Brotherhood, Violence and Another Beginning

“Knew” is the Hebrew yada, the same root as the “knowledge” of the forbidden tree, and it means intimacy, not information. Cain’s name, Qayin, is answered by Eve’s verb qaniti, “I have gotten”. Her words are the first time a human being speaks the name the LORD, and the Hebrew reads literally “with the LORD”.

Abel’s name, Hevel, means breath or vapour, the word Ecclesiastes repeats as “vanity”. Eve explains Cain’s name and says nothing about his. Cain takes up the work Adam was sent out to do in 3:23, to till the ground; keeping sheep is the new trade.

“In process of time” is literally “at the end of days”, most likely the close of a season, when a harvest would be in. The word for “offering” is minchah, a gift or tribute, and the chapter uses it for both brothers’ gifts alike.

The fat is the portion Leviticus 3:16 later reserves outright: “all the fat is the LORD’s.” “Had respect unto” translates a verb of looking, to gaze on with favour. How the favour showed is never said; the old Jewish guess that fire fell and consumed the gift is a guess.

“Very wroth” is literally “it burned to Cain exceedingly”, anger pictured as heat. A fallen face is the outward sign of a man sunk into himself. His anger is directed at God’s verdict, yet it is his brother who will pay for it.

God’s two questions pick up the two facts of the previous verse word for word: the anger, then the fallen face. As in 3:9 and 3:11, God opens with questions rather than a sentence, and this time the questions come before the wrong is done, not after.

“Be accepted” is one Hebrew word, se’et, “a lifting up”, answering the face that fell: the face can rise again. This is the first time the word “sin” appears in the Bible, and “lieth” is rovets, the crouch of an animal waiting at the entrance of a den.

The Hebrew says “Cain said unto Abel” and then reports nothing he said, a gap the King James smooths into “talked with”. The Samaritan Pentateuch, the Greek and the Latin fill it with “Let us go into the field”. The first death in Scripture is a killing, not old age.

“Where is Abel thy brother?” echoes “Where art thou?” to Cain’s father in 3:9. Adam hid and shifted blame; Cain answers with a flat lie. “Keeper” uses shamar, the verb of 2:15, where Adam was put in the garden to dress it and to keep it.

“What hast thou done?” is the question put to the woman in 3:13. “Blood” is plural in Hebrew, “bloods”, which the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 4:5) read as Abel’s blood and that of every descendant he would never have. “Crieth” is the word for the outcry of the wronged, used of Israel in Egypt.

In chapter 3 the serpent and the ground were cursed, but not the man. Cain is the first person to be cursed directly. The earth that “opened her mouth” to drink his brother’s blood will open her mouth again in Numbers 16:32, to swallow Korah and his company.

The ground’s “strength” is its yield, the power to bear a crop. “A fugitive and a vagabond” renders na wanad, a rhyming Hebrew pair built on two verbs of drifting and wandering. The farmer, the most settled of men, is sentenced to have nowhere to settle.

The word rendered “punishment” is avon, which usually means iniquity, and can mean both the guilt and the penalty it brings. The King James margin offers the other reading: “Mine iniquity is greater than that it may be forgiven.” The Hebrew holds both at once.

Cain enlarges the sentence. God said nothing about hiding his face; Cain adds it, and adds the fear of being killed. “Face” comes twice, the face of the earth and the face of God, from a man whose own face fell in verse 5. He now fears for himself exactly what he did to Abel.

“Therefore” is lakhen in the Hebrew; the Greek, Syriac and Latin read lo khen, “not so”, a flat refusal of Cain’s fear. The word for “mark” is ot, the same word as the “signs” of the lights in 1:14 and the “token” of the rainbow in 9:12.

Nod means wandering, the same root as the “vagabond” of verse 12, so Cain settles, of all places, in the land of Wandering. “Went out from the presence of the LORD” is the phrase the Book of Jonah uses when Jonah runs for Tarshish.

Enoch, Chanokh, is usually taken to mean dedicated or initiated. “Builded” is a participle, “was building”, work in progress. The Hebrew can also make Enoch the builder who named the city after his own son Irad, a reading some scholars prefer since Eridu is the oldest city in Sumerian tradition.

Four generations pass in one breath, with no ages and no deeds. Several of these names are close to names in Seth’s line in chapter 5: Irad and Jared, Mehujael and Mahalaleel, Methusael and Methuselah, and Enoch and Lamech appear in both. Genesis keeps the two families apart all the same.

Counting Adam, Lamech stands seventh in Cain’s line. He is the first man recorded with two wives, against the singular “his wife” of 2:24. Adah is commonly explained as ornament and Zillah as shade, though the meanings are not certain.

“Father” here means founder of a way of life, not ancestor of every herdsman. “Cattle” is miqneh, livestock as property, from qanah, “to get”, the verb Eve used at Cain’s birth. The first tent-dwellers and stockmen descend from the man condemned to wander.

Jabal, Jubal and Tubal all chime on the same sounds. The “harp” is the kinnor, a lyre, the instrument David will play. In 1611 “organ” meant any wind instrument; the Hebrew ugab was most likely a pipe or flute, nothing with a keyboard.

“Instructer” is the King James spelling; the Hebrew calls Tubal-cain a sharpener or forger of cutting tools. “Brass” in 1611 covered copper and bronze, which is what the Hebrew means. Naamah, “pleasant”, is a rare named daughter in a genealogy, and nothing more is said of her.

Lamech’s words are the first poem since Adam’s in 2:23, built in matched pairs of lines. “To my wounding” means in return for my wound: a man struck him, and he killed the man. The “young man” is yeled, a youth, which makes the boast worse, not better.

Lamech speaks of himself by name in the third person, and God appears nowhere in his reckoning. In the Greek Old Testament his “seventy and sevenfold” is the very phrase Jesus uses in Matthew 18:22 for how often to forgive a brother.

Seth, Shet, sounds like shat, “he has appointed”, the verb Eve uses. She says “God”, Elohim, where at Cain’s birth she said the LORD. And she calls Seth “seed”, zera, the word of the promise in 3:15 about her seed and the serpent’s.

Enos, Enosh, is a Hebrew word for man in his frailty, the word in Psalm 8:4, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” Calling on the name of the LORD is what Abram does at each altar he builds (12:8). The King James margin offers “to call themselves by the name of the LORD”.