Dust to Dust
And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
-- Genesis 3: 17-19 (KJV)
Adam and Eve knew they were doomed to die if they ever ate of the tree of knowledge, but nobody ever explained to them what "dying" would mean -- a point exploited by the snake in John Milton's version of the Fall, Paradise Lost. In fact, only by eating of the tree would they gain such knowledge, heretofore restricted to what the snake calls "gods" (3: 5). But gods, knowing of death, never need experience it -- which is just another ironic twist in the tale.
On top of death, God throws a few other eternal sufferings into the bargain. Since Eve sinned first, women get the worse of the deal, being condemned to suffer giving birth and to find sexual desire painful. Worst of all, they are subjected forevermore to men's rule.
Men, for their part, must now toil to extract grains and herbs from the soil, and they aren't going to enjoy eating them, either. "In the sweat of thy face," God proclaims, "shalt thou eat bread." Following up on this famous line, God drives home the meaning of death: man (adam in Hebrew) shall "return unto the ground" (adamah) from which he was taken [see The Breath of Life]. "For dust thou art," says God, "and unto dust shalt thou return." If it's any consolation, the snake doesn't get off too easily, either.
God's sentence is the ultimate source of several English phrases, by way of its quotation or paraphrase elsewhere in the Bible. From various biblical sources comes this line in the Burial section of the first English Book of Common Prayer (1548–1549): "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." Eventually, usage pared this mouthful down to the biblical-sounding "ashes to ashes, dust to dust," which itself never appears in the Bible.
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Michael Macrone is Associate Site Producer of GraceCom and the author of nine books
on language, literature, and ideas, including the best-selling
Brush Up Your Shakespeare!
