Genesis 18:27

Since I have begun, I will speak to my Lord, though I am but dust and ashes. By this word he clearly rebukes our pride, we who are far distant from the height of his merits, far removed from divine conversation due to our slowness and inertia, nevertheless inflated with the pride of arrogance, do not recall that we are destined to be dust and ashes; for blessed Abraham, the closer he approached the purity of the divine vision, the more certainly he dispersed and cast away the weaknesses of his own frailty. But we, who are excluded from the gaze of inner clarity by the cloud of our own depravity, the less we lament the darkness of misery inherent in us, the more we are accustomed to see nothing but these.

Let us be imitators also of those who in goat-skins and sheep-skins [Hebrews 11:37] went about proclaiming the coming of Christ; I mean Elijah, Elisha, and Ezekiel among the prophets, with those others to whom a like testimony is borne [in Scripture]. Abraham was specially honoured, and was called the friend of God; yet he, earnestly regarding the glory of God, humbly declared, "I am but dust and ashes." [Genesis 18:27] Moreover, it is thus written of Job, "Job was a righteous man, and blameless, truthful, God-fearing, and one that kept himself from all evil." [Job 1:1] But bringing an accusation against himself, he said, "No man is free from defilement, even if his life be but of one day." [Job 14:4-5] Moses was called faithful in all God's house; and through his instrumentality, God punished Egypt with plagues and tortures. Yet he, though thus greatly honoured, did not adopt lofty language, but said, when the divine oracle came to him out of the bush, "Who am I, that Thou sendest me? I am a man of a feeble voice and a slow tongue." [Exodus 4:10] And again he said, "I am but as the smoke of a pot."

[Daniel 8:27] "And I, Daniel, languished and was sick for some days. And when I rose from my bed, I performed the king's tasks." This is the same thing as we read in Genesis about Abraham, for after he had heard the Lord speaking to him, he averred that he was but dust and ashes (Genesis 18:27). And so Daniel states that he languished as a reaction to the horror of the vision, and suffered illness. And after he had risen from his sick-bed, he says he performed the tasks assigned to him by the king, rendering to all men all that was due them and bearing in mind the gospel principle: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Luke 20:25). "And I was amazed at the vision, and there was no one who could interpret it." If there was no one who could interpret it, how was it that the angel interpreted it in the previous passage? What he means is that he had heard mention of kings and did not know what their names were; he learned of things to come, but he was tossed about with uncertainty as to what time they would come to pass. And so he did the only thing he could do: he marveled at the vision, and resigned everything to God's omniscience.