Gen 2:5: Dust, soil or clay?

The Jewish commentator Rashi observes about the ‘forming’ of Adam that God acted as “a kneader of dough who puts water into flour, and afterwards kneads dough”.[1] This observation is interesting because Adam was formed from the ‘dust’ of the ground and the Hebrew for ‘dust’ would normally indicate what lies of top of dry baked ground (e.g. Job 2:12). Many translations choose ‘dust’ but some get it wrong and go for something like ‘soil’ or ‘clay’.

What Rashi has noticed is that the Hebrew word has been chosen to refer to what the ground was – it had been ‘dust’ and was usually dust but the ground had more recently been flooded and it was now saturated, and with the heat of the sun a mist was rising up from the ground as the ground water evaporated.

The situation being described is very particular and from a retrospective point of view: it is that in the Mesopotamian area there was as yet no rain at the time of Adam’s formation; the sun was again baking hot; the ground (our region) was usually dry but there had been local flooding; and the ground water was evaporating.

This detail from Day Six dovetails with that of Day Three in which God rolls back flood waters to reveal new land. This kind of language has the same sort of local colour that ANE myths of creation have, but without the mythology.