Genesis 3:19

Summary

Genesis 3:19 declares that the man will eat bread through the sweat of his face until he returns to the ground, because from it he was taken; the verse closes with the statement that he is dust and will return to dust.

Key words

• ze.'At ("[the] sweat of", H2188) — feminine singular construct noun, linking directly to the following word in a "X of Y" chain: "sweat of your face/nostrils."
• 'a.Pei.kha ("your face", H0639I + H9021) — masculine dual construct with pronominal suffix; the dual form marks a pair (nostrils/face), a body-part idiom for exertion.
• To.khal ("you will eat", H0398) — qal imperfect, expressing ongoing or repeated future action, not a single event.
• shu.ve.kha ("your return", H7725G + H9041) — qal infinitive construct with suffix, functioning as a verbal noun ("in your returning"), governed by the preposition 'ad ("until", H5704).
• lu.Ka.che.ta ("you were taken", H3947G) — pual perfect, a passive intensive form indicating a completed action done to the subject by an unstated agent.

What the text says

The verse is built on two parallel movement clauses joined by the particle ki ("for/that", H3588A), each explaining why the preceding statement holds. The first clause states that eating bread (Le.chem, H3899H) will happen "by the sweat of your face" (be. ze.'At 'a.Pei.kha), using the construct chain to tie the sweat noun directly to the body-part noun without an explicit verb "to sweat" — the labor is expressed through the noun phrase itself rather than a verb of laboring.

The temporal limit of this eating is marked by 'ad shu.ve.kha ("until your returning"), where the infinitive construct shu.ve.kha (from H7725G, the same root also giving ta.Shuv, "you will return," at the end of the verse) turns the verb into a noun-like form governed by the preposition. This creates a grammatical link between the beginning and end of the verse: the same root H7725G appears both as an infinitive ("returning") and as a finite imperfect verb ("you will return"), framing the whole statement.

The clause ki mi.Me.nah lu.Ka.che.ta ("for from it you were taken") uses the pual perfect lu.Ka.che.ta, a passive form that presents the taking as something done to the subject, without naming an agent. The final line pairs 'a.Far ("dust", H6083) with 'A.tah ("you", H0859A) as a nominal (verbless) clause — "dust you" — followed by the imperfect ta.Shuv ("you will return") completing the return motion begun by shu.ve.kha earlier in the verse.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders 'a.Pei.kha ("your face/nostrils", H0639I, dual) as τοῦ προσώπου σου ("of your face," singular), losing the dual form present in the Hebrew. Both the LXX (γῆ, "earth/ground") and the Vulgate (pulvis/pulverem, "dust") render 'a.Far (H6083, "dust") differently from each other: the LXX uses "earth" while the Vulgate and Hebrew maintain "dust."