9. 1 have transferred "as Job says" from just after "despise themselves," where it is fairly clearly
406 The Literal Meaning of Genesis
Those however, who assert that souls come, not from parents, but from God sending them, can claim the text for their opinion by understanding it like this: he called it their spirit when they die because it was in them and departs from them, but God's when they rise again, because what is sent by him is given back by him. Accordingly this testimony too is not opposed to either view.
14. 1 however reckon that this is best understood as said about the grace of God by which we are inwardly renovated. In a certain manner, you see, theirown spirit is taken away from proud people living according to the man ofearth (1 Cor 1 5:48), when they strip offthe old man (Col 3:9) and become weak, in order to be made whole when pride has been driven out, and they say to the Lord in humble confession: Remember that we are dust (Ps 103: 14), having been told themselves: What does earth and ashes have to be proud of? (Sir 10:9). Thus gazing with the eyes of faith upon the justice of God, to avoid wanting to estab lish their own,8 they despise themselves and fade away, and count themselves but earth and ashes (Job 30: 1 9), as Job says.9 That, you see, is the meaning in the psalm of "they will turn back to dust." But when they have received the Spirit of God they say: /am alive though, now not l, but it is Christ alive in me (Gal 2:20). In this way the face of the earth is being renovated through the grace of the New Testament with a multitude of saints.
9, 15. As for what is written in Ecclesiastes: . . . and the dust is turned into the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it (Sir 12:7); it does not give its vote to either opinion against the other, but stays firmly in the middle between them. When these, you see, on this side say that this proves the soul is given by God, not derived from parents, because once the dust is turned into its earth (that means the flesh, which was made from dust), "the spirit returns to God who gave it"; the others on that side answer: "Certainly, that is so; the spirit, you see, returns to God who gave it to the first man when he puffed into his face, once the dust, that is the human body, has been turned into the earth it was origi nally made from. There is no question, after all, of the spirit returning to the parents, although it is created from there, out of that one spirit given to the first man, just as the flesh itself after death does not return to the parents, from whom we all agree it was certainly propagated. So then, in the same way as the flesh does not return to the human beings from whom it was created, but to the earth from which it was formed for the first man, the spirit also does not return to the human beings from whom it was transfused, but to God by whom it was given to that first flesh."
8. See Rom 10:3. 9. 1 have transferred "as Job says" from just after "despise themselves," where it is fairly clearly out of place; an easy mistake for a copyist to make if he was lagging a little behind the reader dictating the text; or even for a corrector to insert the phrase, omitted by a slow copyist, in the line above where he meant to put it.