dust and ashes

Also found in: Idioms.

dust and ashes

“I am become like dust and ashes.” [O.T.: Job 30:19]

References in classic literature ?

Descendants of some of those proud families still inhabit the palaces of Genoa, and trace in their own features a resemblance to the grim knights whose portraits hang in their stately halls, and to pictured beauties with pouting lips and merry eyes whose originals have been dust and ashes for many a dead and forgotten century.

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I stopped, and looked at the dust and ashes, at the broken crockery and the old iron.

View in context

At the end of August, the ministry decided to get local authorities to solidify with cement incinerated dust and ashes containing 8,000 to 100,000 becquerels of cesium per kg and cover them with watertight sheeting before they are buried in the ground.

Excessive cesium found in burned industrial waste in 3 prefs

Repentance, as a practice, turns us over and over to the One who can make life from the dust and ashes. Perhaps this is a way of talking meaningfully about how hurricanes and the towering emptiness in the New York skyline after 9/11 are acts of judgment.

Ash Wednesday: February 21, 2007

Second, it will show how these might be illuminated by two other texts featuring dust and ashes, namely, the Expulsion story in Genesis 3 and Job's last speech in the Book of Job.