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Bible Dictionaries
Dust
Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words
or ‛Âphâr (עָפָר, Strong's #6083), “dust; clods; plaster; ashes.” Cognates of this word appear in Ugaritic, Akkadian, Aramaic, Syriac, and Arabic. It appears about 110 times in biblical Hebrew and in all periods.
This noun represents the “porous loose earth on the ground,” or “dust.” In its first biblical occurrence, ‛âphâr appears to mean this porous loose earth: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life …” (Gen. 2:7). In Gen. 13:16, the word means the “fine particles of the soil”: “And I will make thy [descendants] as the dust of the earth.…” In the plural, the noun can mean “dust masses” or “clods” of earth: “… While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the first clods [KJV, “highest part of the dust”; NASB, “dust”] of the world” (Prov. 8:26).
‛Âphâr can signify “dry crumbled mortar or plaster”: “And he shall cause the house to be scraped within round about, and they shall pour out the dust that they scrape off without the city into an unclean place …” (Lev. 14:41). In Lev. 14:42, the word means “wet plaster”: “And they shall take other stones, and put them in the place of those stones; and he shall take other mortar, and shall plaster the house.” ‛Âphâr represents “finely ground material” in Deut. 9:21: “And I took your sin, the calf which ye had made, and burnt it with fire, and stamped it, and ground it very small, even until it was as small as dust: and I cast the dust thereof into the brook that descended out of the mount.” ‛Âphâr can represent the “ashes” of something that has been burned: “And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the door, to bring forth out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the grove, and for all the host of heaven: and he burned them [outside] Jerusalem … and carried the ashes of them unto Bethel” (2 Kings 23:4). In a similar use, the word represents the “ashes” of a burnt offering (Num. 19:17).
The “rubble” of a destroyed city sometimes is called “dust”: “And Ben-hadad sent unto him, and said, The gods do so unto me, and more also, if the dust of Samaria shall suffice for handfuls for all the people that follow me” (1 Kings 20:10). In Gen. 3:14 the serpent was cursed with “dust” as his perpetual food (cf. Isa. 65:25; Mic. 7:17). Another nuance arising from the characteristics of dust appears in Job 28:6, where the word parallels “stones.” Here the word seems to represent “the ground”: “The stones of it are the place of sapphires: and it hath dust of gold.”
‛Âphâr may be used as a symbol of a “large mass” or “superabundance” of something. This use, already cited (Gen. 13:16), appears again in its fulfillment in Num. 23:10: “Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel?” “Complete destruction” is represented by ‛âphâr in 2 Sam. 22:43: “Then did I beat them as small as the dust of the earth: I did stamp them as the mire of the street.…” In Ps. 7:5, the word is used of “valuelessness” and “futility”: “Let the enemy persecute my soul, and take it; yea, let him tread down my life upon the earth, and lay mine honor in the dust.” To experience defeat is “to lick the dust” (Ps. 72:9), and to be restored from defeat is “to shake oneself from the dust” (Isa. 52:2). To throw “dust” (“dirt”) at someone is a sign of shame and humiliation (2 Sam. 16:13), while mourning is expressed by various acts of selfabasement, which may include throwing “dust” or “dirt” on one’s own head (Josh. 7:6). Abraham says he is but “dust and ashes,” not really important (Gen. 18:27).
In Job 7:21 and similar passages, ‛âphâr represents “the earth” of the grave: “For now shall I sleep in the dust; and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be.” This word is also used as a simile for a “widely scattered army”: “… For the king of Syria had destroyed them, and had made them like the dust by threshing” (2 Kings 13:7).
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Vines, W. E., M. A. Entry for 'Dust'. Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/vot/d/dust.html. 1940.
