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Genesis

About this book

Disobedience and Expulsion from the Garden

Chapter 3

1 Now the serpent was shrewder than any of the wild animals⁠ that the Lord God had made.⁠ He said to the woman,⁠ “Is it really true that God said, ‘You must not eat from any tree of the orchard’?”⁠ 2 The woman said to the serpent,⁠ “We may eat of the fruit from the trees of the orchard;⁠ 3 but concerning the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the orchard God said, ‘You must not eat from it, and you must not touch it, or else you will die.’”⁠ 4 The serpent said to the woman, “Surely you will not die,⁠ 5 for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will open and you will be like God,⁠ knowing good and evil.”⁠ 6 When the woman saw that the tree produced fruit that was good for food, was attractive to the eye,⁠ and was desirable for making one wise,⁠ she took some of its fruit and ate it.⁠ She also gave some of it to her husband who was with her,⁠ and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them opened, and they knew they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.⁠ 8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God moving about in the orchard at the breezy time of the day,⁠ and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the orchard. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”⁠ 10 The man replied, “I heard you moving about in the orchard, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.”⁠ 11 And the Lord God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave me, she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.”⁠ 13 So the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman replied, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.”⁠ 14 The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the cattle and all the living creatures of the field!⁠ On your belly you will crawl⁠ and dust you will eat all the days of your life.⁠ 15 And I will put hostility between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”⁠ 16 To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your labor pains;⁠ with pain you will give birth to children.⁠ You will want to control your husband, but he will dominate you.”⁠ 17 But to Adam he said, “Because you obeyed the voice of52 your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you,⁠ ‘You must not eat from it,’ the ground is cursed because of you;⁠ in painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.⁠ 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, but you will eat the grass of the field.⁠ 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you will return.”⁠ 20 The man named his wife Eve,⁠ because she was the mother of all the living. 21 The Lord God made garments from skin⁠ for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.⁠ 22 And the Lord God said, “Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil,⁠ he must not be allowed to stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”⁠ 23 So the Lord God expelled him from the orchard in Eden⁠ to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken. 24 When he drove the man out, he placed on the eastern side of the orchard in Eden angelic sentries who used the flame of a whirling sword⁠ to guard the way to the tree of life.⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare Genesis 3:19 and Ecclesiastes 3:20

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Ecclesiastes echoes Genesis in its reflection on mortality by repeating the phrase that humans return to dust. Genesis frames this as the consequence of disobedience, while Ecclesiastes generalizes it as the universal fate of all people.

Passages

Genesis 3:19

Hebrew Bible
17 But to Adam he said, “Because you obeyed the voice of52 your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ the ground is cursed because of you; in painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, but you will eat the grass of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you will return.” 20 The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. 21 The Lord God made garments from skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Genesis

Ecclesiastes 3:20

Hebrew Bible
18 I also thought to myself, “It is for the sake of people, so God can clearly show them that they are like animals. 19 For the fate of humans and the fate of animals are the same: As one dies, so dies the other; both have the same breath. There is no advantage for humans over animals, for both are fleeting. 20 Both go to the same place; both come from the dust, and to dust both return. 21 Who really knows if the human spirit ascends upward, and the animal’s spirit descends into the earth?” 22 So I perceived there is nothing better than for people to enjoy their work because that is their reward; for who can show them what the future holds?
300–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Ecclesiastes

References

"... If we take Genesis 3:19 and Ecclesiastes 3:20, the first stage would be to identify whether “dust to dust” is a citation; the second whether its potential source is Genesis and whether Genesis was known to Qohelet’s audience; third, to identify thematic connections such as mortality and human origins which are important issues in both texts. The last stage would be to analyse other thematic elements in Genesis that might help us to establish a cognitive environment that enables us to arrive at a richer understanding of Ecclesiastes. As noted above, the diverse books of the Bible cite other biblical books in a variety of ways. It was also noted that establishing the existence of the citation, allusion or echo must be done with care. It will be argued below that Ecclesiastes reuses the language of Genesis 3 and 4 for its own ends. Lexicographic citations, the use of common words, are among the most difficult to substantiate and the reuse of relatively common words is insufficient to demonstrate dependency, though clusters of common language, such as we find in Ecclesiastes and Genesis, may be sufficient to demonstrate a link ..."
Ray Moxham, “Qohelet's Fall: The Use of Genesis 2–4 in the Book of Ecclesiastes” (MTh diss., University of Otago, 2015), 35–36.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Genesis 3:19 and Ecclesiastes 3:20

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