vayiytzer (Adonai) elohim et-haadam aphar min-ha’adamah
“And the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground.”
The action of forming, the Hebrew verb yatzar, is related to purpose. In later Jewish tradition, human beings were understood to incline towards a yetzer ra, an ‘evil purpose’, or towards towards the yetzer tov, the ‘good purpose’. Our deeds are judged not only by the objective fact of the deed, but by the intention of the one carrying it out. In some manner, we imprint our deeds with the mark of our intention.
God’s forming of humanity from the dust, then, is not merely about ‘form’ and ‘matter’, but means imparting to dust a new purpose, to be the material aspect of this new creature, the human person.
Today, of course, there is a great temptation to judge actions only by purpose. “I meant well” does not excuse the performance of an action that is inherently bad. Nonetheless, the Christian tradition, and especially, I think, the monastic tradition, insists that we take time to inspect our purposes for acting. Otherwise, we may very slowly be drawn away even from right action.