthly things.”