the Bread Curse and Prayer
I was Googling to see if there is a connection/symbolism between Bread and Prayer in the Bible....
- there was not a specific result that simply connected these, but I did find an interesting link:
From this link, I learned something that I had never ever seen…
THE CURSE OF BREAD
Genesis 3: 19
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat BREAD, till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken; for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
What? I had never seen that before…
Bread was part of the curse… I guess this is why it is so amazing that the Lord gave the Israelites manna, that Jesus had us pray for our daily bread, and that Jesus is the bread of life.
Prayer is our offering back to the Lord who supplies everything!
Ecclesiastes 11:1
Cast your bread upon the waters,
for you will find it after many days.
-More on Bread:
Job 28:5
As for the earth, out of it comes bread, but underneath it is turned
up as by fire.
Psalm 104:14
You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to
cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth
Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible-
"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,.... Or "of thy nose" ,
sweat appearing first and chiefly on the forehead, from whence it
trickles down by the nose in persons employed in hard labour; and here
it takes in all the labour used in cultivating the earth for the
production of herbs, and particularly of corn, of which bread is made;
with respect to which there are various operations in which men sweat,
such as ploughing, sowing, reaping, threshing, winnowing, grinding,
sifting, kneading, and baking; and it may have regard to all methods
and means by which men get their bread, and not without sweat; and
even such exercises as depend upon the brain are not excused from such
an expense: so that every man, let him be in what station of life he
will, is not exempt, more or less, from this sentence, and so
continues till he dies, as is next expressed: till thou return unto
the ground, his original, out of which he was made; that is, until he
dies, and is interred in the earth, from whence he sprung; signifying
that the life of man would be a life of toil and labour to the very
end of it: and nothing else can man expect in it:for dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return; his body was
composed of the dust, was of the earth, earthly, and should be reduced
to that again by death, which is not an annihilation of man, but a
bringing him back to his original; which shows what a frail creature
man is, what little reason he has to be proud of himself, when he
reflects from whence he came and whither he must go; see Ecclesiastes
12:7."
