Sastra Bait Kedua Kejadian 3:19: On the Migration & Allegorical Interpretation

[3] Because the body took its substance out of earth (or land) and is again resolved into earth. Moses is a witness to this, when he says, “Earth thou art and into earth shalt thou return” (Gen. 3:19); indeed he also says that the body was clay formed into human shape by God’s moulding hand, and what suffers solution must needs be resolved into the elements which were united to form it. Sense-perception, again, is of one kin and family with understanding, the irrational with the rational, for both these are parts of one soul. And speech is our “father’s house,” “father’s” because Mind is our father, sowing in each of the parts of the body the faculties that issue from itself, and assigning to them their workings, being in control and charge of them all; house—because mind has speech for its house or living-room, secluded from the rest of the homestead. It is Mind’s living-place, just as the hearthside is man’s.

[252] And how long is this to be? “Until,” He says, “thou shalt turn back into the earth, from which thou wert taken” (Gen. 3:19). For, having forsaken the wisdom of heaven, is he not now ranked with things earthly and chaotic? How then he turns back yet further, we have to consider. But perhaps what he means is of this kind, that the foolish mind has indeed always turned back from the right principle, but has been taken not from the sublime nature but from the more earthly substance, and, whether staying still or in movement, is the same and devoted to the same interests.