Genesis 3:19

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 

Genesis 30:30-31

30:30 Indeed, ⁴  you had little before I arrived, ⁵  but now your possessions have increased many times over. ⁶  The Lord has blessed you wherever I worked. ⁷  But now, how long must it be before I do something for my own family too?” ⁸ 

30:31 So Laban asked, ⁹  “What should I give you?” “You don’t need to give me a thing,” ¹⁰  Jacob replied, ¹¹  “but if you agree to this one condition, ¹²  I will continue to care for ¹³  your flocks and protect them:

Genesis 33:14

33:14 Let my lord go on ahead of his servant. I will travel more slowly, at the pace of the herds and the children, ¹⁴  until I come to my lord at Seir.”

[3:19]  ¹ tn The expression “the sweat of your brow” is a metonymy, the sweat being the result of painful toil in the fields.

[3:19]  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.

[3:19]  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.

[30:30]  ⁴ tn Or “for.”

[30:30]  ⁵ tn Heb “before me.”

[30:30]  ⁶ tn Heb “and it has broken out with respect to abundance.”

[30:30]  ⁷ tn Heb “at my foot.”

[30:30]  ⁸ tn Heb “How long [until] I do, also I, for my house?”

[30:31]  ⁷ tn Heb “and he said.” The referent (Laban) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[30:31]  ⁸ tn The negated imperfect verbal form has an obligatory nuance.

[30:31]  ⁹ tn The order of the introductory clause and the direct discourse has been rearranged in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[30:31]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “If you do for me this thing.”

[30:31]  ¹¹ tn Heb “I will return, I will tend,” an idiom meaning “I will continue tending.”

[33:14]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and I, I will move along according to my leisure at the foot of the property which is before me and at the foot of the children.”