Longfellow’s psalm declares, “Life is real! Life is earnest! / And the grave is not its goal; / Dust thou art, to dust returnest, / Was not spoken of the soul.” Longfellow is correct in that Moses (the human author of Genesis) and the author of the book of Job were not speaking of a person’s soul, but his or her physical body. GENESIS 2:7 tells us that, “…the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” The next chapter reveals that after Adam’s and Eve’s sin, God said to Adam, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’…In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return” (GENESIS 3:17-19). Too, Job prays to God in his distress, “You have made me like clay. And will You turn me into dust again?” (JOB 10:9).
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