WHERE IS "ASHES TO ASHES, DUST TO DUST" FOUND IN THE BIBLE?

 

The short answer to that question is, “It isn't.” But that would not make much of a blog post if I just stopped there, and the fact is that this popular saying is not entirely unrelated to the Bible. That exact phrase comes from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer for the dead and reads, in context, as follows:

“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed: we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.”

The biblical reference in the above is primarily to two passages in Genesis, 2:7 and 3:19. In the first passage, God forms (not creates) man from the dust of the ground. From a scientific viewpoint, this might be equated with what is called prebiotic evolution – the posited and speculative natural process of transforming inorganic matter, the building blocks of life including simple compounds from carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus, calcium, etc. – into more complex, self-replicating units. But then due to the sin in the Garden, mankind is doomed to eventually decompose back into inorganic matter, as stated in Genesis 3:19.

The interesting thing about these two words in Hebrew is that when that language was originally written there were no vowels, only consonants. And thus, both words were represented by the same consonants – 'pr. But when vowels were latter added, it became obvious that two slightly different concepts could be in mind, with 'apar representing “dust” and 'epar meaning “ashes.” Thus, they form a sort of natural rhyming pair.

But there are further biblical references actually tying together the words “ashes” and “dust,” and these may also have been in the minds of those who penned the Book of Common Prayer. The combination of the two words actually appears in four places in the Bible – Genesis 18:27; Job 30:19; 42:6; and Ezekiel 27:30. Many of the comments by scholars cross-reference these four occurrences, and so I will just quote from them in a somewhat random manner rather than attempting to separate them according to the primary biblical passage in mind.

Hayden: “Humiliation or contrition is expressed with this term [i.e. ashes]. Job says, 'I am reduced to dust ('apar) and ashes ('epar)' (Job 30:19; cf. 42:6)...Self-abasement is the theme of three passages [containing 'dust']: Abraham says he is nothing but dust and ashes (Gen 18:27), Job repents in dust and ashes (Job 42:6), and one who wishes to seek God should bury his face in the dust (Lam 3:29)...'Apar is used 12x of the material from which the human body is composed and to which it will return (Gen 2:7; 3:19; Job 4:19, 8:19; 10:9; 34:15; Ps 103:14; 104:29; Eccl 3:20; 12:7).”

Dictionary of Biblical Imagery: “Since the word ashes is literally an image of complete waste, it also lends itself to use as a metaphor for weakness, ephemerality and emptiness...This same connotation underlies the use of ashes in expressions of intense grief and loss. The often repeated phrase 'in sackcloth and ashes' paints a vivid picture of mourning women and men in torn clothing, lying or kneeling on the ground as they heap ashes and dust upon themselves (2 Sam 13:19; Esther 4:13; Is 58:5,61:3; Jer 6:26,25:34; Ezek 27:30)...Job's initial cry of mourning, 'I have become like dust and ashes,' later becomes a prayer of confession, 'I repent in dust and ashes' (Job 30:19; 42:6). In other biblical prayers of both confession in 'sackcloth and ashes' (Dan 9:3-5; Jn 3:6; Mt 11:21;Lk 10:13) and petition (Gen 18:27), the image of ashes is always a moving reminder of the human condition before God.”

Hartley: “After emaciating Job's body, God has cast him into the mire to disgrace him. Job has been made to feel that he is merely dust and ashes (cf. 2:2; 27:16; 42:6). He is not thinking that God has soiled him indelibly (cf. 9:31), but rather that God has so discredited him that he has no honor left.” However in Job 42:6, “Job abases himself and recants, confessing himself to be no better than the dust and ashes on which he has been sitting. Job has come to a true assessment of himself before the holy God, as indicated by the similarity of his words to those of Abraham when he interceded for the sparing of Sodom and Gomorrah for the sake of the righteous left in those cities.”

van Rooy: “The head played an important role in the mourning rites of Israel. The first rite was usually to throw dust, soil, or ashes on the head (Josh 7:6; 1 Sam 4:12; 2 Sam 1:2,15:32; Job 2:12; Lam 2:10, Ezek 27:30).”

Few of the above scholars bother to comment on Ezekiel 27:30, in which the sailors grieve over the loss of Tyre, perhaps because the words “dust” and “ashes” are separated by a line from one another. The NRSV translates these two poetic lines as an example of incomplete, synonymous parallelism:

    “They throw      dust on their heads and

              wallow in ashes.”

However, a probably better rendering is suggested by the Anchor Bible, which translates it as:

    “They will throw                       earth on their heads,

                     dust themselves with ashes.”

In either case, the two verbs should express the same sort of action. And as Greenberg points out, that poses a problem with the NRSV: “Throwing earth on one's head (Josh 7:6; Job 2:12) and dusting oneself with ash (Jer 6:26) were conventions of grief. The tradition vacillates regarding the sense of [the verb] htpls,” which may be translated by 'spread under', 'sprinkle themselves', or 'rub themselves'. “Medievals and many moderns have fixed on 'wallow,'… though since it is poured on the crown [of the head] it is hard to imagine the crown wallowing.”

Block adds that Ezekiel “describes in detail the verbal and nonverbal gestures of mourning (cf. 26:16) by the seamen: a loud and bitter outcry, throwing dust on their heads (cf. Josh. 7:6; Job 2:12; Lam. 2:10), wallowing in ashes (Mic 1:10; Jer 6:26; 25:34), plucking out the hair, etc.”

So it appears that there are two basic contexts in which “dust and ashes” appears in the Bible – as an expression of grief and a humbling of oneself in the presence of God. It is interesting that both of these appear in the book of Job.