(BA) Genesis 3:8

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1 August 2022 Navigate 'up to the Genesis index: index-genesis.

And they heard the sound of Yahweh God walking about in the garden in the ruaḥ ha-yom, and the person and his wife hid themselves from the face of Yahweh God among the trees of the garden.

sound

Some translations here read voice for qol. That is, God is talking. And the word qol does sometimes refer to voices. Others use sound, and indeed the word qol does sometimes refer to sounds other than voices.

cool of the day

Literally, one might translate this Hebrew phrase as wind of the day. Gesenius, in his Lexicon (see his entry nšp) takes this as a phrase for the evening twilight, "when a colder gale blows."

Various translations, however, use a more general phrase like "cool of the day." Some, however, do more or less specifically make it clear that they take the phrase as referring to the evening.

No other biblical passage uses this phrase.

a storm theophany?

Here is a basically traditional interpretation of Genesis 3:8 --

And they heard the sound of Yahweh God walking about in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God among the trees of the garden.

Jeffrey Niehaus suggested in 1994 another interpretation. It is known that qol ("sound") is used in places as a word for thunder, and hthlk, ("walking about", traditionally) is used elsewhere to describe the back-and-forth motion of lightning flashing. Jeffrey Niehaus proposed that ywm ("day") had a secondary sense -- the argument is based on Akkadian parallels -- of "storm." And "cool" is a paraphrase of the Hebrew ruaḥ 'wind'. Thus we get something along these lines, describing Yahweh appearing in a storm-theophany:

And they heard the thunder of Yahweh God flashing through the garden in the wind of the storm. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God among the trees of the garden.