Genesis 4

Notes

1. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "Adam" (KJV, RSV)

   Ruling 11

   The Hebrew is וְהָאָדָם, with the article: the noun of 2:7–3:24, not a name. The LXX (Αδαμ) and the Vulgate (Adam) give the name here, and the English tradition follows them. Under ruling 11 the noun is "man" when a distinct woman who already exists is in the verse, and Eve is. The subject stands before a perfect (וְהָאָדָם יָדַע), not in the usual wayyiqtol, which Rashi reads as a pluperfect, "had known," before the expulsion; the simple past is printed and leaves the sequence where the Hebrew leaves it. "Knew" is the home gloss of יָדַע, the knowing of 2:9 and 3:5–7 now used of the two of them.

2. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 17, 23, 18

   The name קַיִן is explained by the mother's verb, קָנִיתִי "I have acquired." The two are not one root (קַיִן is likely "smith," as in Aramaic and Arabic, and a spear-head in 2 Sam 21:16), so the pun is the speaker's, as with Woman and Man at 2:23. English has no pun that keeps "Cain" and the core gloss "acquire" (17), and an added word under ruling 23 would have to displace the core gloss. The pun stays in this note. קָנָה is the verb of El Elyon, "acquirer of skies and land" (14:19, 22), of Deut 32:6, "is he not your father who acquired you?", and of the crux at Prov 8:22.

3. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "I have gotten a man from the LORD" (KJV) / "I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD" (RSV)

   Rulings 1, 46

   אֶת־יְהוָה is either the preposition "with" or the mark of a definite object. The versions all take a preposition and gloss it: the LXX διὰ τοῦ θεοῦ "through God," the Vulgate per Deum, Targum Onkelos "from before the LORD." Genesis Rabbah 22:2 reads "with" as partnership: from now on no man without woman, no woman without man, and neither without the Presence. The object reading, "I have acquired a man: Adonai," is Luther's (Ich habe den Mann, den HERRN), who read Eve as believing that her son was the seed promised in 3:15; Targum Pseudo-Jonathan has "a man, the messenger of the LORD." English cannot hold the preposition and the object together. Ruling 1 would print the stranger reading, but the object reading settles a doctrine, which guide §1.4 forbids. "With" is the preposition's plain sense. It holds the partnership and the help, and adds nothing, where the RSV adds "the help of." אִישׁ "man" is used of a newborn only here: the core gloss holds.

4. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 18

   The name is the noun הֶבֶל, "breath, vapour": "breath of breaths, all is breath" (Eccl 1:2); "the human is like a breath" (Ps 144:4; 39:6). Cain's name is given a reason and Abel's is not. His name tells what his life will be. The verse has no second "she conceived." Rashi, after Genesis Rabbah 22:2, counts the three particles אֶת and finds twin sisters born with the brothers. The two occupations are participles, kept as ongoing work: "shepherding flock" and "serving ground." Cain does what the human was put in the garden to do and sent out to do (2:5, 15; 3:23), so ruling 34 keeps "serve."

5. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 10

   מִקֵּץ יָמִים "at the end of days" is the idiom of a span run out: "at the end of forty days" (8:6), "at the end of ten years" (16:3). The phrase has nothing to do with אַחֲרִית הַיָּמִים, "the latter end of days." Days alone can mean a year (Lev 25:29; Judg 17:10; 1 Sam 27:7), and 1 Sam 1:3 uses the plural for a yearly sacrifice (מִיָּמִים יָמִימָה). So the gifts may come at the turn of the year, at harvest. The KJV's "in process of time" paraphrases the idiom.

6. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "an offering" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 2, 3

   מִנְחָה is a gift from a lesser to a greater: Jacob's to Esau (32:14, 19, 21–22; 33:10), the brothers' to Joseph (43:11, 15, 25–26), Ehud's tribute to Eglon (Judg 3:15, 17–18), the kingdoms' tribute to Solomon (1 Kgs 5:1). Only in the priestly law is it the grain offering (Lev 2). Here both brothers' gifts are called מִנְחָה, the produce and the firstlings, so the word does not decide between grain and blood; the narrative leaves the reason for the preference unsaid. The collocation decides (3). The nearest chain is Jacob and Esau. Two brothers, a gift, and the face: "I will cover his face with the gift… perhaps he will lift my face" (32:21), and "I have seen your face as one sees the face of Elohim, and you accepted me" (33:10). Compare the fallen face and the "lifting" of vv. 5–7. "Offering" is left for קָרְבָּן (Lev 1:2).

7. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "shalt thou not be accepted?" (KJV) / "will you not be accepted?" (RSV)

   Rulings 1, 46

   שְׂאֵת is the infinitive of נָשָׂא "lift," the verb Cain takes up in v. 13; Strong's files it apart. No object is stated, and the readings divide on what is lifted. (a) The face. The face fell in vv. 5–6, and "lifting the face" is to accept a person (19:21; 32:21; 1 Sam 25:35; Job 42:8–9), hence the KJV and RSV "accepted." (b) The guilt. "Lifting iniquity" is forgiving (Exod 34:7; Num 14:18), and Targum Onkelos has "if you do well, it will be forgiven you." (c) Eminence. Reuben is "excess of lifting" (יֶתֶר שְׂאֵת, 49:3), the firstborn's place, which Cain the firstborn would keep. The LXX translates something else: "if you offered rightly but did not divide rightly, did you not sin? Be still" (οὐκ ἐὰν ὀρθῶς προσενέγκῃς, ὀρθῶς δὲ μὴ διέλῃς, ἥμαρτες; ἡσύχασον). That makes Cain's fault one of ritual, and Philo and the Greek fathers follow it. Heb 11:4 and 1 John 3:12 judge the brothers by their deeds and their faith, not by the gifts. The bare noun "a lifting" holds every reading the bare infinitive holds, so nothing is decided.

8. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him" (KJV) / "sin is couching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it" (RSV)

   Rulings 8, 41, 46

   חַטָּאת "sin" is feminine. The participle רֹבֵץ "crouching" is masculine, and so are the suffixes of תְּשׁוּקָתוֹ "his longing" and בּוֹ "over him." Grammar ties the pronouns to the crouching one, not to the noun. רָבַץ is the verb of an animal lying down or lying in wait (29:2; 49:9 Judah the lion; 49:14; Num 22:27). Akkadian rābiṣu, "the croucher," names a demon that lurks at the door of a house. Sin is drawn here as a beast at the doorway, a figure that acts and longs, so ruling 41 gives it its grammatical gender, "his" (8). The masculine also admits the old alternative: the longing is Abel's, the younger brother's toward the firstborn, whom Cain shall rule. b. Berakhot 61a takes the croucher as the bad inclination, which sits "at the opening" of the heart. The second half repeats 3:16 word for word: "to your man your longing, and he shall rule over you." תְּשׁוּקָה and מָשַׁל keep the same English in both, so the reader hears that Cain now stands where the woman stood. תִּמְשָׁל is a yiqtol: a command, a promise, or a permission. The KJV has "thou shalt rule," the ASV "do thou rule," and the JPS of 1917 "thou mayest rule," the timshel on which Steinbeck built East of Eden. "You shall" holds the command and the promise; the permission is left to this note.

9. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 74

   The Masoretic text has the verb of saying and no words: וַיֹּאמֶר קַיִן אֶל־הֶבֶל אָחִיו, and then the next clause. The Samaritan Pentateuch, the LXX (Διέλθωμεν εἰς τὸ πεδίον), the Peshitta and the Vulgate (egrediamur foras) supply "Let us go out to the field." That is likely a filling of the gap, made from the next clause. The Palestinian Targums (Neofiti, Pseudo-Jonathan) fill it with a quarrel: Cain says there is no judgment and no judge, and Abel answers that there is judgment and a judge and a world to come. Genesis Rabbah 22:7 has them dividing the world and quarrelling over it. The Masoretic text is printed as it stands: Cain speaks, and the narrator withholds what he said. Exod 19:25 also ends a speech formula with no speech ("and he said to them").

10. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 20

    קוּם against a person is the verb of attack: "as when a man rises against his neighbour and kills him" (Deut 22:26), in the same sequence as here; also Judg 9:43. The wayyiqtol takes the "rise" side of the seed's split (20). Genesis Rabbah 22:8 reads the verb literally: Abel had been the stronger and was on top, and Cain rose from under him.

11. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "the voice of thy brother's blood crieth" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 26, 39, 8

    דְּמֵי is plural, and so is the participle צֹעֲקִים "crying": it agrees with the bloods, not with the singular "voice." The plural דָּמִים is blood shed by violence: "man of bloods" (2 Sam 16:7–8), bloodguilt (Exod 22:1; Ps 51:16). It is blood spilled, not an abstraction, so ruling 26 does not apply, and the concrete plural is printed (39). m. Sanhedrin 4:5 builds on the plural. It does not say "your brother's blood" but "your brother's bloods," his blood and the blood of his descendants. From this the court warns witnesses in capital cases that whoever destroys one soul is as one who destroys a whole world. קוֹל may also be an exclamation, "Hark!" (Isa 40:3, 6; Song 2:8, "the voice of my beloved! look, he comes"). The English keeps "voice," and after the dash "they" keeps the plural verb with its subject, so both constructions stay readable. Heb 12:24 speaks of "the blood of Abel" in the singular, following its Greek (4).

12. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 3

    מִן־הָאֲדָמָה "from the ground" has three readings. (a) Separation: banished from the ground he served, as he says in v. 14. (b) Source: the ground that took his brother's bloods now curses him. (c) Comparison: "more than the ground," which was cursed for the human's sake (3:17); 3:14 joins אָרוּר to מִן. English "from" holds the first two; the third is the construction of 3:14. This is the first curse laid on a human being. The earlier ones fell on the serpent and on the ground (3:14, 17).

13. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "a fugitive and a vagabond" (KJV) / "a fugitive and a wanderer" (RSV)

    Rulings 24, 2

    נָע וָנָד, naʿ wa-nad, is a rhyming pair of participles. נוּעַ is to totter, sway or quiver: lips moving (1 Sam 1:13), trees shaking in the wind (Isa 7:2), the drunkard reeling (Isa 24:20; Ps 107:27). נוּד is to move to and fro, to wander (Jer 4:1; Ps 56:9 "my wanderings"), and to shake the head in sympathy (Job 2:11; Jer 15:5). Neither word means "fugitive." The source marks sound, so ruling 24 applies: "waverer and wanderer" keeps the alliteration and both senses. Cain repeats the pair in v. 14, and the root returns in the land of Nod (v. 16).

14. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "My punishment is greater than I can bear" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 1, 46

    עָוֹן is a wrong, the guilt it leaves, and the punishment that follows (1 Sam 28:10, "no punishment shall meet you"; Lam 4:6). With נָשָׂא it is either to bear guilt (Lev 5:1, 17; Num 14:34) or to lift it away, that is, to forgive (Exod 34:7; Num 14:18; Ps 32:5). So Cain says either that his punishment is too heavy to carry or that his wrong is too great to be forgiven. The LXX has μείζων ἡ αἰτία μου τοῦ ἀφεθῆναί με, "my guilt is too great to be forgiven"; the Vulgate maior est iniquitas mea quam ut veniam merear; Onkelos "too great to be forgiven"; the KJV puts "Mine iniquity is greater than that it may be forgiven" in its margin. Rashi, after the midrash, hears a question: you bear the upper and lower worlds, and my iniquity you cannot bear? "Iniquity… for lifting" keeps the comparative and both senses of the verb, carrying and taking away, so English holds the crux open (1). It also takes up "a lifting" from v. 7. The expected "punishment" is one of the three senses of עָוֹן, and the home gloss "iniquity" is printed for all three.

15. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "Behold" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 88, 95

    הֵן is the short form beside הִנֵּה (compare Ugaritic hn, "look"), and it does the same work; the two are one particle in two spellings and share "look" as a declared pair (88, 95).

16. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 74, 2

    לָכֵן is "thus," the home gloss of כֵּן held, as at 2:24 for עַל־כֵּן. The KJV has "Therefore." The LXX (Οὐχ οὕτως, "Not so!"), Symmachus, Theodotion, the Peshitta and the Vulgate (nequaquam ita fiet) read לֹא כֵן, a denial of Cain's fear. The Masoretic text is printed. The subject of יֻקָּם "he shall be avenged" is unexpressed. It may be Cain, whose blood will be avenged sevenfold, as Lamech takes it in v. 24, or the killer, on whom vengeance will be taken; English "he" keeps both. Targum Onkelos reads the number as generations: vengeance will be taken on the killer to the seventh generation. The Tanhuma then has Lamech, the seventh from Adam, kill Cain.

17. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 6

    יֻקָּם is the hophal of נָקַם, "be avenged," with no expressed subject after the hanging "every killer of Cain." In English "he shall be avenged" would make the killer the one avenged, the reverse of the sense; the subject is the slaying of Cain, so "it" is printed. At 4:24 the same verb has Cain as its subject, "sevenfold shall Cain be avenged," and the two are kept in the one verb (6).

18. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "lest any finding him should kill him" (KJV, RSV)

    Ruling 2

    הִכָּה, the hiphil of נָכָה, is to strike, with a blow that may or may not kill (Exod 2:11–12; 21:12, 15, 18–19). "Strike" keeps the verb apart from הָרַג "kill" (vv. 8, 14, 15, 23, 25), and the KJV and RSV use "kill" for both. The text does not say what the sign was. לְקַיִן "for Cain" may mean a sign given to him or a sign set on him. Genesis Rabbah 22:12 gathers guesses (a horn, a dog, leprosy); Rashi has a letter of the divine name on his forehead.

19. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 17, 18

    נוֹד "Nod" is the root of נָד "wanderer" (vv. 12, 14). Cain "dwells" (יָשַׁב) in Wander-land, so the name contradicts the verb. "Nod" cannot carry the pun in English (17), and the name is printed in its familiar form (18). He goes east, as the garden was planted in the east (2:8), the cherubim were stationed on its east (3:24), and the builders of Babylon came from the east (11:2). LXX Ναιδ.

20. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 18

    The names are printed in their familiar English forms; their Hebrew forms and meanings are in the names table. Cain's line (vv. 17–22) and Seth's line in Gen 5 share names in nearly the same order: Cain and Kenan, Enoch and Enoch, Irad and Jared, Mehujael and Mahalalel, Methushael and Methuselah, Lamech and Lamech. Mehujael is spelled two ways within v. 18 (מְחוּיָאֵל, מְחִיּיָאֵל); one name is printed. In v. 17 the builder is grammatically Cain, the last named man, who names the city for "his son." The clause can also be read with Enoch as builder, naming the city for his own son Irad. That name is close to Eridu, the first city of the Sumerian King List.

    See the table

21. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "begat" (KJV) / "was the father of" (RSV)

    Rulings 20, 37

    Here the qal of יָלַד has a male subject, as again at 10:8, 13, 15, 24, 26; 22:23 and 25:3. Gen 5 and 11 use the hiphil הוֹלִיד, "produced," for the same relation. Ruling 20 splits the verb by stem, and the qal's home gloss "bear" is held here because the chapter builds a chain on it (37): Eve (vv. 1–2), Cain's woman (v. 17), Adah (v. 20), Zillah (v. 22) and Eve again (v. 25) all "bear," and the fathers of v. 18 take the same form. "Bore" of a father is strange in English, but the strangeness is the Hebrew's: one verb serves the mother's bearing and the father's begetting, and Gen 4 uses the plain stem where Gen 5 uses the causative. No ruling covers a male subject of the qal; the report raises it. The niphal in v. 18 and the pual in v. 26 are "was born."

22. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 81, 14, 78

    Lamech's song (vv. 23–24) is lined by the translator under ruling 81(b). The Leningrad Codex runs it as prose, but it is built of three parallel couplets, and the colons follow the accents (14). The atnach falls under אִמְרָתִי in v. 23 and under קָיִן in v. 24. The opening pair, "hear… voice" with "give ear… saying," is the summons of Deut 32:1 and Isa 28:23. Isa 32:9 also addresses it to women: "women at ease, hear my voice; trusting daughters, give ear to my saying." Lamech's women (here and at v. 19) are "women" in the WPB, the core gloss of אִשָּׁה in the plural, and "wives" in the WPRB (WPRB mechanical rule 2).

23. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 10

    יֹשֵׁב אֹהֶל וּמִקְנֶה "dweller in tent and livestock" uses one participle for two nouns that do not fit it alike: the tent is where he dwells, the livestock what he has. The versions supply a second word: the LXX "of tent-dwellers, cattle-rearers" (οἰκούντων ἐν σκηναῖς κτηνοτρόφων), the Vulgate habitantium in tentoriis atque pastorum. The Hebrew is kept. מִקְנֶה is from קָנָה "acquire" (v. 1): livestock is what one has acquired, wealth that moves (26:14; 34:23). "Father" is the founder of a way of life or a craft, here and in v. 21.

24. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron" (KJV) / "the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron" (RSV)

    Rulings 25, 1

    לָטַשׁ is to sharpen or whet: the Israelites went down to the Philistines to sharpen their ploughshares (1 Sam 13:20); "he whets his sword" (Ps 7:13); "like a sharpened razor" (Ps 52:4). חֹרֵשׁ is the participle of the verb of cutting in, engraving and ploughing. With bronze it is the craftsman: Hiram of Tyre was "a worker of bronze" (חֹרֵשׁ נְחֹשֶׁת, 1 Kgs 7:14). So Tubal-cain sharpens every cutting tool (RSV) or trains every craftsman (KJV). "Cutter" is either a tool or a man who cuts, and keeps the crux open (1). "Bronze," not "brass," since brass, an alloy with zinc, came much later. The "cain" of his name is likely the smith word behind Cain (see the note at v. 1).

25. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 15, 46

    הָרַגְתִּי is a qatal, printed "I have killed" (15). It can also be read as a boast or a threat ("I kill a man for wounding me"), to match the yiqtol of v. 24. Rashi, after the Tanhuma, takes it as a question in Lamech's defence: did I kill a man by my wounding, that the wound should be on me? In the story behind it, the blind Lamech, led by his son Tubal-cain, shot Cain thinking him an animal, and then in grief struck and killed the boy.

26. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "a young man" (KJV, RSV)

    Ruling 2

    יֶלֶד, from יָלַד "bear," is "one born." Context sets the age: an infant (21:8), a boy (21:14–16), and grown men, Rehoboam's companions, "the children who grew up with him" (1 Kgs 12:8, 10, 14). Here it is parallel to אִישׁ "man," and may name the same victim twice or a second, younger one. "Child" keeps the root and the range. The KJV and RSV "young man" decides the age.

27. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold" (KJV) / "If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 4

    כִּי opens v. 24 as it opened the second couplet of v. 23 ("for a man I have killed"). It is printed "for" both times: the song gives its grounds. The conditional "if… truly" of the KJV and RSV supplies a structure the Hebrew does not mark. The numbers answer v. 15: Cain's sevenfold, and Lamech's "seventy and seven," the second without a verb. The LXX renders it ἑβδομηκοντάκις ἑπτά. In Matt 18:22 Jesus answers Peter's "up to seven times?" with the same Greek words, and Lamech's measure of vengeance becomes the measure of forgiveness. The NT follows its Greek: "seventy times seven" or "seventy-seven times" (4).

28. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "Adam" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 86, 72, 11

    Here אָדָם has no article, and OSHB tags it as the personal name (H121). The LXX and the Vulgate have "Adam," as they did at 4:1. "Adam" enters at 5:3, its first unambiguous personal use (72, 86; see the note at 5:3). Before it the anarthrous word is the common noun, and ruling 11 makes it "man," since his woman is in the verse, as at 3:17 and 3:21. The source tag stays H121.

29. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 17

    Seth, שֵׁת, because Elohim "has set," שָׁת. English carries the pun with the home gloss of שִׁית, so it is in the text (17). As at v. 1 the mother names the son and says why. There she said "with Adonai"; here she says "Elohim." "Another seed" is the woman's seed of 3:15 (זֶרַע, kept "seed"), an offspring set "in place of" Abel, as the ram is "in place of his son" (22:13).

30. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 32, 18

    The name אֱנוֹשׁ is the noun "mortal" (32): "what is mortal, that you remember him?" (Ps 8:5); "mortal, his days are like grass" (Ps 103:15). After Abel's death the line begins again with a son called Mortal. The names table has the form. Gen 5:6–11 picks him up.

31. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "then began men to call upon the name of the LORD" (KJV) / "At that time men began to call upon the name of the LORD" (RSV)

    Rulings 20, 40, 46

    הוּחַל is the hophal of חָלַל, the passive of the hiphil "begin" (6:1; 10:8; 11:6): "it was begun," impersonal, with no subject named. The KJV and RSV supply "men." In the piel and niphal the same root means "profane" (Lev 19:12; Ezek 20:9), and the tradition divides on the root, not on the stem. Genesis Rabbah 23:7 and Rashi: "then it was profaned," people began to call humans and idols by the name of the Holy One. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: that was the generation in whose days they began to go astray and make idols. The LXX reads the consonants another way, οὗτος ἤλπισεν ἐπικαλεῖσθαι τὸ ὄνομα κυρίου τοῦ θεοῦ, "he hoped to call on the name of the Lord God," taking Enosh as the subject. From that reading Augustine made Enosh a figure of the hope of the resurrection (City of God 15.18). The sense "profane" belongs to other stems, so this form has no attested stranger sense: the expected reading is printed with the evidence (40), and the split stays by stem (20). The calling on the divine name in the days of Enosh stands against Exod 6:3, "by my name Adonai I was not known to them," a tension the text leaves as it is.