CHAPTER IV.

_Beginnings of History and Civilisation._

_Critical Analysis._――Chapter 4 consists of three easily separable sections: (a) the story of Cain and Abel (¹⁻¹⁶), (b) a Cainite genealogy (¹⁷⁻²⁴),¹ and (c) a fragment of a Sethite genealogy (²⁵ᐧ ²⁶). As they lie before us, these are woven into a consecutive history of antediluvian mankind, with a semblance of unity sufficient to satisfy the older generation of critics.² Closer examination seems to show that the chapter is composite, and that the superficial continuity conceals a series of critical problems of great intricacy.

¹ Wellhausen unites verse ¹⁶ᵇ with ¹⁷⁻²⁴.

² _e.g._ Hupfeld, _Quellen_, 126 ff.

1. We have first to determine the character and extent of the Cainite genealogy. It is probable that the first link occurs in verse ¹ ᶠᶠᐧ, and has to be disentangled from the Cain legend (so Wellhausen, Budde); whether it can have included the whole of that legend is a point to be considered later (page 100). We have thus a list of Adam’s descendants through Cain, continued in a single line for seven generations, after which it branches into three, and then ceases. It has no explicit sequel in Genesis; the sacred number 7 marks it as complete in itself; and the attempts of some scholars to remodel it in accordance with its supposed original place in the history are to be distrusted. Its main purpose is to record the origin of various arts and industries of civilised life; and apart from the history of Cain there is nothing whatever to indicate that it deals with a race of sinners, as distinct from the godly line of Seth. That this genealogy belongs to Yahwist has hardly been questioned except by Dillmann, who argues with some hesitation for assigning it to Elohist, chiefly on the ground of its discordance with verses ²⁵ᐧ ²⁶. Budde (page 220 ff.) has shown that the stylistic criteria point decidedly (if not quite unequivocally) to Yahwist;¹ and in the absence of any certain trace of Elohist in chapters 1‒11, the strong presumption is that the genealogy represents a stratum of the former document. The question then arises whether it be the original continuation of chapter 3. An _essential_ connexion cannot, from the nature of the case, be affirmed. The primitive genealogies are composed of desiccated legends, in which each member is originally independent of the rest; and we are not entitled to assume that an account of the Fall necessarily attached itself to the person of the first man. If it were certain that 3²⁰ is an integral part of one recension of the Paradise story, it might reasonably be concluded that that recension was continued in 4¹, and then in 4¹⁷⁻²⁴. In the absence of complete certainty on that point the larger question must be left in suspense; there is, however, no difficulty in supposing that in the earliest written collection of Hebrew traditions the genealogy was preceded by a history of the Fall in a version partly preserved in chapter 3. The presumption that this was the case would, of course, be immensely strengthened if we could suppose it to be the intention of the original writer to describe not merely the progress of culture, but also the rapid development of sin (so Wellhausen).

‎ ¹ יָלַד‎ = ‘beget,’ ¹⁸; גם הוא‎, ²² (_in genealogies_, confined to Yahwist, 10²¹ 19³⁸ 22²⁰ᐧ ²⁴ 4²⁶); ושם אחיו‎, ²¹ (compare 10²⁵); compare ¹⁹ with 10²⁵ etc. (Budde _l.c._).

2. The fragmentary genealogy of verses ²⁵ᐧ ²⁶ corresponds, so far as it goes, with the Sethite genealogy of Priestly-Code in chapter 5. It will be shown later (page 138 f.) that the lists of 4¹⁷⁻²⁴ and 5 go back to a common original; and if the discrepancy had been merely between Yahwist and Priestly-Code, the obvious conclusion would be that these two documents had followed different traditional variants of the ancient genealogy. But how are we to account for the fact that the first three names of Priestly-Code’s list occur also in the connexion of Yahwist? There are four possible solutions. (1) It is conceivable that Yahwist, not perceiving the ultimate identity of the two genealogies, incorporated both in his document (compare Ewald _Jahrbücher der biblischen Wissenschaft_, vi. page 4); and that the final redactor (Redactorᴾʳⁱᵉˢᵗˡʸ⁻ᶜᵒᵈᵉ) then curtailed the second list in view of chapter 5. This hypothesis is on various grounds improbable. It assumes (see ²⁵ᵇ) the murder of Abel by Cain as an original constituent of Yahwist’s narrative; now that story takes for granted that the worship of Yahwe was practised from the beginning, whereas ²⁶ᵇ explicitly states that it was only introduced in the third generation. (2) It has not unnaturally been conjectured that verse ²⁵ ᶠᐧ are entirely redactional (Ewald, Schrader, al.); _i.e._, that they were inserted by an editor (Redactorᴾʳⁱᵉˢᵗˡʸ⁻ᶜᵒᵈᵉ) to establish a connexion between the genealogy of Yahwist and that of Priestly-Code. In favour of this view the use of אדם‎ (as a proper name) and of אלהים‎ has been cited; but again the statement of ²⁶ᵇ presents an insurmountable difficulty. Priestly-Code has his own definite theory of the introduction of the name יהוה‎ (see Exodus 6² ᶠᶠᐧ), and it is incredible that any editor influenced by him should have invented the gratuitous statement that the name was in use from the time of Enosh. (3) A third view is that verses ²⁵ᐧ ²⁶ stood originally before verse ¹ (or before verse ¹⁷), so that the father of Cain and Abel (or of Cain alone) was not Adam but Enosh; and that the redactor who made the transposition is responsible also for some changes on verse ²⁵ to adapt it to its new setting (so Stade) (see on the verse). That is, no doubt, a plausible solution (admitted as possible by Dillmann), although it involves operations on the structure of the genealogy too drastic and precarious to be readily assented to. It is difficult also to imagine any sufficient motive for the supposed transposition. That it was made to find a connexion for the (secondary) story of Cain and Abel is a forced suggestion. The tendency of a redactor must have been to keep that story as far from the beginning as possible, and that the traditional data should have been deliberately altered so as to make it the opening scene of human history is hardly intelligible. (4) There remains the hypothesis that the two genealogies belong to separate strata within the Yahwistic tradition, which had been amalgamated by a redactor of that school (Redactorᴶᵃʰʷⁱˢᵗ) prior to the incorporation of Priestly-Code; and that the second list was curtailed by Redactorᴾʳⁱᵉˢᵗˡʸ⁻ᶜᵒᵈᵉ because of its substantial identity with that of the Priestly Code in chapter 5. The harmonistic glossing of verse ²⁵ is an inevitable assumption of any theory except (1) and (2); it must have taken place after the insertion of the Cain and Abel episode; and on the view we are now considering it must be attributed to Redactorᴶᵃʰʷⁱˢᵗ. In other respects the solution is free from difficulty. The recognition of the complex character of the source called Yahwist is forced on us by many lines of proof; and it will probably be found that this view of the genealogies yields a valuable clue to the structure of the non-Priestly sections of chapters 2‒11 (see pages 3, 134). One important consequence may here be noted. Eve’s use of the name אלהים‎, and the subsequent notice of the introduction of the name יהוה‎, suggest that this writer had previously avoided the latter title of God (as Elohist and Priestly-Code previously to Exodus 3¹⁴ ᶠᶠᐧ and Exodus 6² ᶠᶠᐧ). Hence, if it be the case that one recension of the Paradise story was characterised by the exclusive use of אלהים‎ (see page 53), 4²⁵ᐧ ²⁶ will naturally be regarded as the sequel to that recension.

3. There remains the Cain and Abel narrative of verses ¹⁻¹⁶. That it belongs to Yahwist in the wider sense is undisputed,¹ but its precise affinities within the Yahwistic cycle are exceedingly perplexing. If the theory mentioned at the end of the last paragraph is correct, the consistent use of the name ‎ יהוה‎² would show that it was unknown to the author of verses ²⁵ᐧ ²⁶ and of that form of the Paradise story presupposed by these verses. Is it, then, a primary element of the genealogy in which it is embedded? It certainly contains notices――such as the introduction of agriculture and (perhaps) the origin of sacrifice――in keeping with the idea of the genealogy; but the length and amplitude of the narration would be without parallel in a genealogy; and (what is more decisive) there is an obvious incongruity between the Cain of the legend, doomed to a fugitive unsettled existence, and the Cain of the genealogy (verse ¹⁷), who as the first city-builder inaugurates the highest type of stable civilised life.³ Still more complicated are the relations of the passage to the history of the Fall in chapter 3. On the one hand, a series of material incongruities seem to show that the two narratives are unconnected: the assumption of an already existing population on the earth could hardly have been made by the author of chapter 3; the free choice of occupation by the two brothers, and Yahwe’s preference for the shepherd’s sacrifice, ignore the representation (3¹⁹) that husbandry is the destined lot of the race; and the curse on Cain is recorded in terms which betray no consciousness of a primal curse resting on the ground. It is true, on the other hand, that the literary form of 4¹⁻¹⁶ contains striking reminiscences of that of chapter 3. The most surprising of these (4⁷ᵇ ∥ 3¹⁶ᵇ) may be set down to textual corruption (see the note on the verse); but there are several other turns of expression which recall the language of the earlier narrative: compare 4⁹ᐧ ¹⁰ᐧ ¹¹ with 3⁹ᐧ ¹³ᐧ ¹⁷. In both we have the same sequence of sin, investigation and punishment (in the form of a curse), the same dramatic dialogue, and the same power of psychological analysis. But whether these resemblances are such as to prove identity of authorship is a question that cannot be confidently answered. There is an indistinctness of conception in 4¹⁻¹⁶ which contrasts unfavourably with the convincing lucidity of chapter 3, as if the writer’s touch were less delicate, or his gift of imaginative delineation more restricted. Such impressions are too subjective to be greatly trusted; but, taken along with the material differences already enumerated, they confirm the opinion that the literary connexion between chapter 3 and 4¹ ᶠᶠᐧ is due to conscious or unconscious imitation of one writer by another.――On the whole, the evidence points to the following conclusion: The story of Cain and Abel existed as a popular legend entirely independent of the traditions regarding the infancy of the race, and having no vital relation to any part of its present literary environment. It was incorporated in the Yahwistic document by a writer familiar with the narrative of the Fall, who identified the Cain of the legend with the son of the first man, and linked the story to his name in the genealogy. How much of the original genealogy has been preserved it is impossible to say: any notices that belonged to it have certainly been rewritten, and cannot now be isolated; but verse ¹ (birth of Cain) may with reasonable probability be assigned to it (so Budde), possibly also ²ᵇ{β} (Cain’s occupation), and ³ᵇ (Cain’s sacrifice).――Other important questions will be best considered in connexion with the original significance of the legend (page 111 ff.).

¹ Compare יהוה‎, ¹ᐧ ³ᐧ ⁴ᐧ ⁶ᐧ ⁹ᐧ ¹³ᐧ ¹⁵ᐧ ¹⁶; ארור‎, ¹¹; לבלתי‎, ¹⁵; and obsolete the resemblances to chapter 3 noted below: the naming of the child by the mother.

² This uniformity of usage is not, however, observed in LXX. In LXXᴬ Κύριος occurs twice (³ᐧ ¹³), ὁ θεός 5 times (¹ᐧ ⁴ᐧ ⁹ᐧ ¹⁰ᐧ ¹⁶), and Κύριος ὁ θεός 3 times (⁶ᐧ ¹⁵ᐧ ¹⁵) (for variants, see Cambridge LXX).

³ Even if we adopt Budde’s emendation of verse ¹⁷, and make Enoch the city-founder (see on the verse), it still remains improbable that that rôle should be assigned to the son of a wandering nomad.

IV. 1‒16. _Cain and Abel._

Eve bears to her husband two sons, Cain and Abel; the first becomes a tiller of the ground, and the second a keeper of sheep (¹ᐧ ²). Each offers to Yahwe the sacrifice appropriate to his calling; but only the shepherd’s offering is accepted, and Cain is filled with morose jealousy and hatred of Abel (³⁻⁵). Though warned by Yahwe (⁶ ᶠᐧ), he yields to his evil passion and slays his brother (⁸). Yahwe pronounces him accursed from the fertile ground, which will no longer yield its substance to him, and he is condemned to the wandering life of the desert (¹⁰⁻¹²). As a mitigation of his lot, Yahwe appoints him a sign which protects him from indiscriminate vengeance (¹⁴ ᶠᐧ); and he departs into the land of Nod, east of Eden (¹⁶).

