13 August 2022 draft-bible
2. his brother. As the Hebrew reads.
2. sheep. Hebrew ṣʾon, a term which can encompass both sheep and goats. I will probably continue to translate this term as ‘sheep’ in the places where the ASV and WEB do so. See the entry SHEEP in the appendix “Recurring Words”.
3. in the course of time. Literally, ‘at the end of days’. I think the WEB, in its urge to streamline the WEB, fumbles the expression a bit. ‘As time passed’, if taken literally, suggests that Cain bringing an offering was some kind of drawn-out process. The somewhat dated ‘And in process’ means precisely what ‘And in the course’ means today; while ‘it came to pass’ is simply ‘it happened’. So this revision sticks closely to the ASV here. Another interpretation is that adopted in the NET, that “At the designated time, Cain brought …”.
4. he also. Hebrew gam hu.
4. firstborn is simply a more up to date equivalent of firstling.
4. looked favorably. On the meaning of the word, see DCH, שעה.
5. expression. Hebrew panim, literally, face.
5. darkened. Literally, fallen. But ‘his expression fell’ is abnormal English. Darkened in English, like fell in Hebrew, expresses the negative change of the facial expression metaphorically.
6. angry … expression … darkened. As in 5.
8. And Cain said. Hebrew wayyomer qayin. The verb is ordinarily used like the English verb to say, in that its use implies that what is said is about to be specified. And so we read “And Cain said to Abel his brother”. But the Masoretic Text does not contain what Cain said to his brother. To smooth over this oddity, some translations go the route of the ASV, reading something like, “And Cain told Abel his brother”, or (KJV) “And Cain talked with Abel his brother”. But there is no need to smooth out the mistake in the Masoretic Text. The combined testimony of the Samaritan Pentateuch, Septuagint, Syriac, Vetus Latina, Vulgate, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan point to an original text either identical or very close to what the WEB has (see BHK [1913], BHS__5).
8. And it came to pass. Hebrew, wayᵉhi, a discourse marker that can be translated all sorts of ways in English. A very literal translation would be, ‘And it was’, which is sometimes suitable. I will not note every time I avoid an ‘it came to pass’, and instead this will be registered under IT CAME TO PASS in the appendix “Recurring Words’.
8. killed. A simple update of the archaic slew. See the entry SLAY in the appendix “Recurring Words”.
9. my brother’s keeper. Hebrew šomer aḥi. Time and biblical familiarity are working against the phrase brother’s keeper, at this point. It will barely register as meaningful in the reader’s mind, unless one has heard it in a religious context, and then ‘brother’s keeper’ likely sounds like something good and decent and dignified, some kind of expression of man’s duty to his fellow man. Cain, however, is being flippant. He is asking, “What am I, his babysitter?” The whole force of his response rests on the reader knowing that one grown man is not, in fact, the keeper of another grown man. The answer also may remind the reader that Cain is, in fact, Abel’s older brother, and would have been his keeper most likely at some point.
10. And he said. Hebrew, wayyomer. The subject is not specified, though of course Yahweh is the speaker.
11. calls out. To read “cries out” might not be a mistake, but reading simply “cries” could mislead the reader into thinking here we have a Hebrew verb for weeping. Instead, ṣaʿaq is a more general term, more likely to be used of someone calling out for help or justice than of someone weeping.
11. cursed from the ground. There may be a certain awkwardness to this phrase in English. A paraphrase that expands a bit might say, “you are cursed and banished from the ground”, as the New Living Translation does. The Christian Standard Bible even introduces the word ‘alienated’ into the translation, and this fits well with the context – Cain’s curse is to be alienated from the arable ground that he has been farming, and he is now doomed to a rootless existence, as if due to the ground itself being offended by the innocent blood poured upon it. This is by no means some over-imaginative reading of this story – the idea that blood leaves moral effects on the land it comes in contact with, and that this pollution affects its residents, is a concept that appears many times in the Hebrew Bible. Compare, for example, Leviticus 18:28, Numbers 35:33-34, Deuteronomy 19:7-13 and 21:1-9, Isaiah 26:21, Ezekiel 24:1-14,
It seems to me that replacing from with because rather flattens the whole metaphorical thing the story does here.
12. no longer. An updated version of not henceforth. I am following the word order of the Hebrew pretty closely in this verse.
14. today. Hebrew ha-yom, a regular expression for ‘today’.
14. face … face. The second use of ‘face’ is pulled up in front of the words ‘I shall be hidden’. The affect is to emphasize the repetition of ‘face’ – Cain is being alienated from two faces: the face of the ground and the face of God. While it is true that the ‘face’ of the ground is, strictly speaking, it’s surface, the WEB obscures the wordplay in reading the first ‘face’ as ‘surface’ and then in not passing the emphatic word order into the English translation.
15. so that … not. This is a more up-to-date equivalent of lest. Not every such substitution will be noted; see the entry for LEST in the appendix “Recurring Words”.
16. left. Hebrew yṣʿ , which really could be either “went out from” or “left” in this scenario. But the WEB better matches the terseness of the Hebrew.
16. dwelt. A slightly more literal translation of the Hebrew yšb. While it would not be strictly wrong to translate this verb as ‘live’, as the WEB does here, compare verse 20, where the WEB translates the same verb with “dwell”.
16. east of Eden. The WEB’s wording, like the Hebrew, is briefer.
17. bore. Hebrew watteled. “Bore” is briefer.
17. named. Literally, called the name of.
18. And to Enoch, Irad was born. Following the word order of the Hebrew.
19. the one. So it literally reads in Hebrew.
19. the second. Hebrew ha-šeni.
20. he. Hebrew hu.
20. those who. A less archaic equivalent for the ASV’s “such as”.
21. livestock. Hebrew miqne, for which “cattle” could be misleading if the reader thinks specifically of bovines.
21. he. As in 20.
21. who. A less archaic equivalent for the ASV’s “such”.
22. gave birth to. The sentence structure is a bit complex in this verse, so here I prefer the WEB’s gave birth to over the ASV’s bare, if only for the sake of removing one possible source of confusion from the sentence.
22. Tubal Cain’s sister. The ASV reads the sister of Tubal Cain. Hebrew makes no distinction between what we would in English express as “the X of Y” and “Y’s X”. I will not note every time this issue comes up, but this issue will be filed under Possessive Constructions in the appendix “Recurring Issues”.
23. a young man for bruising me. Hebrew, ‘and a young man for bruising me’. But the Hebrew construction is not pointing to two different acts of killing – the line ‘a young man for bruising me’ is a poetic restatement of ‘I have slain a man for wounding me’. And so in English we must leave out the ‘and’ here.
24. sevenfold. While WEB might be moving toward a more contemporary-sounding English with “seven times”, this introduces an ambiguity. It could be read as speaking of vengeance on seven occasions. But the real point isn’t that the vengeance will happen seven times; it is that Cain will be avenged seven times as severely as he is attacked.
25. bore. As in verse 17.
25. named. Literally, called his name.
25. For God. Curiously, the quote from Eve is not prefaced by any words like, “And Eve said”.
26. named. As in 25.
27. At that time. Hebrew ʾaz. It’s a less common word than the English ‘Then’. In Genesis in Hebrew, ʾaz appears just six times. On the other hand, it appears in the WEB English translation of Genesis nearly seventy times. In English, the word Then is used almost as filler, just to routinely move the story along from one thing to the next. In Hebrew, ʾaz is used a bit more deliberately.
This page is released under the CC0 1.0 license.