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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 Psalm 90:3

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Psalm 90 describes humanity returning to dust, language that correlates with Genesis 3 where life begins and ends with dust. Rather than presenting dust as only a metaphor for death, both texts link mortality with human origins in a repeating cycle.

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

Psalm 90:3

Hebrew Bible
1 A prayer of Moses, the man of God. O Lord, you have been our protector through all generations. 2 Even before the mountains came into existence, or you brought the world into being, you were the eternal God. 3 You make mankind return to the dust, and say, “Return, O people.” 4 Yes, in your eyes a thousand years are like yesterday that quickly passes, or like one of the divisions of the nighttime. 5 You bring their lives to an end and they “fall asleep.” In the morning they are like the grass that sprouts up:
600–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Psalms

References

"... A verbal similarity exists between Genesis 3:19 and Ecclesiastes 3:20. We must now consider whether this is a citation. The creation of human beings from the dust is a common motif in the First Testament (Job 4:19; 10:9; 34:15; Ps 90:3; 103:14; 104:29). Most frequently dust simply means the grave, or death, with no indication that the creation account is the source. Dust is also used to describe prodigious offspring (Genesis 13:16; 28:14; Numbers 23:10). Returning to dust is simply a metaphor and a physiological description of death (e.g. Job 16:15; 17:16; 20:11; 21:26; Psalm 7:5; 22:15; 44:25; 89:39; Isaiah 26:19; Daniel 12:2). No other passage contains the dual concept of creation from dust and returning to it. The closest is Job 10:9, where humans are formed from clay (כחמר) but return to dust (עפר). Reference in the preceding verse to the action of God in fashioning and making him (ידיך עצבוני ויעשוני) suggest a connection to Genesis. Psalm 90:3 and 104:29 speak of returning to dust, implying that we came from dust. Psalm 103:14, like Genesis 3:19, states that we are dust, again implying origin (and fragility). We cannot be sure that the idea of returning to dust originated with the Genesis account. However, the similarities would suggest this: both Genesis and Ecclesiastes go beyond using “dust” as a metaphor for death and “going down to dust” for dying. Both see it as the literal origin of humanity ..."
Ray Moxham, “Qohelet's Fall: The Use of Genesis 2–4 in the Book of Ecclesiastes” (MTh diss., University of Otago, 2015), 54.

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 Psalm 90:3

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