=1‒5. Birth of Cain and Abel: their occupation, and sacrifice.=――=1.= On the naming of the child by the _mother_, see Benzinger, _Hebräische Archäologie_² 116. It is peculiar to the oldest strata (Yahwist and Elohist) of the Hexateuch, and is not quite consistently observed even there (4²⁶ 5²⁹ 25²⁵ ᶠᐧ, Exodus 2²²): it may therefore be a relic of the matriarchate which was giving place to the later custom of naming by the father (Priestly-Code) at the time when these traditions were taking shape.――The difficult sentence קָנִיתִי אִישׁ אֶת־יַהְוֶה‎ connects the name קַיִן‎ with the verb קָנָה‎. But קנה‎ has two meanings in Hebrew: (a) to (create, or) produce, and (b) to acquire; and it is not easy to determine which is intended here.

The second idea would seem more suitable in the present connexion, but it leads to a forced and doubtful construction of the last two words, (a) To render אֵת‎ ‘with the help of’ (Dillmann and most) is against all analogy. It is admitted that את‎ itself nowhere has this sense (in 49²⁵ the true reading is וְאֵל‎, and Micah 3⁸ is at least doubtful); and the few cases in which the synonym עִם‎ can be so translated are not really parallel. Both in 1 Samuel 14⁴⁵ and Daniel 11³⁹, the עם‎ denotes association _in the same act_, and therefore does not go beyond the sense ‘along with.’ The analogy does not hold in this verse if the verb means ‘acquire’; Eve could not say that she had _acquired_ a man along with Yahwe. (b) We may, of course, assume an error in the text and read מֵאֵת‎ = ‘from’ (Budde al. after Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ). (c) The idea that את‎ is the sign of accusative (Targumᴶᵒⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ, al.), and that Eve imagined she had given birth to the divine ‘seed’ promised in 3¹⁵ (Luther, al.) may be disregarded as a piece of antiquated dogmatic exegesis.――If we adopt the other meaning of קנה‎, the construction is perfectly natural: _I have created_ (or _produced_) _a man with_ (the co-operation of) _Yahwe_ (compare Rashi: “When he created me and my husband he created us alone, but in this case we are associated with him”). A strikingly similar phrase in the bilingual Babylonian account of Creation (above, page 47) suggests that the language here may be more deeply tinged with mythology than has been generally suspected. We read that “Aruru, together with him [Marduk], created (the) seed of mankind”: _Aruru zí-ír a-mí-lu-ti it-ti-šu ib-ta-nu_ (_Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek_, vi. 1, 40 f.; King, _The Seven Tablets of Creation_ i. 134 f.). Aruru, a form of Ištar, is a mother-goddess of the Babylonians (see _Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament_³, 430), _i.e._, a deified ancestress, and therefore so far the counterpart of the Hebrew חַוָּה‎ (see on 3²⁰). The exclamation certainly gains in significance if we suppose it to have survived from a more mythological phase of tradition, in which Ḥawwah was not a mortal wife and mother, but a creative deity taking part with the supreme god in the production of man. See Cheyne, _Traditions and Beliefs of Ancient Israel_, 104, who thinks it “psychologically probable that Eve congratulated herself on having ‘created’ a man.”――That אִישׁ‎ is not elsewhere used of a man-child is not a serious objection to any interpretation (compare גָּבֶר‎ in Job 3³); though the thought readily occurs that the etymology would be more appropriate to the name אֱנוֹשׁ‎ (4²⁶) than to קַיִן‎.

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‎ =1.= והאדם ידע‎] A pluperfect sense (Rashi) being unsuitable, the peculiar order of words is difficult to explain; see on 3¹, and compare 21¹. Stade (_Ausgewählte akademische Reden und Abhandlungen_ 239) regards it as a proof of editorial manipulation.――The euphemistic use of ידע‎ is peculiar to Yahwist in the Hexateuch (7 times): Numbers 31¹⁷ᐧ ¹⁸ᐧ ³⁵ (Priestly-Code: compare Judges 21¹¹ᐧ ¹²) are somewhat different. Elsewhere Judges 11³⁹ 19²²ᐧ ²⁵, 1 Samuel 1¹⁹, 1 Kings 1⁴,――all in the older historiography, and some perhaps from the literary school of Yahwist.――קַיִן‎] √ קין‎ (Arabic _ḳāna_). In Arabic _ḳain_ means ‘smith’; = Syrian (‡ Syriac word), ‘worker in metal’ (see 4²² 5⁹). Nöldeke’s remark, that in Arabic _ḳain_ several words are combined, is perhaps equally true of Hebrew קַיִן‎ (_Encyclopædia Biblica_, 130). Many critics (Wellhausen, Budde, Stade, Holzinger, al.) take the name as eponym of the Ḳenites (קַיִן‎, קַינִי‎): see page 113 below.――קָנִיתִי‎] All versions express the idea of ‘acquiring’ (ἐκτησάμην, _possedi_, etc.). The sense ‘create’ or ‘originate,’ though apparently confined to Hebrew and subordinate even there, is established by Deuteronomy 32⁶, Proverbs 8²², Psalms 139¹³, Genesis 14¹⁹ᐧ ²².――את‎] Of the versions Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ alone can be thought to have read מֵאֵת‎ ‎ (מן קדם‎); one anonymous Greek translation (see Field) took the word as _notional accusative_ (ἄνθρωπον κύριον); the rest vary greatly in rendering (as was to be expected from the difficulty of the phrase), but there is no reason to suppose they had a different text: LXX διὰ τοῦ θεοῦ, Symmachus σὺν κ., ὁ Ἑβρ. καὶ Σύρ.: ἐν θ., Vulgate _per Deum_, Peshiṭtå (‡ Syriac word). Conjectures: Marti (_Lit. Centralbl._, 1897, xx. 641) and Zeydner (_Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft_, xviii. 120): אִישׁ אֹת יַהְוֶה‎ = ‘the man of the Jahwe sign’ (verse ¹⁵); Gunkel אִישׁ אָתְאַוֶּה‎ = ‘man whom I desire.’

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=2.= _And again she bare, etc._] The omission of the verb הָרָה‎ is not to be pressed as implying that the brothers were twins, although that may very well be the meaning. The Old Testament contains no certain trace of the widespread superstitions regarding twin-births.――The sons betake themselves to the two fundamental pursuits of settled life: the elder to agriculture, the younger to the rearing of small cattle (sheep and goats). The previous story of the Fall, in which Adam, as representing the race, is condemned to husbandry, seems to be ignored (Gunkel).

The absence of an etymology of הֶבֶל‎ is remarkable (but compare verse ¹⁷), and hardly to be accounted for by the supposition that the name was only coined afterwards in token of his brief, fleeting existence (Dillmann). The word (= ‘breath’) might suggest that to a Hebrew reader, but the original sense is unknown. Gunkel regards it as the proper name of an extinct tribe or people; Ewald, Wellhausen, al. take it to be a variant of יָבָל‎, the father of nomadic shepherds (4²⁰); and Cheyne has ingeniously combined both names with a group of Semitic words denoting domestic animals and those who take charge of them (_e.g._ Syrian (‡ Syriac word) = ‘herd’; Arabic _’abbāl_ = ‘camel-herd,’ etc.): the meaning would then be ‘herdsman’ (_Encyclopædia Biblica_, i. 6). The conjecture is retracted in _Traditions and Beliefs of Ancient Israel_, in the interests of Yeraḥme’el.

=3.= _An offering_] מִנְחָה‎, literally a present or tribute (32¹⁴ ᶠᶠᐧ 33¹⁰ 43¹¹ ᶠᶠᐧ, 1 Samuel 10²⁷ etc.): see below. The use of this word shows that the ‘gift-theory’ of sacrifice (_Lectures on the Religion of the Semites_², 392 ff.) was fully established in the age when the narrative originated.――_of the fruit of the ground_] “Fruit in its natural state was offered at Carthage, and was probably admitted by the Hebrews in ancient times.” “The Carthaginian fruit-offering consisted of a branch bearing fruit, ... it seems to be clear that the fruit was offered at the altar, ... and this, no doubt, is the original sense of the Hebrew rite also” (_Lectures on the Religion of the Semites_², 221 and _note_ 3). Cain’s offering is thus analogous to the first-fruits (בִּכּוּרִים‎: Exodus 23¹⁶ᐧ ¹⁹ 34²²ᐧ ²⁶, Numbers 13²⁰ etc.) of Hebrew ritual; and it is arbitrary to suppose that his fault lay in not selecting the best of what he had for God.――=4.= Abel’s offering consisted of _the firstlings of his flock, namely_ (see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 154 _a_, _N._ 1 (_b_)) _of their fat-pieces_] compare Numbers 18¹⁷. Certain fat portions of the victim were in ancient ritual reserved for the deity, and might not be eaten (1 Samuel 2¹⁶ etc.: for Levitical details, see Driver-White, _Leviticus_, _Polychrome Bible_, pages 4, 65).――=4b, 5a.= How did Yahwe signify His acceptance of the one offering and rejection of the other? It is commonly answered (in accordance with Leviticus 9²⁴, 1 Kings 18³⁸ etc.), that fire descended from heaven and consumed Abel’s offering (Theodotion, Rashi, Abraham Ibn Ezra, Delitzsch, al.). Others (Dillmann, Gunkel) think more vaguely of some technical sign, _e.g._ the manner in which the smoke ascended (Ewald, Strack); while Calvin supposes that Cain inferred the truth from the subsequent course of God’s providence. But these conjectures overlook the strong anthropomorphism of the description: one might as well ask how Adam knew that he was expelled from the garden (3²⁴). Perhaps the likeliest analogy is the acceptance of Gideon’s sacrifice by the Angel of Yahwe (Judges 6²¹).――_Why_ was the one sacrifice accepted and not the other? The distinction must lie either (a) in the disposition of the brothers (so nearly all commmentaries), or (b) in the material of the sacrifice (Tuch). In favour of (a) it is pointed out that in each case the personality of the worshipper is mentioned before the gift. But since the reason is not stated, it must be presumed to be one which the first hearers would understand for themselves; and they could hardly understand that Cain, apart from his occupation and sacrifice, was less acceptable to God than Abel. On the other hand, they would readily perceive that the material of Cain’s offering was not in accordance with primitive Semitic ideas of sacrifice (see _Lectures on the Religion of the Semites_², Lecture VIII.).

From the fact that the altar is not expressly mentioned, it has been inferred that sacrifice is here regarded as belonging to the established order of things (Stade al.). But the whole manner of the narration suggests rather that the incident is conceived as the initiation of sacrifice,――the first spontaneous expression of religious feeling in cultus.¹ If that impression be sound, it follows also that the narrative proceeds on a _theory_ of sacrifice: the idea, viz., that animal sacrifice alone is acceptable to Yahwe. It is true that we cannot go back to a stage of Hebrew ritual when vegetable offerings were excluded; but such sacrifices must have been introduced after the adoption of agricultural life; and it is quite conceivable that in the early days of the settlement in Canaan the view was maintained among the Israelites that the animal offerings of their nomadic religion were superior to the vegetable offerings made to the Canaanite Baals. Behind this may lie (as Gunkel thinks) the idea that pastoral life as a whole is more pleasing to Yahwe than husbandry.

¹ It may be a mere coincidence that in Philo Byblius the institution of animal sacrifice occurs in a legend of two brothers who quarrelled (_Præparatio Evangelica_ i. 10). Kittel (_Studien zur hebräischen Archäologie und Religionsgeschichte_ 103¹) suggests that our narrative may go back to a time prior to the introduction of the fire-offering and the altar.

