Genesis 3:19. By the Sweat of Your Nose

 Genesis 3:19 “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

With the entrance of sin, staying alive became a daily workout, particularly when it came to getting food. But why does God mention the face particularly in connection with sweating? He doesn’t say the sweat of your body, back or armpits.

The original Hebrew word translated as face in this verse is ‘aph, the same word rendered as “nostrils” in Genesis 2:7. Sweating nostrils, now that is an interesting image! That happens to me when I eat chili! It also happened last night as I bent my face over a kettle for a steam-treatment to combat a nasty sinus infection. That’s when it clicked: the sweating face makes reference to our needed remedy. 

The face was what got Adam and Eve into trouble. The woman “saw that the fruit was good” she heard the serpent talk, she smelled the delicious fruit, felt its texture on her lips and tasted the flavor bursting on her tongue. Sin overstimulates, which gives us a deceptive allusion of heightened senses. In reality, sin has caused a serious blunting of our perceptions both physical and spiritual. When it comes to receiving the Word of God, we “are dull of hearing” (Hebrews 5:11). We have become “carnal, sold under sin” (Romans 7:14).  Spiritual things “are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). That’s why we must have our “senses exercised to discern both good and evil” (Hebrews 5:14). If you exercise your senses, they gonna sweat.

This is also the first mention of bread in the Bible. While the original word lekh’-em can be more loosely translated as food, it makes particular reference to bread or grain. Bread is certainly more labor intensive to prepare than anything on the pre-fall menu. Eating the bread of life is not always easy either, but it's the only way back from this mess we’re in. 

There is also an element of frustration and anger expressed here, because according to the Strong’s Hebrew dictionary, the word ‘aph can also mean “(from the rapid breathing in passion) ire: -anger (-gry), […] wrath” (e-Sword Bible App). The pleasant, easy labor that Adam had known until now would be replaced with hard and at times frustrating rigor. Manual labor provides plenty of situations that test our passions. That’s why physical labor is a blessing for building character, and it should continue “until we return to the ground.” Sin is the reverse of creation. Because of sin, we revert to dirt. Yet it is only as we die that we can experience resurrection. God took us out of dirt once, He can surely do it again. But it will do us no good at all to be raised from physical death if we refuse God's plan to raise us up from our spiritual death in our trespasses and sins. In view of that, how can you love and cling to sin any longer? Won’t you renounce it just now?