“Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” Genesis 2:7
“By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you will return.” Genesis 3:19
“All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.” Ecclesiastes 3:20
“I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted.” Genesis 13:16
“Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.” Genesis 28:14
“Abraham answered, ‘Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes (afar v’eifer).’” Genesis 18:27
“Just as dust never ends, so too Israel will never end.” Bereishit Rabba 41:9
“Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Peshischa said: A person should have two pockets; in one should be the note ‘For my sake the world was created,’ and in the other ‘I am but dust and ashes.’”
“After you have been humbled like the dust of the earth, then you shall spread out in all directions.” (Seforno on Genesis 28:14)
“Shake off the dust, rise up; sit enthroned, Jerusalem. Free yourself from the chains on your neck, Daughter Zion, now a captive.” (Isaiah 52:2)
“When Care was crossing a river, she saw some clay. She picked it up, pensive, and began to shape a figure. While she was wondering what she had made, Jupiter came by. Care asked Jupiter to give spirit (animus) to the form she had molded. Jupiter willingly granted her request. Care then wanted to claim the work as her own. But Jupiter insisted that it belonged to him. As they argued, Earth came forward and declared that, since the material used to make the figure came from her, the figure should belong to her. The three could not resolve their dispute, so they asked Saturn to arbitrate. Saturn ruled:
Since Care shaped the figure, she would possess it while it lived.
When it died, its body would return to Earth, from which it came.
Its spirit would return to Jupiter, who gave it life.
Saturn also decreed that the figure be called Homo (man), because it was made from humus (earth).” (Hyginus, Fabulae, 220)
Why does God promise Abraham and then Jacob that their descendants will be like the dust of the earth? What does dust have to do with blessing? And if Israel is to be like the dust of the earth, how does this lead to blessings for “all the families of the earth”?
The human being, as described in Bereishit, is a composite of “dust” and “breath of life.” Dust represents earthy yet lifeless material, which God activates with spirit. Dust connotes man as earth-dweller, matter, and mortal. To be “dust of the earth” is to be stuff. Man is not an angel or an AI, which fundamentally lacks dust. Man is grounded in, biased by, and limited to dust. Even if humans travel to Mars, they will remain dust—at home even in Martian dust. Rashi says, “God gathered dust from the entire earth, from the four corners, so that wherever he would die, the earth would accept him for burial.” Humans can scatter from place to place but will always be at home in dust. Life can be described as a round-trip journey from dust to the forgetting of dust and back.
But we are not merely dust. We are also dust that speaks, thinks, and acts. The world was created for us so that the dust that we are might be filled with the spirit of life. Abraham acknowledges his dustiness right before arguing with God on behalf of Sodom. His humility (a word cognate in English with both humanity and humus, meaning earth) precedes his chutzpah. Abraham doesn’t argue with God in spite of his dusty condition but because of it. He cares about his fellow dustlings, as if to say, “Don’t return Sodom to dust; let it be filled with the spirit of life.”
Rabbi Simcha Bunim famously contrasts our non-special existence with our singular being. We live—or should live—with two perspectives: one focused on our basic being, the other on our aspirational becoming; one centered on self-acceptance, the other on striving to make a name for ourselves. Seforno gives this dialectic dynamism, suggesting that humility is the precondition for “spreading out.” Blessing comes to those who accept that they are dust. The Jewish people endure because they make peace with the fact that to be human is to be dust. To “shake off the dust,” as Isaiah imagines, we must first inhabit it. Paradoxically, arrogance is not Lindy; humility is the secret to longevity. Thus, God blesses Abraham’s and Jacob’s lineage with the quality of humility—so that it will be an enduring one.
Dust is uncountable not because there is so much of it, but because we are it. The human qua object of analysis is not the human qua subject of analysis. Counting dust circumvents the principle of reflexivity, a form of arrogance. As George Soros writes:
“Traditionally, we think of understanding as essentially a passive role and participating as an active role. In truth, the two roles interfere with each other, making it impossible for the participant to base decisions on pure or perfect knowledge. The participants’ perceptions influence the market in which they participate, but the market action also influences the participants' perceptions.”
To count the dust is to misunderstand its meaning. What matters is not how much dust exists, but what we do with the dust that we are, on the dust we inhabit. Dust is ontological. The Israelites remind the world that it is dust infused with the spirit of life.
“Rabbi Yishmael said: Adam was created from the place of the Temple, as it is said (Psalms 139:15): ‘My unformed substance Your eyes saw...’ How do we know that he was created from the Temple? Because it is written (Genesis 2:7): 'And the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground,’ and it is written (Exodus 20:21): ‘An altar of earth you shall make for Me.’” (Pirkei d’Rebbe Eliezer)
The Midrash teaches that Adam was formed from the site that would become the Temple—the same place where Jacob dreams in this week’s parasha. The Temple is the site where dust transforms into life; the place where earthlings seek their source. We cannot know God without first acknowledging that we are dust. The miracle is that we are dust that cares.
Now, to return to our original question:
Why does God promise Abraham and then Jacob that their descendants will be like the dust of the earth? God promises them that if their descendants are humble like dust, they will endure like dust.
And if Israel is to be like the dust of the earth, how does this lead to blessings for “all the families of the earth”? As the families of the earth grow and scale, they may forget that they are dust. Thus Israel is to serve as a reminder of our shared dust condition. Those who look upon Israel and are reminded of their dust condition will be blessed.
The Jewish people endure because they accept that they are dust. We have slept on dust and dreamed through the rise and fall of empires. In peace and war, we have known that we come from dust and return to dust, and we have said yes.
Shabbat Shalom,
Zohar Atkins
Beautiful!
This beautiful piece reminded me of the final quote in Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities, with ‘a far’ replaced by ‘afar’: “It is afar, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is afar, far better rest I go to than I have ever known.”