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‎ =3.= מקץ ימים‎] _After some time_, which may be longer (1 Samuel 29³) or shorter (24⁵⁵). To take ימים‎ in the definite sense of ‘year’ (1 Samuel 1²¹ 2¹⁹ 20⁶ etc.) is unnecessary, though not altogether unnatural (Abraham Ibn Ezra al.).――הֵבִיא‎] the ritual use is well established: Leviticus 2²ᐧ ⁸, Isaiah 1¹³, Jeremiah 17²⁶ etc.――מִנְחָה‎: Arabic _minḥat_ = ‘gift,’ ‘loan’: √ _manaḥa._¹ On the uses of the word, see Driver _A Dictionary of the Bible_, iii. 587b. In sacrificial terminology there are perhaps three senses to be distinguished: (1) Sacrifice in general, conceived as a tribute or propitiatory present to the deity, Numbers 16¹⁵, Judges 6¹⁸, 1 Samuel 2¹⁷ᐧ ²⁹ 26¹⁹, Isaiah 1¹³, Zephaniah 3¹⁰, Psalms 96⁸ etc. (2) The conjunction of מנחה‎ and זֶבַח‎ 1 Samuel 2²⁹ 3¹⁴, Isaiah 19²¹, Amos 5²⁵ etc.) may show that it denotes vegetable as distinct from animal oblations (see _Lectures on the Religion of the Semites_², 217, 236). (3) In Priestly-Code and late writings generally it is restricted to cereal offerings: Exodus 30⁹, Numbers 18⁹ etc. Whether the wider or the more restricted meaning be the older it is difficult to say.――=4.= וּמֵֽחֶלְבֵֿהֶן‎] On Metheg, see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 16 _d_. We might point as singular of the noun (חֶלְבְּהֶן‎, Leviticus 8¹⁶ᐧ ²⁵; Gesenius-Kautzsch § 91 _c_); but _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ has _scriptio plena_ of the plural ומחלביהן‎‎.――וישע‎] LXX καὶ ἔπιδεν (in verse ⁵ προσέσχεν); Aquila ἐπεκλίθη; Symmachus ἐτέρφθη; Theodotion ἐνεπύρισεν (see above); ὁ Σύρ. εὐδόκησεν; Vulgate _respexit_; Peshiṭtå (‡ Syriac word); Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ והות רעוא קדם יי‎. There is no _exact_ parallel to the meaning here; the nearest is Exodus 5⁹ (‘_look away_ [from their tasks] _to_’ idle words).――=5.= חרה‎] in Hebrew always of _mental_ heat (anger); LXX wrongly ἐλύπησεν; so Peshiṭtå. On impersonal construct, see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 144 _b_; compare 18³⁰ᐧ ³² 31³⁶ 34⁷, Numbers 16¹⁵ etc. The word is not used by Priestly-Code.――For נפל‎, Peshiṭtå has (‡ Syriac word) (literally ‘became black’).

¹ Some, however, derive it from נחה‎ = ‘direct’; and Hommel (_The Ancient Hebrew Tradition as illustrated by the Monuments_, 322) cites a Sabæan inscription where _tanaḥḥayat_ (V conjecture) is used of offering a sacrifice (see Lagrange, _Études_, 250). If this be correct, what was said above about the ‘gift theory’ would fall to the ground.

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=5b.= Cain’s feeling is a mixture of anger (_it became very hot to_ him) and dejection (_his face fell_: compare Job 29²⁴, Jeremiah 3¹²). This does not imply that his previous state of mind had been bad (Dillmann al.). In tracing Cain’s sin to a disturbance of his religious relation to God, the narrator shows his profound knowledge of the human heart.

=6‒12. Warning, murder, and sentence.=――=7.= The point of the remonstrance obviously is that the cause of Cain’s dissatisfaction lies in himself, but whether in his general temper or in his defective sacrifice can no longer be made out. Every attempt to extract a meaning from the verse is more or less of a _tour de force_, and it is nearly certain that the obscurity is due to deep-seated textual corruption (_v.i._).――=8=. _And Cain said_] אָמַר‎ never being quite synonymous with ‎דִּבֵּר‎, the sentence is incomplete: the missing words, _Let us go to the field_, must be supplied from versions; see below (so Ewald, Dillmann, Driver, al.). That Cain, as a first step towards reconciliation, communicated to Abel the warning he had just received (Tuch al.), is perhaps possible grammatically, but psychologically is altogether improbable.――_the field_] the open country (see on 2⁵), where they were safe from observation (1 Kings 11²⁹).――=9.= Yahwe opens the inquisition, as in 3⁹, with a question, which Cain, unlike Adam, answers with a defiant repudiation of responsibility. It is impossible to doubt that here the writer has the earlier scene before his mind, and consciously depicts a terrible advance in the power of sin.――=10=. _Hark! Thy brother’s blood is crying to me, etc._] צָעַק‎ denotes strictly the cry for help, and specially for redress or vengeance (Exodus 22²²ᐧ ²⁶, Judges 4³, Psalms 107 ⁶ᐧ ²⁸). The idea that blood exposed on the ground thus clamours for vengeance is persistently vivid in the Old Testament (Job 16¹⁸, Isaiah 26²¹, Ezekiel 24⁷ᐧ ⁸, 2 Kings 9²⁶): see _Lectures on the Religion of the Semites_², 417⁵. In this passage we have more than a mere metaphor, for it is the blood which is represented as drawing Yahwe’s attention to the crime of Cain.――=11.= _And now cursed art thou from_ (off) _the ground_] _i.e._, not the earth’s surface, but the cultivated ground (compare verse ¹⁴, and see on 2⁵). To restrict it to the soil of Palestine (Wellhausen, Stade, Holzinger) goes beyond the necessities of the case.――_which has opened her mouth, etc._] a personification of the ground similar to that of Sheol in Isaiah 5¹⁴ (compare Numbers 16³²). The idea cannot be that the earth is a monster greedy of blood; it seems rather akin to the primitive superstition of a physical infection or poisoning of the soil, and through it of the murderer, by the shed blood (see Miss Harrison, _Prolegomena to the study of Greek Religion_, 219 ff.). The ordinary Old Testament conception is that the blood remains _uncovered_ (compare Euripides _Electra_, 318 f.). The relation of the two notions is obscure.――=12.= The curse ‘from off the ground’ has two sides: (1) The ground will _no longer yield its strength_ (Job 31³⁹) to the murderer, so that even if he wished he will be unable to resume his husbandry; and (2) he is to be a _vagrant and wanderer in the earth_. The second is the negative consequence of the first, and need not be regarded as a separate curse, or a symbol of the inward unrest which springs from a guilty conscience.

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=7.= The difficulties of the present text are “the curt and ambiguous expression שְׂאֵת‎; further, the use of חַטָּאת‎ as masculine, then the whole tenor of the sentence, _If thou doest not well..._; finally, the exact and yet incongruous parallelism of the second half-verse with 3¹⁶” (Olshausen _Monatsberichte der Königlich-Preussischen Akadamie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin._, 1870, 380).――As regards ⁷ᵃ, the main lines of interpretation are these: (1) The infinitive שְׂאֵת‎ may be complementary to תֵּיטיב‎ as a _relative_ verb (Gesenius-Kautzsch § 120, 1), in which case שׂ׳‎ must have the sense of ‘offer’ sacrifice (compare 43³⁴, Ezekiel 20³¹). So (a) LXX οὐκ ἐὰν ὀρθῶς προσενέγκῃς, ὀρθῶς δὲ μὴ διέλῃς, ἥμαρτες; ἡσύχασον (reading לְנַתַּח‎ for לַפֶּתַח‎, and pointing the next two words חָטָאתָ רְבַץ‎) = ‘Is it not so――if thou offerest rightly, but dost not cut in pieces rightly, thou hast sinned? Be still!’ Ball strangely follows this fantastic rendering, seemingly oblivious of the fact that נַתַּח‎ (compare Exodus 29¹⁷, Leviticus 1⁶ᐧ ¹², 1 Kings 18²³ᐧ ³³ etc.)――for which he needlessly substitutes ‎ בַּֽתֵּר‎ (15¹⁰)――has no sense as applied to a fruit-offering.――(b) Somewhat similar is a view approved by Budde as “völlig befriedigend” (_Die biblische Urgeschichte_ 204 f.): ‘Whether thou make thine offering costly or not, at the door,’ etc. [‘Whether thou offerest _correctly_ or not,’ would be the safer rendering].――(2) The infinitive may be taken as compressed apodosis, and תּ׳‎ as an independent verb = ‘do well’ (as often). ‎ ‎ שׂ׳‎ might then express the idea of (a) _elevation of countenance_ ‎ ‎ (= שׂ׳ פנים‎: compare Job 11¹⁵ 22²⁶): ‘If thou doest well, shall there not be lifting up?’ etc. (so Tuch, Ewald, Delitzsch, Dillmann, Driver, al.); or (b) _acceptance_ (שׂ׳ פ׳‎ as Genesis 19²¹, 2 Kings 3¹⁴, Malachi 1⁸ᐧ ⁹): so Aquila (ἀρέσεις), Theodotion (δεκτόν), Peshiṭtå (‡ Syriac word), Vulgate (_recipies_); or (c) _forgiveness_ (as Genesis 50¹⁷, Exodus 32³²): so Symmachus (ἀφήσω), Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ, Jerome, and recently Holzinger. Of these renderings 2 (a) or 1 (b) are perhaps the most satisfying, though both are cumbered with the unnatural metaphor of sin as a wild beast couching at the door (of what?), and the harsh discord of gender. The latter is not fairly to be got rid of by taking רֹבֵץ‎ as a noun (‘sin is at the door, a lurker’: Ewald al.), though no doubt it might be removed by a change of text. Of the image itself the best explanation would be that of Holzinger, who regards רָבַץ‎ as a technical expression for unforgiven sin (compare Deuteronomy 29¹⁹). Jewish interpreters explain it of the evil impulse in man (יֵצֶר הָרַע‎), and most Christians similarly of the overmastering or seductive power of sin; ⁷ᵇ being regarded as a summons to Cain to subdue his evil passions.――=7b= reads smoothly enough by itself, but connects badly with what precedes. The antecedent to the pronoun suffix is usually taken to be Sin personified as a wild beast, or less commonly (Calvin al.) Abel, the object of Cain’s envy. The word תְּשׁוּקָה‎ is equally unsuitable, whether it be understood of the wild beast’s eagerness for its prey or the deference due from a younger brother to an older; and the alternative תְּשׁוּבָה‎ of LXX and Peshiṭtå (see on 3¹⁶) is no better. The verbal resemblance to 3¹⁶ᵇ is itself suspicious; a facetious parody of the language of a predecessor is not to be attributed to any early writer. It is more likely that the erroneous words were afterwards adjusted to their present context: in Peshiṭtå the suffix are actually reversed (‡ Syriac phrase).――The paraphrase of Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ affords no help, and the textual confusion is probably irremediable; tentative emendations like those of Gunkel (page 38) are of no avail. Cheyne _Traditions and Beliefs of Ancient Israel_, 105, would remove verse ⁷ as a gloss, and make ⁸ᵃ (reading אחי‎) Cain’s answer to verse ⁶.

‎ =8.= אָמַר‎, in the sense of ‘speak,’ ‘converse’ (2 Chronicles 32²⁴), is excessively rare and late: the only instance in early Hebrew is apparently Exodus 19²⁵, where the context has been broken by a change of document. It might mean ‘mention’ (as 43²⁷ etc.), but in that case the object must be indicated. Usually it is followed, like English ‘say,’ by the actual words spoken. Hence ‎ נֵלְכָה הַשָּׂדֶה‎ is to be supplied with _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_, LXX, Peshiṭtå, Vulgate, but _not_ Aquila (Tuch, Delitzsch: see the scholia in Field): a _Pisqa_ in some Hebrew MSS, though not recognised by the Massoretic, supports this view of the text. To emend וַיִּשְׁמֹר‎ (Olshausen al.) or וַיָּמֶר‎, וַיֵּמַר‎ (Gesenius-Kautzsch) is less satisfactory.――=9.= אֵי‎] _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ אַיֵּה‎.――=10.= On the interjectional use of קוֹל‎, see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 146 _b_; Nöldeke _Mandäische Grammatik_ page 482.――צֹעֲקִים‎] _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ צעק‎, agreeing with קוֹל‎ (?).――=11.= אָרוּר ... מִן‎] pregnant construct, Gesenius-Kautzsch § 119 _x, y, ff._ This sense of מִן‎ is more accurately expressed by מֵעַל‎ in verse ¹⁴, but is quite common (compare especially 27³⁹). Other renderings, as _from_ (indicating the direction from which the curse comes) or _by_, are less appropriate; and the comparison _more than_ is impossible.――=12.= תֹסֵף‎] jussive form with לֹא‎ (Gesenius-Kautzsch § 109 _d_, _h_; Davidson §§ 63, _R._ 3, 66, _R._ 6); followed by infinitive without ל‎ (Gesenius-Kautzsch § 114 _m_).――נָע וָנָד‎] an alliteration, as in 1². Best rendered in anonymous Greek versions (Field): σαλευόμενος καὶ ἀκαταστατῶν; Vulgate _vagus et profugus_; LXX (incorrectly) στένων καὶ τρέμων.

