19 You shall eat — at the cost of sweat on your face. בְּזֵעַ֤ת אַפֶּ֙יךָ֙ תֹּ֣אכַל לֶ֔חֶם
The one word that’s relatively straightforward here is תאכל, “you shall eat,” the third of the four Hebrew words in the phrase. It’s the same verb as וְאָכַלְתָּ֖ in the previous verse, and in fact it has the same meaning. To learn about these two forms, read this footnote;1 click here; and/or see Lesson 5 of my Hebrew course (watch the first lesson for free here).
The other words require some more elaboration. Let’s start at the end and work from more familiar to less familiar. First, לחם.
Unlike Christians, Jews say Grace after a meal, in accordance with Deut 8:10. Before a meal, it is common to say a blessing ending with the words ha-motzi leḥem min ha-aretz, “who brings forth bread from the earth.” Everyone knows that leḥem means bread, but in our verse, what “everyone” knows is wrong. In Biblical Hebrew, לחם means food.
More precisely, לחם and its equivalents in the related Semitic languages of the ancient world are often used to name the basic food in whatever culture is using the term. To excerpt the etymology from HALOT:
לֶחֶם (ca. 300 times): Pun. OArm. EgArm. Palm., BArm. JArm. CPArm. Syr. Mnd. [these are all varieties of Aramaic] לַחְמָא bread; Arabic laḥm flesh, meat, Soqotri [an Arabic dialect] fish, ? Ethiopic lāhem bull, cow; basic meaning solid food.
So this is about eating in general, and about eating in its most basic sense — not specifically about eating bread. For that reason, I”ve entirely left out the word לחם.
Have a look at the King James Bible some time and you will discover that English meat has been used the same way. The offerings of Leviticus 2 described by NRSV as “grain offerings” are called meat offerings in the KJV. Among the definitions of “meat” offered by the OED are:
Food, as nourishment for people and fodder for animals; esp. solid food, as opposed to drink (but see quots. c1450 and 1575). Now archaic and regional
A kind of food; an article of food, a dish. Frequently in plural. Also figurative. Obsolete (archaic in later use).
A meal, a feast. Sometimes: spec. the principal meal of a day, dinner.
On the other hand Christians are familiar with the phrase from the Lord’s Prayer asking,
Give us this day our daily bread.
Prisoners in the Soviet gulag and like places were certainly given a daily ration of bread, but that is not what the prayer is about, and that is not what Gen 3:19 is about. It’s about the food we eat every day, food of every kind.
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