One of my favorite books of all time, probably in my Top 3, is Thorleif Boman's "Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek." I use it almost like a devotional, reading parts here and there, finding different things in one reading that I never noticed before. He talks about the Hebrew tendency to attach a meaning or attribute to anything physical. "Flesh," "flowers," or "grass" is used to convey weakness, the transitory, or the temporary. The "sun" and the "moon" are signs of God's daily grace and mercy, while "gold" naturally conveys opulence. But the one that usually interests me the most is their use of "dust."
Dust carried with it a very related spectrum of ideas. To show extreme grief, they poured it on their heads. It was equated to death, Sheol, and the grave. When speaking to a superior, it seemed common to refer to oneself as no more than "dust and ashes" to communicate humility and smallness.
And man was created from "dust."