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=13‒16. Mitigation of Cain’s punishment.=――=13.= _My punishment is too great to be borne_] So the plea of Cain is understood by all modern authorities. The older rendering: _my guilt is too great to be forgiven_ (which is in some ways preferable), is abandoned because the sequel shows that Cain’s reflexions run on the thought of suffering and not of sin; see below.――=14=. _from Thy face I shall be hidden_] This anguished cry of Cain has received scant sympathy at the hands of commentaries (except Gunkel). Like that of Esau in 27³⁴, it reveals him as one who had blindly striven for a spiritual good,――as a man not wholly bad who had sought the favour of God with the passionate determination of an ill-regulated nature and missed it: one to whom banishment from the divine presence is a distinct ingredient in his cup of misery.――_every one that findeth me, etc._] The object of Cain’s dread is hardly the vengeance of the slain man’s kinsmen (so nearly all commentaries); but rather the lawless state of things in the desert, where any one’s life may be taken with impunity (Gunkel). That the words imply a diffusion of the human race is an incongruity on either view, and is one of many indications that the Cain of the original story was not the son of the first man.

This expostulation of Cain, with its rapid grasp of the situation, lights up some aspects of the historic background of the legend. (1) It is assumed that Yahwe’s presence is confined to the cultivated land; in other words, that He is the God of settled life, agricultural and pastoral. To conclude, however, that He is the God of Canaan in particular (compare 1 Samuel 26¹⁹), is perhaps an over-hasty inference. (2) The reign of right is coextensive with Yahwe’s sphere of influence: the outer desert is the abode of lawlessness; justice does not exist, and human life is cheap. That Cain, the convicted murderer, should use this plea will not appear strange if we remember the conditions under which such narratives arose.

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=13.= On עָוֹן‎ (√ _ġawaʸ_ = ‘go astray’: Driver _Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Samuel_ 134 f.) in the sense of _punishment_ of sin, see the passages cited in Brown-Driver-Briggs, _s.v._ 3. נשא ע׳‎, in the sense of ‘bear guilt,’ seems peculiar to Priestly-Code and Ezekiel; elsewhere it means to ‘pardon iniquity’ (Exodus 34⁷, Numbers 14¹⁸, Hosea 14³, Micah 7¹⁸, Psalms 32⁵). This consideration is not decisive; but there is something to be said for the consensus of ancient versions (LXX ἀφεθῆναι; Vulgate _veniam merear_, etc.) in favour of the second interpretation, which might be retained without detriment to the sense if the sentence could be read as a question.――=14.= אֹתִי‎] instead of suffix is unlike Yahwist. In the next verse אֹתוֹ‎ after infinitive was necessary to avoid confusion between subject and object.

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=15.= What follows must be understood as a divinely appointed amelioration of Cain’s lot: although he is not restored to the amenities of civilised life, Yahwe grants him a special protection, suited to his vagrant existence, against indiscriminate homicide.――_Whoso kills Ḳayin_ (or ‘whenever any one kills Ḳ’), _it_ (the murder) _shall be avenged sevenfold_] by the slaughter of seven members of the murderer’s clan. See below.――_appointed a sign for Ḳayin_] or _set a mark on Ḳ_. The former is the more obvious rendering of the words; but the latter has analogies, and is demanded by the context.

The idea that the sign is a pledge given once for all of the truth of Yahwe’s promise, after the analogy of the prophetic ‎ אוֹת‎, is certainly consistent with the phrase שֵׁים ... לְ‎: compare _e.g._ Exodus 15²⁵, Joshua 24²⁵ with Exodus 10² etc. So some authorities in _Bereshith Rabba_, Abraham Ibn Ezra, Tuch, al. But Exodus 4¹¹ᵃ proves that it may also be something attached to the person of Cain (Calvin, _Bereshith Rabba_, Delitzsch, and most); and that אוֹת‎ may denote a mark appears from Exodus 13⁹ᐧ ¹⁶ etc. Since the sign is to serve as a warning to all and sundry who might attempt the life of Cain, it is obvious that the second view alone meets the requirements of the case: we must think of something about Cain, visible to all the world, marking him out as one whose death would be avenged sevenfold. Its purpose is protective and not penal: that it brands him as a murderer is a natural but mistaken idea.――It is to be observed that in this part of the narrative _Ḳayin_ is no longer a personal but a collective name. The clause כָל־הֹרֵג ק׳‎ (not מִי יַֽהֲרֹג‎, or ‎ אֲשֶׁר י׳‎) has frequentative force (examples below), implying that the act might be repeated many times on members of the tribe Ḳayin: similarly the sevenfold vengeance assumes a kin-circle to which the murderer belongs. See, further, page 112.

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‎ =15.= לָכֵן‎] οὐχ οὕτως (LXX, Symmachus, Theodotion) implies לֹא כֵן‎: so Peshiṭtå, Vulgate; but this would require to be followed by ‎ כִּי‎.――כָּל־הֹרֵג ק׳‎] see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 116 _w_; compare Exodus 12¹⁵, Numbers 35³⁰, 1 Samuel 2¹³ 3¹¹ etc.――יֻקַּםh] The subject might be ‎ קַיִן‎ (as verse ²⁴) or (more probably) impersonal (Exodus 21²¹), certainly not the murderer of Cain.――שִׁבְעָתַיִם‎] = ‘7 times’: Gesenius-Kautzsch § 134 _r_. Versions: LXX ἑπτὰ ἐκδικούμενα παραλύσει; Aquila ἑπταπλασίως ἐκδικηθήσεται; Symmachus ἑβδόμως ἐκδίκησιν δώσει; Theodotion δι’ ἑβδομάδος ἐκδικήσει; Vulgate _septuplum punietur_; Peshiṭtå (‡ Syriac phrase); Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ ‎ לשבעא דרין יתפרע מיניה‎ (hence the idea that Cain was killed by Lamech the 7th from Adam [see on verse ²⁴]).

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=16.= _and dwelt in the land of Nôd_] The verb יָשֶׂב‎ is not necessarily inconsistent with nomadic life, as Stade alleges (see Genesis 13¹², 1 Chronicles 5¹⁰ etc.). It is uncertain whether the name נוֹד‎ is traditional (Wellhausen, Gunkel), or was coined from the participle ‎נָד‎ = ‘land of wandering’ (so most); at all events it cannot be geographically identified. If the last words קדמת עדן‎ belong to the original narrative, it would be natural to regard Ḳayin as representative of the nomads of Central Asia (Knobel al.); but the phrase may have been added by a redactor to bring the episode into connexion with the account of the Fall.

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‎ =16.= נוד‎] _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ נד‎, LXX Ναϊδ ‎ (ניד‎ ?) with variants (see Nestle, _Marginalien und Materialien_, page 9).――Symmachus, Theodotion, Vulgate (_habitavit profugus in terra_) [Targum?] take the word as a participle; but the order of words forbids this.――קדמת‎] see on 2¹⁴. ‘In front of Eden’ and ‘East of Eden’ would here be the same thing (3²⁴).

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_The Origin of the Cain Legend._

The exposition of 4¹⁻¹⁶ would be incomplete without some account of recent speculations regarding the historical or ethnological situation out of which the legend arose. The tendency of opinion has been to affirm with increasing distinctness the view that the narrative “embodies the old Hebrew conception of the lawless nomad life, where only the blood-feud prevents the wanderer in the desert from falling a victim to the first man who meets him.”¹ A subordinate point, on which undue stress is commonly laid, is the identity of Cain with the nomadic tribe of the Ḳenites. These ideas, first propounded by Ewald,² adopted by Wellhausen,³ and (in part) by William Robertson Smith,⁴ have been worked up by Stade, in his instructive essay on ‘The sign of Cain,’⁵ into a complete theory, in which what may be called the nomadic motive is treated as the clue to the significance of every characteristic feature of the popular legend lying at the basis of the narrative. Although the questions involved are too numerous to be fully dealt with here, it is necessary to consider those points in the argument which bear more directly on the original meaning of verses ¹⁻¹⁶.

¹ Smith, _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_², 251.

² _Jahrbücher der biblischen Wissenschaft_, vi. 5 ff.

³ _Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments_² 10 f.

⁴ _l.c._

⁵ _Ausgewählte akademische Reden und Abhandlungen_, 229‒73.

1. That the figure of Cain represents some phase of nomadic life may be regarded as certain. We have seen (page 110) that in verse ¹³ ᶠᶠᐧ the name Cain has a collective sense; and every descriptive touch in these closing verses is characteristic of desert life. His expulsion from the אדמה‎ and the phrase נע ונד‎, express (though not by any means necessarily,――see below) the fundamental fact that his descendants are doomed to wander in the uncultivated regions beyond the pale of civilisation. The vengeance which protects him is the self-acting law of blood-revenge,――that ‘salutary institution’ which, in the opinion of Burckhardt, has done more than anything else to preserve the Bedouin tribes from mutual extermination.¹ The sign which Yahwe puts on him is most naturally explained as the “_sharṭ_ or tribal mark which every man bore in his person, and without which the ancient form of blood-feud, as the affair of a whole stock and not of near relations alone, could hardly have been worked.”² And the fact that this kind of existence is traced to the operation of a hereditary curse embodies the feeling of a settled agricultural or pastoral community with regard to the turbulent and poverty-stricken life of the desert.

¹ _Bedouins and Wahabys_, 148.――The meaning is that the certainty of retaliation acts as a check on the warlike tribesmen, and renders their fiercest conflicts nearly bloodless.

² Smith, _l.c._――It may be explained that at present the kindred group for the purpose of the blood-feud consists of all those whose lineage goes back to a common ancestor in the fifth generation. There are still certain tribes, however, who are greatly feared because they are said to ‘strike sideways’; _i.e._ they retaliate upon any member of the murderer’s tribe whether innocent or guilty. See Burckhardt 149 ff., 320 f.

2. While this is true, the narrative cannot be regarded as expressing reprobation of every form of nomadism known to the Hebrews. A disparaging estimate of Bedouin life as a whole is, no doubt, conceivable on the part of the settled Israelites (compare Genesis 16¹²); but Cain is hardly the symbol of that estimate. (1) The ordinary Bedouin could not be described as ‘fugitives and vagabonds in the earth’: their movements are restricted to definite areas of the desert, and are hardly less monotonous than the routine of husbandry.¹ (2) The full Bedouin are breeders of camels, the half-nomads of sheep and goats; and both live mainly on the produce of their flocks and herds (see Meyer, _Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstämme_, 303 ff.). But to suppose Cain to exemplify the latter mode of life is inconsistent with the narrative, for sheep-rearing is the distinctive profession of Abel; and it is hardly conceivable that Hebrew legend was so ignorant of the proud spirit of the full Bedouin as to describe them as degraded agriculturists. If Cain be the type of any permanent occupation at all, it must be one lower than agriculture and pasturage; _i.e._ he must stand for some of those rude tribes which subsist by hunting or robbery. (3) It is unlikely that a rule of sevenfold revenge was generally observed amongst Semitic nomads in Old Testament times. Among the modern Arabs the law of the blood-feud is a life for a life: it is only under circumstances of extreme provocation that a twofold revenge is permissible. We are, therefore, led to think of Cain as the impersonation of an inferior race of nomads, maintaining a miserable existence by the chase, and practising a peculiarly ferocious form of blood-feud.――The view thus suggested of the fate of Cain finds a partial illustration in the picture given by Burckhardt and Doughty of a group of low-caste tribes called Solubba or Sleyb. These people live partly by hunting, partly by coarse smith-work and other gipsy labour in the Arab encampments; they are forbidden by their patriarch to be cattle-keepers, and have no property save a few asses; they are excluded from fellowship and intermarriage with the regular Bedouin, though on friendly terms with them; and they are the only tribes that are free of the Arabian deserts to travel where they will, ranging practically over the whole peninsula from Syria to Yemen. It is, perhaps, of less significance that they sometimes speak of themselves as decayed Bedouin, and point out the ruins of the villages where their ancestors dwelt as owners of camels and flocks.² The name קַיִן‎, signifying ‘smith’ (page 102), would be a suitable eponym for such degraded nomads. The one point in which the analogy absolutely fails is that tribes so circumstanced could not afford to practise the stringent rule of blood-revenge indicated by verse ¹⁵.――It thus appears that the known conditions of Arabian nomadism present no exact parallel to the figure of Cain. To carry back the origin of the legend to pre-historic times would destroy the _raison d’être_ of Stade’s hypothesis, which seeks to deduce everything from definite historical relations: at the same time it may be the only course by which the theory can be freed from certain inconsistencies with which it is encumbered.³

¹ Nöldeke _Encyclopædia Biblica_, 130.

² Burckhardt 14 f.; Doughty, _Arabia Deserta_, i. 280 ff.

³ An interesting parallel might be found in the account given by Merker (_Die Masai_, page 306 ff.) of the smiths (_ol kononi_) among the Masai of East Africa. Apart from the question of the origin of the Masai, it is quite possible that these African nomads present a truer picture of the conditions of primitive Semitic life than the Arabs of the present day. See also Andree, _Ethnographische Parallelen und Vergleiche_ (1878), 156 ff.

3. The kernel of Stade’s argument is the attractive combination of Cain the fratricide with the eponymous ancestor of the Ḳenites.¹ In historical times the Ḳenites appear to have been pastoral nomads (Exodus 2¹⁶ ᶠᶠᐧ 3¹) frequenting the deserts south of Judah (1 Samuel 27¹⁰ 30²⁹), and (in some of their branches) clinging tenaciously to their ancestral manner of life (Judges 4¹¹ᐧ ¹⁷ 5²⁴, Jeremiah 35⁷ compared with 1 Chronicles 2⁵⁵). From the fact that they are found associated now with Israel (Judges 1¹⁶ etc.), now with Amaleḳ (Numbers 24²¹ ᶠᶠᐧ, 1 Samuel 15⁶), and now with Midian (Numbers 10²⁹), Stade infers that they were a numerically weak tribe of the second rank; and from the name, that they were smiths. The latter character, however, would imply that they were pariahs, and of that there is no evidence whatever. Nor is there any indication that the Ḳenites exercised a more rigorous blood-feud than other Semites: indeed, it seems an inconsistency in Stade’s position that he regards the Ḳenites as at once distinguished by reckless bravery in the vindication of the tribal honour, and at the same time too feeble to maintain their independence without the aid of stronger tribes. There is, in short, nothing to show that the Ḳenites were anything but typical Bedouin; and all the objections to associating Cain with the higher levels of nomadism apply with full force to his identification with this particular tribe. When we consider, further, that the Ḳenites are nearly everywhere on friendly terms with Israel, and that they seem to have cherished the most ardent attachment to Yahwism, it becomes almost incredible that they should have been conceived as resting under a special curse.

¹ The tribe is called קַיִן‎ in Numbers 24²², Judges 4¹¹; elsewhere the gentilic קֵינִי‎ is used (in 1 Chronicles 2⁵⁵ קֵינִים‎).

4. It is very doubtful if any form of the nomadic or Ḳenite theory can account for the rise of the legend as a whole. The evidence on which it rests is drawn almost exclusively from verses ¹³⁻¹⁶. Stade justifies his extension of the theory to the incident of the murder by the analogy of those temporary alliances between Bedouin and peasants in which the settled society purchases immunity from extortion by the payment of a fixed tribute to the nomads (compare 1 Samuel 25² ᶠᐧ). This relation is spoken of as a brotherhood, the tributary party figuring as the _sister_ of the Bedouin tribe. The murder of Abel is thus resolved into the massacre of a settled pastoral people by a Bedouin tribe which had been on terms of formal friendship with it. But the analogy is hardly convincing. It would amount to this: that certain nomads were punished for a crime by being transformed into nomads: the fact that Cain was previously a husbandman is left unexplained.――Gunkel, with more consistency, finds in the narrative a vague reminiscence of an actual (prehistoric) event,――the extermination of a pastoral tribe by a neighbouring agricultural tribe, in consequence of which the latter were driven from their settlements and lived as outlaws in the wilderness. Such changes of fortune must have been common in early times on the border-land between civilisation and savagery;¹ and Gunkel’s view has the advantage over Stade’s that it makes a difference of sacrificial ritual an intelligible factor in the quarrel (see page 105 f.). But the process of extracting history from legend is always precarious; and in this case the motive of _individual_ blood-guilt appears too prominent to be regarded as a secondary interest of the narrative.

¹ Instances in Merker, _Die Masai_, pages 3, 7, 8, 14, 328, etc.

The truth is that in the present form of the story the figure of Cain represents a fusion of several distinct types, of which it is difficult to single out any one as the central idea of the legend. (1) He is the originator of agriculture (verse ²). (2) He is the founder of sacrifice, and (as the foil to his brother Abel) exhibits the idea that vegetable offerings alone are not acceptable to Yahwe (see on verse ³). (3) He is the individual murderer (or rather shedder of kindred blood) pursued by the curse, like the Orestes, Alcmæon, Bellerophon, etc., of Greek legend (verse ⁸ ᶠᶠᐧ). Up to verse ¹² that motive not only is sufficient, but is the only one naturally suggested to the mind: the expression נָע וָנָד‎ being merely the negative aspect of the curse which drives him from the ground.¹ (4) Lastly, in verses ¹³⁻¹⁶ he is the representative of the nomad tribes of the desert, as viewed from the standpoint of settled and orderly civilisation. Ewald pointed out the significant circumstance, that at the beginning of the ‘second age’ of the world’s history we find the counterparts of Abel and Cain in the shepherd Jabal and the smith Tubal-Cain (verse ²⁰ ᶠᶠᐧ). It seems probable that some connexion exists between the two pairs of brothers: in other words, that the story of Cain and Abel embodies a variation of the tradition which assigned the origin of cattle-breeding and metal-working to two sons of Lamech. But to resolve the composite legend into its primary elements, and assign each to its original source, is a task obviously beyond the resources of criticism.

¹ For a Semitic parallel to this conception of Cain, compare Doughty’s description of the wretched Harb Bedouin who had accidentally slain his antagonist in a wrestling match: “None accused Aly; nevertheless the _mesquin_ fled for his life; and he has gone ever since thus armed, lest the kindred of the deceased finding him should kill him.” (_Travels in Arabia Deserta_ ii. 293, cited by Stade).

IV. 17‒24. _The line of Cain._

This genealogy, unlike that of Priestly-Code in chapter 5, is not a mere list of names, but is compiled with the view of showing the origin of the principal arts and institutions of civilised life.¹ These are: Husbandry (verse ²; see above), city-life (¹⁷), [polygamy (¹⁹) ?], pastoral nomadism, music and metal-working (²⁰ ᶠᶠᐧ). The Song of Lamech (²³ ᶠᐧ) may signalise an appalling development of the spirit of blood-revenge, which could hardly be considered an advance in culture; but the connexion of these verses with the genealogy is doubtful.――It has commonly been held that the passage involves a pessimistic estimate of human civilisation, as a record of progressive degeneracy and increasing alienation from God. That is probably true of the compiler who placed the section after the account of the Fall, and incorporated the Song of Lamech, which could hardly fail to strike the Hebrew mind as an exhibition of human depravity. In itself, however, the genealogy contains no moral judgment on the facts recorded. The names have no sinister significance; polygamy (though a declension from the ideal of 2²⁴) is not generally condemned in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 21¹⁵); and even the song of Lamech (which is older than the genealogy) implies no condemnation of the reckless and bloodthirsty valour which it celebrates.――The institutions enumerated are clearly those existing in the writer’s own day; hence the passage does not contemplate a rupture of the continuity of development by a cataclysm like the Flood. That the representation involves a series of anachronisms, and is not historical, requires no proof (see Driver _The Book of Genesis with Introduction and Notes_ 68).――On the relation of the section to other parts of the chapter, see page 98 above: on some further critical questions, see the concluding Note (page 122 ff.).

¹ Gunkel, however (page 47), considers the archæological notices to be insertions in the genealogy, and treats them as of a piece with the similar notices in 2¹⁵ 3⁷ᐧ ²¹ᐧ ²³.

=17. Enoch and the building of the first city.=――The question where Cain got his wife is duly answered in _Jubilees_ iv. 1, 9: she was his sister, and her name was _‛Âwân_. For other traditions, see Marmorstein, ‘_Die Namen der Schwestern Kains und Abels_,’ etc., _Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft_, xxv. 141 ff.――_and he became a city-builder_] So the clause is rightly rendered by Delitzsch, Budde, Holzinger, Gunkel, al. (compare 21²⁰ᵇ, Judges 16²¹, 2 Kings 15⁵). The idea that he happened to be engaged in the building of a city when his son was born would probably have been expressed otherwise, and is itself a little unnatural.

That קַיִן‎ is the subject of וַיְהִי‎ only appears from the phrase ‎ כְּשֵׁם בְּנוֹ‎ towards the end. Budde (120 ff.) conjectures that the original text was כִּשְׁמוֹ‎, making Enoch himself the builder of the city called after him (so Holzinger). The emendation is plausible: it avoids the ascription to Cain of _two_ steps in civilisation――agriculture and city-building; and it satisfies a natural expectation that after the mention of Enoch we should hear what _he_ became, not what his father became after his birth,――especially when the subject of the immediately preceding verbs is Cain’s wife. But the difficulty of accounting for the present text is a serious objection, the motive suggested by Budde (123) being far-fetched and improbable.――The incongruity between this notice and verses ¹¹⁻¹⁶ has already been mentioned (page 100). Lenormant’s examples of the mythical connexion of city-building with fratricide (_Les Origines de l’histoire_², i. 141 ff.) are not to the point; the difficulty is not that the first city was founded by a murderer, but by a nomad. More relevant would be the instances of cities originating in hordes of outlaws, collected by Frazer, as parallels to the peopling of Rome (_Fort. Rev._ 1899, April, 650‒4). But the anomaly is wholly due to composition of sources: the Cain of the genealogy was neither a nomad nor a fratricide. It has been proposed (Holzinger, Gunkel) to remove ¹⁷ᵇ as an addition to the genealogy, on the ground that no intelligent writer would put city-building before cattle-rearing; but the Phœnician tradition is full of such anachronisms, and shows how little they influenced the reasoning of ancient genealogists.――The name ‎חֲנוֹךְ‎ occurs (besides 5¹⁸ ᶠᶠᐧ, 1 Chronicles 1³) as that of a Midianite tribe in 25⁴ (1 Chronicles 1³³), and of a Reubenite clan in 46⁹ (Exodus 6¹⁴, Numbers 26⁵, 1 Chronicles 5³). It is also said that חנך‎ is a Sabæan tribal name (Gesenius-Buhl¹² _s.v._),¹ which has some importance in view of the fact that קֵינָן‎ (5⁹ ᶠᶠᐧ) is the name of a Sabæan deity. As the name of a city, the word would suggest to the Hebrew mind the thought of ‘initiation’ (_v.i._). The city חנוך‎ cannot be identified. The older conjectures are given by Dillmann (page 99); Sayce (_Zeitschrift für Keilschriftsforschung_, ii. 404; _Hibbert Lectures_, 185) and Cheyne (_Encyclopædia Biblica_, 624; but see now _Traditions and Beliefs of Ancient Israel_, 106) connect it with _Unuk_, the ideographic name of the ancient Babylonian city of Erech.

¹ Omitted in 13th edition.

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=17.= On וידע‎, see on verse ¹.――The verb חָנַךְ‎ appears from Arabic _ḥanaka_ to be a denominative from _ḥanak_ (Hebrew חֵךְ‎), and means to rub the palate of a new-born child with chewed dates: hence tropically ‘to initiate’ (Lane, _s.v._; Wellhausen _Reste arabischen Heidentums_ 173). In Hebrew it means to ‘dedicate’ or ‘inaugurate’ a house, etc. (Deuteronomy 20⁵, 1 Kings 8⁶³: compare חֲנֻכָּה‎, Numbers 7¹¹, Nehemiah 12²⁷ etc.); and also to ‘teach’ (Proverbs 22⁶). See, further, on 5¹⁸.

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=18.= The next four generations are a blank so far as any advance in civilisation is concerned. The only question of general interest is the relation of the names to those of chapter 5.

On the first three names, see especially Lagarde, _Orientalia_, ii. 33‒38; Budde _Die biblische Urgeschichte_ 123‒9.――עִירָד‎] LXX Γαιδαδ (= עֵידָד‎), Peshiṭtå עִידָר‎ (the latter supported by Philo), corresponds to יֶרֶד‎ in 5¹⁵ ᶠᶠᐧ. The initial guttural, and the want of a Hebrew etymology, would seem to indicate עירד‎ as the older form which has been Hebraized in ירד‎; but the conclusion is not certain. If the root be connected with Arabic _‛arada_ (which is doubtful in view of LXX’s Γ), the idea might be either ‘fugitive’ (Dillmann al.), or ‘strength, hardness, courage’ (Budde). Sayce (_Zeitschrift für Keilschriftsforschung_, ii. 404) suggests an identification with the Chaldean city _Eridu_; Holzinger with עֲרָד‎ in the Negeb (Judges 1¹⁶ etc.).――The next two names are probably (but not certainly: see Gray, _Studies in Hebrew Proper Names_, 164 f.) compounds with אֵל‎. The first is given by Massoretic Text in two forms, מְחוּיָאֵל‎ and מְחִיָּ[י]אֵל‎. The variants of LXX are reducible to three types, Μαιηλ (מחייאל‎), Μαουιηλ (מחויאל‎), Μαλελεηλ (= מהללאל‎, 5¹³ ᶠᶠᐧ). Lagarde considers the last original, though the first is the best attested. Adopting this form, we may (with Budde) point the Hebrew מַחְיִי אֵל‎ or מְחַיִּי אֵל‎ = ‘God makes me live’: so virtually Philo ἀπὸ ζωῆς θεοῦ, and Jerome _ex vita Deus_ (cited by Lagarde). Both Massoretic forms undoubtedly imply a bad sense: ‘destroyed (or smitten) of God’ (though the form is absolutely un-Hebraic, see Driver _Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Samuel_ 14).――מְתוּשָׁאֵל‎ is now commonly explained by Assyrian _mutu-ša-ili_, ‘Man of God,’¹ though the relative ša presents a difficulty (Gray, _l.c._). The true LXX reading is Μαθουσαλα (= מְתוּשֶׁלַח‎, 5²¹ ᶠᶠᐧ); Μαθουσαηλ occurs as a correction in some MSS――לֶמֶךְ‎] again inexplicable from Hebrew or even Arabic. Sayce (_Hibbert Lectures_ 186) and Hommel connect it with _Lamga_, a Babylonian name of the moon-god, naturalised in South Arabia.²

¹ Lenormant _Les Origines de l’histoire_² i. 262 f., Dillmann, Budde, al. Cheyne _Encyclopædia Biblica_, 625. It does not appear that _mutu-ša-ili_ occurs as an _actual_ name.

² Hommel, _Die altisraelitische überlieferung in inschriftlicher beleuchtung_ 117 n.: “Lamga ist ein babylonischer Beiname des Sin; daraus machten die Sabäer, mit volksetymologischer Anlehnung an ihr Verbum lamaka (wahrsch. glänzen), einen Plural Almâku.”

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=18.= On accusative אֵת‎ with passive see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 116 _a_, _b_.――יָלַד‎ in the sense of ‘beget’ is a sure mark of the style of Yahwist (see Holzinger _Einleitung in den Hexateuch_ ‎ 99).――מְתוּ‎] archaic nominative case (Gesenius-Kautzsch § 90 _o_) of an old Semitic word (also Egyptian according to Erman) מֵת‎ = ‘man’ (male, husband, etc.): compare Gesenius-Buhl _s.v._

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=19. The two wives of Lamech.=――No judgment is passed on Lamech’s bigamy, and probably none was intended. The notice may be due simply to the fact that the names of the wives happened to be preserved in the song afterwards quoted.

Of the two female names by far the most attractive explanation is that of Ewald (_Jahrbücher der biblischen Wissenschaft_, vi. 17), that עָדָה‎ means Dawn (Arabic _ġadⁱⁿ_, but LXX has Ἀδα), and צִלָּה‎ (feminie of צֵל‎) Shadow,――a relic of some nature-myth (compare Lenormant _Les Origines de l’histoire_² 183 f.). Others (Holzinger) take them as actual proper names of inferior stocks incorporated in the tribe Lamech; pointing out that עדה‎ recurs in 36² ᶠᶠᐧ as a Canaanite clan amalgamated with Esau. This ethnographic theory, however, has very little foothold in the passage. For other explanations, see Dillmann page 100.

=20‒22. The sons of Lamech and their occupations.=――At this point the genealogy breaks up into three branches, introducing (as Ewald thinks) a second age of the world. But since it is nowhere continued, all we can say is that the three sons represent three permanent social divisions, and (we must suppose) three modes of life that had some special interest for the authors of the genealogy. On the significance of this division, see at the close.――=20.= _Yābāl_, son of ‛Adah, _became the father_ (_i.e._ originator: Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ רַב‎) _of tent- and cattle-dwellers_ (_v.i._); _i.e._ of nomadic shepherds. מִקְנֶה‎, however, is a wider term than צאן‎ (verse ²), including all kinds of cattle, and even camels and asses (Exodus 9³). The whole Bedouin life is thus assigned to Jabal as its progenitor.――=21.= _Yûbāl_, also a son of ‛Adah, is the father of _all who handle lyre and pipe_; the oldest and simplest musical instruments. These two occupations, representing the bright side of human existence, have ‛Adah (the Dawn?) as their mother; recalling the classical association of shepherds with music (see Lenormant i. 207).――=22.= Equally suggestive is the combination of _Tûbal-ḳáyin_, the smith, and _Na‛ămāh_ (‘pleasant’), as children of the dark Ẓillah; compare the union of Hephæstos and Aphrodite in Greek mythology (Dillmann al.).――The opening words of ᵃ{β} are corrupt. We should expect: _he became the father of every artificer in brass and iron_ (see footnote). The persistent idea that Tubal-cain was the inventor of weapons, _Bereshith Rabba_, Rashi, and most, which has led to a questionable interpretation of the Song, has no foundation. He is simply the metal-worker, an occupation regarded by primitive peoples as a species of black-art,¹ and by Semitic nomads held in contempt.

¹ See Andree, _Ethnographische Parallelen und Vergleiche_ (1878), 157.

On the names in these verses see the interesting discussion of Lenormant _Les Origines de l’histoire_² i. 192 ff.――The alliterations, _Yābāl_――_Yûbāl_――_Tûbal_, are a feature of legendary genealogies: compare Arabic Habîl and Ḳabîl, Shiddîd and Shaddâd, Mâlik and Milkân, etc. (Lenormant. 192). יבל‎ (LXX Ἰωβελ -ηλ) and יובל‎ (Ἰουβαλ) both suggest יֹבֵל‎ (Hebrew and Phœnician), which means primarily ‘ram,’ then ‘ram’s horn’ as a musical instrument (Exodus 19¹³), and finally ‘joyous music’ (in the designation of the year of Jubilee). On a supposed connexion of יבל‎ with הֶבֶל‎ in the sense of ‘herdsman,’ see above, page 103.――תּוּבַל‎ is a Japhetic people famous in antiquity for metal-working (see on 10²); and it is generally held that their _heros eponymus_ supplies the name of the founder of metallurgy here; but the equation is doubtful. A still more precarious combination with a word for smith (_tumā́l_, _dubalanza_, etc.) in Somali and other East African dialects, has been propounded by Merker (_Die Masai_, 306). The compound תובל קין‎ (written in Oriental MSS as one word) may mean either ‘Tubal [the] smith’ (in which case קין‎ [we should expect הקין‎] is probably a gloss), or ‘Tubal of (the family of) Cain.’¹ LXX has simply Θοβελ; but see the footnote. Tuch and others adduce the analogy of the Τελχῖνες, the first workers in iron and brass, and the makers of Saturn’s scythe (Strabo, XIV. ii. 7); and the pair of brothers who, in the Phœnician legend, were σιδήρου εὑρεταὶ καὶ τῆς τούτου ἐργασίας.――נַֽעֲמָה‎ (LXX Νοεμα) seems to have been a mythological personage of some importance. A goddess of that name is known to have been worshipped by the Phœnicians.² In Jewish tradition she figures as the wife of Noah (_Bereshith Rabba_), as a demon, and also as a sort of St. Cecilia, a patroness of _vocal_ music (Targumᴶᵒⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ: compare Lagarde _Onomastica Sacra_, 180, 56: Νοεμὶν ψάλλουσα φωνῇ οὐκ ἐν ὀργάνῳ [Nestle, _Marginalien und Materialien_, 10]).

¹ So Ewald, who thinks the קין‎ belongs to each of the three names.

² Lenormant 200 f.; Tiele, _Geschichte der Religion im Altertum_ i. 265; Baethgen, _Beiträge zur Geschichte Cölestins_ 150.

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‎ =20.= ישֵׁב אֹהֶל וּמִקְנֶה‎] LXX οἰκούντων ἐν σκηναῖς κτηνοτρόφων, perhaps reading אהלי מקנה‎ as in 2 Chronicles 14¹⁵ (so Ball). Vulgate (_atque pastorum_) takes מַקְנֶה‎ as a participle; Peshiṭtå inserts (‡ Syriac word), and Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ ומרי‎, before ‘cattle’; similarly Kuenen proposed וקנה מקנה‎. The zeugma is somewhat hard, but is retained by most commentaries for the sake of conformity with verse ²¹ ᶠᐧ; Gesenius-Kautzsch § 117 _bb_, 118 _g_.――=21.= ‎ וְשֵׁם אָחִיו‎] compare 10²⁵ (Yahwist) (1 Chronicles 7¹⁶).――אבי וגו׳‎] LXX καταδείξας ψαλτήριον καὶ κιθάραν.――כִּנּוֹר וְעוּגָב‎] Vulgate _cithara et organo_; Peshiṭtå (‡ Syriac word); Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ כנורא ואבובא‎ ‎ (∥ נבלא‎). See Benzinger, _Hebräische Archäologie_², 237‒246; Wellhausen _Psalms_ (_Polychrome Bible_), 219 f., 222 f.; Riehm, _Handwörterbuch des biblischen Altertums_ 1043 ff. The כנור‎ is certainly a stringed instrument, played with the hand (1 Samuel 16²³ etc.), probably the lyre (Greek κινύρα). The עוגב‎ (associated with the כנור‎ in Job 21¹² 30³¹: elsewhere only Psalms 150⁴) is some kind of wind instrument (Vulgate, Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ),――a flute or reed-pipe, perhaps the Pan’s pipe (σύριγξ).――=22.= גם הוא‎] _in genealogies_ (as here, 4²⁶ 10²¹ 19³⁸ 22²⁰ᐧ ²⁴ [Judges 8³¹]) is characteristic of Yahwist.――תובל קין‎] LXX Θοβελ· καὶ ἦν. Other versions have the compound name, and on the whole it is probable that καὶ ἦν is a corruption of Καιν, although the next clause has Θοβελ alone.――לֹטֵשׁ וגו׳‎] LXX καὶ ἦν σφυροκόπος, χαλκεὺς χαλκοῦ καὶ σιδήρου, Vulgate _qui fuit malleator et faber in cuncta opera aer. et f_; Peshiṭtå (‡ Syriac phrase); Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ ‎ רבהון דכל ידעי עיבידת נ׳ וב׳‎. To get any kind of sense from Massoretic Text, it is necessary either (a) to take לֹטֵשּׁ‎ (‘sharpener’ or ‘hammerer’) in the sense of ‘instructor’; or (b) take חֹרֵשׁ‎ as neuter (‘a hammerer of every cutting implement of,’ etc.); or (c) adopt the quaint construction (mentioned by Budde 138): ‘a hammerer of all (sorts of things),――a (successful) artificer in bronze,’ etc.! All these are unsatisfactory; and neither the omission of כל‎ with LXX (Dillmann), nor the insertion of אבי‎ before it yields a tolerable text. Budde’s emendation (139 ff.) ויהי למך חֹרֵשׁ וגו׳‎ [for ‎ קין‎] is much too drastic, and stands or falls with his utterly improbable theory that Lamech and not Tubal-cain was originally designated as the inventor of weapons. The error must lie in the words קין לטש‎, for which we should expect, הוא היה אבי‎ (Olshausen, Ball). The difficulty is to account for the present text: it is easy to say that לטש‎ and קין‎ are glosses, but there is nothing in the verse to require a gloss, and neither of these words would naturally have been used by a Hebrew writer for that purpose.――בַּֽרְזָל‎] The Semitic words for ‘iron’ (Assyrian _parzillu_, Aramaic פַּרְזָל‎ (‡ Syriac word), Arabic _farzil_) have no Semitic etymology, and are probably borrowed from a foreign tongue. On the antiquity of iron in West Asia, see Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_ i. 616 ff.

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=23, 24. The song of Lamech.=――A complete poem in three distichs, breathing the fierce implacable spirit of revenge that forms the chief part of the Bedouin’s code of honour. It is almost universally assumed (since Herder) that it commemorates the invention of weapons by Tubal-cain, and is accordingly spoken of as Lamech’s ‘Sword Song.’ But the contents of the song furnish no hint of such an occasion (Wellhausen); and the position in which it stands makes its connexion with the genealogy dubious. On that point see, further, below. It is necessary to study it independently, as a part of the ancient legend of Lamech which may have supplied some of the material that has been worked into the genealogy.――The verses may be rendered:

²³Adah and Zillah, hear my voice! Wives of Lamech, attend to my word! For I kill a man for a wound to me, And a boy for a scar. ²⁴For Cain takes vengeance seven times, But Lamech seventy times and seven!

=23a.= Holzinger raises the question whether the words ‘Adah and Zillah’ belong to the song or the prose introduction; and decides (with Vulgate) for the latter view, on the ground that in the remaining verses the second member is shorter than the first (which is not the case). The exordium of the song might then read:

Hear my voice, ye women of Lamech! Attend to my word!――

the address being not to the wives of an individual chieftain, but to the females of the tribe collectively. It appears to me that the alteration destroys the balance of clauses, and mars the metrical effect: besides, strict syntax would require the repetition of the ‎לְ‎‎.――=23b.= The meaning is that (the tribe?) Lamech habitually avenges the slightest personal injury by the death of man or child of the tribe to which the assailant belongs. According to the principle of the blood-feud, אִישׁ‎ and יֶלֶד‎ (י׳‎ is not a fighting ‘youth,’――a sense it rarely bears: 1 Kings 12⁸ ᶠᶠᐧ, Daniel 1⁴ ᶠᶠᐧ,――but an innocent man-child [Budde, Holzinger]) are not the actual perpetrators of the outrage, but any members of the same clan. The parallelism therefore is not to be taken literally, as if Lamech selected a victim proportionate to the hurt he had received.――=24.= Cain is mentioned as a tribe noted for the fierceness of its vendetta (7 times); but the vengeance of Lamech knows no limit (70 and 7 times).

The Song has two points of connexion with the genealogy: the names of the two wives, and the allusion to Cain. The first would disappear if Holzinger’s division of ²³ᵃ were accepted; but since the ordinary view seems preferable, the coincidence in the names goes to show that the song was known to the authors of the genealogy and utilised in its construction. With regard to the second, Gunkel rightly observes that glorying over an _ancestor_ is utterly opposed to the spirit of antiquity; the Cain referred to must be a rival contemporary tribe, whose grim vengeance was proverbial. The comparison, therefore, tells decidedly against the unity of the passage, and perhaps points (as Stade thinks) to a connection between the song and the legendary cycle from which the Cain story of ¹³ ᶠᶠᐧ emanated.――The temper of the song is not the primitive ferocity of “a savage of the stone-age dancing over the corpse of his victim, brandishing his flint tomahawk,” etc. (Lenormant); its real character was first divined by Wellhausen, who, after pointing out the baselessness of the notion that it has to do with the invention of weapons, describes it as “eine gar keiner besonderen Veranlassung bedürftige Prahlerei eines Stammes (Stammvaters) gegen den anderen. Und wie die Araber sich besonders gern ihren Weibern gegenüber als grosse Eisenfresser rühmen, so macht es hier auch Lamech” (_Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments_² 305). On this view the question whether it be a song of triumph or of menace does not arise; as expressing the permanent temper and habitual practice of a tribe, it refers alike to the past and the future. The sense of the passage was strangely misconceived by some early Fathers (perhaps by LXX, Vulgate), who regarded it as an utterance of remorse for an isolated murder committed by Lamech. The rendering of Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ is based on the idea (maintained by Kalisch) that Lamech’s purpose was to represent his homicide as justifiable and himself as guiltless: ‘I have not slain a man on whose account I bear guilt, nor wounded a youth for whose sake my seed shall be cut off. When 7 generations were suspended for Cain, shall there not be for Lamech his son 70 and 7?’ Hence arose the fantastic Jewish legend that the persons killed by Lamech were his ancestor Cain and his own son Tubal-cain (Rashi al.; compare Jerome _Epistula Hieronymi ad Damasum papam_, 125).¹――The metrical structure of the poem is investigated by Sievers in _Metrische Studien_, i. 404 f., and ii. 12 f., 247 f. According to the earlier and more successful analysis, the song consists of a double tetrameter, followed by two double trimeters. Sievers’ later view is vitiated by an attempt to fit the poem into the supposed metrical scheme of the genealogy, and necessitates the excision of עדה וצלה‎ as a gloss.

¹ See, further, Lenormant _Les Origines de l’histoire_ i. 186 ff.

Apart from verse ²³ ᶠᐧ, the most remarkable feature of the genealogy is the division of classes represented by the three sons of Lamech. It is difficult to understand the prominence given to this classification of mankind into herdsmen, musicians, and smiths, or to imagine a point of view from which it would appear the natural climax of human development. Several recent scholars have sought a clue in the social conditions of the Arabian desert, where the three occupations may be said to cover the whole area of ordinary life. Jabal, the first-born son, stands for the full-blooded Bedouin with their flocks and herds,¹――the _élite_ of all nomadic-living men, and the ‘flower of human culture’ (Budde 146). The two younger sons symbolise the two avocations to which the pure nomad will not condescend, but which are yet indispensable to his existence or enjoyment――smith-work and music (Stade 232). The obvious inference is that the genealogy originated among a nomadic people, presumably the Hebrews before the settlement in Canaan (Budde); though Holzinger considers that it embodies a specifically Ḳenite tradition in which the eponymous hero Cain appears as the ancestor of the race (so Gordon, _The Early Traditions of Genesis_, 188 ff.).――Plausible as this theory is at first sight, it is burdened with many improbabilities. If the early Semitic nomads traced their ancestry to (peasants and) city-dwellers, they must have had very different ideas from their successors the Bedouin of the present day.² Moreover, the circumstances of the Arabian peninsula present a very incomplete parallel to the classes of verses ²⁰⁻²². Though the smiths form a distinct caste, there is no evidence that a caste of musicians ever existed among the Arabs; and the Bedouin contempt for professional musicians is altogether foreign to the sense of the verses, which certainly imply no disparaging estimate of Jubal’s art. And once more, as Stade himself insists, the outlook of the genealogy is world-wide. Jabal is the prototype of all nomadic herdsmen everywhere, Jubal of all musicians, and Tubal (the Tibareni?) of all metallurgists.――It is much more probable that the genealogy is projected from the standpoint of a settled, civilised, and mainly agricultural community. If (with Budde) we include verses ² and ¹⁷ᵇ, and regard it as a record of human progress, the order of development is natural: husbandmen, city-dwellers, wanderers [?] (shepherds, musicians, and smiths). The three sons of Lamech represent not the highest stage of social evolution, but three picturesque modes of life, which strike the peasant as interesting and ornamental, but by no means essential to the framework of society.――This conclusion is on the whole confirmed by the striking family likeness between the Cainite genealogy and the legendary Phœnician history preserved by Eusebius from Philo Byblius, and said to be based on an ancient native work by Sanchuniathon. Philo’s confused and often inconsistent account is naturally much richer in mythical detail than the Hebrew tradition; but the general idea is the same: in each case we have a genealogical list of the legendary heroes to whom the discovery of the various arts and occupations is attributed. Whether the biblical or the Phœnician tradition is the more original may be doubtful; in any case “it is difficult,” as Driver says, “not to think that the Hebrew and Phœnician representations spring from a common Canaanite cycle of tradition, which in its turn may have derived at least some of its elements from Babylonia” (_The Book of Genesis with Introduction and Notes_ page 74).³

¹ But against this view, see page 112 above, and Meyer, _Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstämme_, 303 ff.

² Holzinger evades this objection by deleting verse ¹⁷ᵇ, and reducing the genealogy to a bare list of names; but why should the Ḳenites have interposed a whole series of generations between their eponymous ancestor and the origin of their own nomadic life?

³ Compare Eusebius _Præparatio Evangelica_ i. 10 (edited by Heinichen, page 39 ff.). The Greek text is printed in Müller’s _Fragmenta Historicorum Græcorum_ iii. 566 f. French translations are given by Lenormant _Les Origines de l’histoire_ i. 536 ff., and Lagrange, _Études sur les Religions Semitiques_¹, 362 ff. (the latter with a copious commentary and critical introduction).――The passage in Eusebius is much too long to be quoted in full, but the following extracts will give some idea of its contents and its points of similarity with Genesis: Of the two protoplasts Αἰών and Πρωτόγονος, it is recorded εὑρεῖν δὲ τὸν Αἰῶνα τὴν ἀπὸ τῶν δένδρων τροφήν.――The second pair, Γένος and Γενεά, dwelt in Phœnicia, and inaugurated the worship of the sun.――Of the race of Αἰών and Πρωτόγονος were born three mortal children, Φῶς, Πῦρ, and Φλόξ: οὗτοι ἐκ παρατριβῆς ξύλων εὗρον πῦρ, καὶ τὴν χρῆσιν ἐδίδαξαν.――Then followed a race of giants, of whom was born [Σα]μημροῦμος ‎ (= שׁמי מרום‎) ὁ καὶ Ὑ ψουράνιος, who founded Tyre. Of him we read: καλύβας τε ἐπινοῆσαι ἀπὸ καλάμων, καὶ θρύων, καὶ παπύρων· στασιάσαι δὲ πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφὸν Οὔσωον, ὃς σκέπην τῷ σώματι πρῶτος ἐκ δερμάτων ὧν ἴσχυσε συλλαβεῖν θηρίων εὗρε ... Δένδρου δὲ λαβόμενον τὸν Οὔσωον καὶ ἀποκλαδεύσαντα, πρῶτον τολμῆσαι εἰς θάλασσαν ἐμβῆναι· ἀνιερῶσαι δὲ δύο στήλας ... αἷμά τε σπένδειν αὐταῖς ἐξ ὧν ἤγρευε θηρίων.――The further history of invention names (a) Ἀγρεύς and Ἁλιεύς, τοὺς ἁλείας καὶ ἄγρας εὑρετάς; (b) ... δύο ἀδελφοὺς σιδήρου εὑρετὰς, καὶ τῆς τούτου ἐργασίας· ὧν θάτερον τὸν Χρυσὼρ λόγους ἀσκῆσαι, καὶ ἐπῳδὰς καὶ μαντείας; (c) Τεχνίτης and Γήϊνος Αὐτόχθων: οὗτοι ἐπενόησαν τῷ πηλῷ τῆς πλίνθου συμμιγνύειν φορυτὸν, καὶ τῷ ἡλίῳ αὐτὰς τερσαίνειν, ἀλλὰ καὶ στέγας ἐξεῦρον; (d) Ἀγρός and Ἀγρούηρος (or Ἀγρότης): ἐπενόησαν δὲ οὗτοι αὐλὰς προστιθέναι τοῖς οἴκοις καὶ περιβόλαια καὶ σπήλαια· ἐκ τούτων ἀγρόται καὶ κυνηγοί; (e) Ἄμυνος and Μάγος: οἳ κατέδειξαν κῶμας καὶ ποίμνας; (f) Μισώρ (מישר‎) and Συδύκ (צדק‎): οὗτοι τὴν τοῦ ἁλὸς χρῆσιν εὗρον. (g) Of Μισώρ was born Τάαυτ, ὃς εὗρε τὴν τῶν πρώτων στοιχείων γραφήν; and (h) of Συδύκ, the Διόσκουροι: οὗτοι, φησὶ, πρῶτοι πλοῖον εὗρον.――After them came others οἳ καὶ βοτάνας εὗρον, καὶ τὴν τῶν δακετῶν ἴασιν, καὶ ἐπῳδάς.――It is impossible to doubt that some traditional elements have been preserved in this extraordinary medley of euhemerism and archæology, however unfavourably it may contrast with the simplicity of the biblical record.

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=23.= The Introduction of the song is imitated in Isaiah 28³² 32⁹; compare also Deuteronomy 32¹. The words הֶֽאֱזין‎ and ‎ אִמְרָה‎ are almost exclusively poetical.――On the form שְׁמַעַן‎, see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 46 _f_.――הָרַגְתִּי‎ is perfect of experience (Davidson § 40 (_c_); Driver _A Treatise on the use of the Tenses in Hebrew_ § 12), rather than of single completed action, or of certainty (Abraham Ibn Ezra, Delitzsch, Budde, al.).――כִּי‎ is not recitative, but gives the reason for the call to attention.――לְפִצְעִי‎, לְחַבּוּרָתִי‎] On this use of לְ‎ see Brown-Driver-Briggs, _s.v._ 5, f.: LXX εἰς τραῦμα [μώλωπα] ἐμοί; Vulgate _in vulnus [livorem] meum._――=24.= כִּי‎] again introducing the reason, which, however, “lies not in the words immediately after כי‎, but in the second part of the sentence” (Brown-Driver-Briggs, _s.v._ 3, c): compare Deuteronomy 18¹⁴, Jeremiah 30¹¹.――יֻקּם‎ on accusative, see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 29 _g_. The Niphal יִקֹּם‎ would yield a better sense: ‘avenges himself’ (Budde, Dillmann, Holzinger).

IV. 25, 26. _Fragmentary Sethite Genealogy._

The verses are the beginning of a Yahwistic genealogy (see above, page 99), of which another fragment has fortunately been preserved in 5²⁹ (Noah). Since it is thus seen to have contained the three names (Seth, Enos, Noah) peculiar to the genealogy of Priestly-Code, it may be assumed that the two lists were in substantial agreement, each consisting of ten generations. That that of Yahwist was not a dry list of names and numbers appears, however, from every item of it that has survived. The preservation of 4²⁵ ᶠᐧ is no doubt due to the important notice of the introduction of Yahwe-worship (²⁶ᵇ), the redactor having judged it more expedient in this instance to retain Yahwist’s statement intact. The circumstance shows on how slight a matter far-reaching critical speculations may hang. But for this apparently arbitrary decision of the redactor, the existence of a Sethite genealogy in Yahwist would hardly have been suspected; and the whole analysis of the Yahwist document into its component strata might have run a different course.

=25.= _And Adam knew, etc._] see on verse ¹. That יָדַע‎ denotes properly the _initiation_ of the conjugal relation (Budde) is very doubtful: see 38²⁶, 1 Samuel 1¹⁹.――_And she called_] see again on verse ¹.――_God has appointed me seed_] (the remainder of the verse is probably an interpolation). Compare 3¹⁵. Eve’s use of אלהים‎ is not ‘surprising’ (Dillmann); it only proves that the section is not from the same source as verse ¹. On the other hand, it harmonises with the fact that in 3¹ ᶠᶠᐧ אלהים‎ is used in dialogue. It is at least a plausible inference that both passages come from one narrator, who systematically avoided the name יהוה‎ up to 4²⁶ (see page 100).

The verse in its present form undoubtedly presupposes a knowledge of the Cain and Abel narrative of 4¹⁻¹⁶; but it is doubtful if the allusions to the two older brothers can be accepted as original (see Budde 154‒159). Some of Budde’s arguments are strained; but it is important to observe that the word עוד‎ is wanting in LXX, and that the addition of אחר תחת הבל‎ destroys the sense of the preceding utterance, the idea of _substitution_ being quite foreign to the connotation of the verb שׁית‎. The following clause כי הרגו קין‎ reads awkwardly in the mouth of Eve (who would naturally have said אשר ה׳ ק׳‎), and is entirely superfluous on the part of the narrator. The excision of these suspicious elements leaves a sentence complete in itself, and exactly corresponding in form to the naming of Cain in verse ¹: שת לי אלהים זרע‎, ‘God has appointed me seed’ (_i.e._ posterity). There is an obvious reference to 3¹⁵, where both the significant words שׁית‎ and זרע‎ occur. But this explanation really implies that Seth was the first-born son (according to this writer), and is unintelligible of one who was regarded as a substitute for another. How completely the mind of the glossator is preoccupied by the thought of substitution is further shown by the fact that he does not indicate in what sense Cain has ceased to be the ‘seed’ of Eve.――As a Hebrew word (with equivalents in Phœnician, Arabic, Syrian, Jewish-Aramaic: compare Nöldeke _Mandäische Grammatik_ page 98) שֵׁת‎ would mean ‘foundation’ (not _Setzling_, still less _Ersatz_); but its real etymology is, of course, unknown. Hommel’s attempt (_Die altorientalischen Denkmäler und das Alte Testament_, page 26 ff.) to establish a connexion with the second name in the list of Berossus (below, page 137) involves too many doubtful equations, and even if successful would throw no light on the name. In Numbers 24¹⁷ שֵׁת‎ appears to be a synonym for Moab; but the text is doubtful (Meyer, _Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstämme_, 219). The late Gnostic identification of Seth with the Messiah may be based on the Messianic interpretation of 3¹⁵, and does not necessarily imply a Babylonian parallel.

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‎ =25.= אָדָם‎] here for the first time unambiguously a proper name. There is no reason to suspect the text: the transition from the generic to the individual sense is made by Priestly-Code only in 5¹⁻³, and is just as likely to have been made by Yahwist.――LXX reads Εὕαν in place of עוֹד‎; Peshiṭtå has both words.――Before ‎ ותלד‎ LXX, Peshiṭtå insert ‎וַתַּהַר‎.――ותקרא‎] _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ ‎ויקרא‎.――כִּי‎] LXX λέγουσα; so Vulgate and even Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ.

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=26.= On the name אֱנוֹשׁ‎ (= _Man_, and therefore in all probability the _first_ member of an older genealogy), see below.――_Then men began to call, etc._] Better (with LXX, etc., _v.i._): _He was the first to call on the name of Yahwe_ (compare 9²⁰ 10⁸), _i.e._ he was the founder of the worship of Yahwe; compare 12⁸ 13⁴ 21³³ 26²⁵ (all Yahwist). What historic reminiscence (if any) lies behind this remarkable statement we cannot conjecture; but its significance is not correctly expressed when it is limited to the institution of formal public worship on the part of a religious community (Delitzsch); and the idea that it is connected with a growing sense of the distinction between the human and the divine (Ewald, Delitzsch, al.) is a baseless fancy. It means that ’Enôš was the first to invoke the Deity under this name; and it is interesting chiefly as a reflexion, emanating from the school of Yahwist, on the origin of the specifically Israelite name of God. The conception is more ingenuous than that of Elohist (Exodus 3¹³⁻¹⁵) or Priestly-Code (6³), who base the name on express revelation, and connect it with the foundation of the Hebrew nationality.

The expression קרא בשם י׳‎ (literally ‘call by [means of] the name of Yahwe’) denotes the essential act in worship, the invocation (or rather _evocation_) of the Deity by the solemn utterance of His name. It rests on the widespread primitive idea that a real bond exists between the person and his name, such that the pronunciation of the latter exerts a mystic influence on the former.¹ The best illustration is 1 Kings 18²⁴ ᶠᶠᐧ, where the test proposed by Elijah is _which name_――Baal or Yahwe――will evoke a manifestation of divine energy.――The cosmopolitan diffusion of the name יהוה‎, from the Babylonian or Egyptian pantheon, though often asserted,² and in itself not incredible, has not been proved. The association with the name of Enoš might be explained by the supposition that the old genealogy of which Enoš was the first link had been preserved in some ancient centre of Yahwe-worship (Sinai? or Kadesh?).

¹ See Giesebrecht, _Die alttestamentliche Schätzung des Gottesnamens und ihre religiongeschichtliche Grundlage_, especially page 25 ff., 98 ff.

² W. M. Müller, _Asien und Europa nach altägyptischen Denkmälern_, pages 239, 312; Delitzsch _Babel und Bibel_ [translated by M‘Cormack] page 61 f.; Bezold, _Die Babylonisch-Assyrischen Keilinschriften Und Ihre Bedeutung Für Das Alte Testament_ etc. page 31 ff.; Oppert, _Zeitschrift für Assyriologie_, xvii. 291 ff.; Daiches, _ib._ xxii. (1908), 125 ff.; Algyogyi-Hirsch, _Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft_, xxiii. 355 ff.; Stade _Biblische Theologie des Alten Testaments_ i. 29; Meyer _Geschichte des Alterthums_², i. (2te Hälfte), 545 f. Compare, further, Rogers, _Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_ (1908), page 89 ff.

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‎ =26.= גם הוּא‎] (Gesenius-Kautzsch § 135 _h_) LXX omitted.――אֱנוֹשׁ‎] like אדם‎, properly a collective: Enôš is a personification of mankind. The word is rare and mostly poetic in Hebrew (especially Job, Psalms); but is common in other Semitic dialects (Arabic, Aramaic, Nabatean, Palmyren, Sabaean, Assyrian). Nestle’s opinion (_Marginalien und Materialien_, 6 f.), that it is in Hebrew an artificial formation from אֲנָשִׁים‎, and that the genealogy is consequently late, has no sort of probability; the only ‘artificiality’ in Hebrew is the occasional individual use. There is a presumption, however, that the genealogy originated among a people to whom אנוש‎ or its equivalent was the ordinary name for mankind (Aramæan or Arabian).――אז הוחל‎] so Aquila, Symmachus; _The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch_ אז החל‎; LXX οὗτος ἤλπισεν (from √ יחל‎) implies either זה החל‎ or הוא ה׳‎; so Vulgate (_iste coepit_) and _Jubilees_ iv. 12; Peshiṭtå has (‡ Syriac phrase). The true text is that read by LXX, etc.; and if the alteration of Massoretic Text was intentional (which is possible), we may safely restore הוּא הֵחֵל‎ after 10⁸. The Jewish exegesis takes הוּחַל‎ in the sense ‘was profaned,’ and finds in the verse a notice of the introduction of idolatry (Jerome _Quæstiones sive Traditiones hebraicæ in Genesim_, Targumᴼⁿᵏᵉˡᵒˢ⁻ᴶᵒⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ, Rashi, al.),――although the construction is absolutely ungrammatical (Abraham Ibn Ezra).――After יהוה‎ LXX adds carelessly τοῦ θεοῦ.