(BA) Genesis 4:22

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

And Zillah also gave birth, to Tubal Cain, a lotesh of every horesh of bronze and iron.

The participle lotesh occurs only here, but it is of the verb latash, which can be seen from other examples to mean "sharpen", or more specifically "to make sharp by hammering". It's a metal-working sort of term. So Tubal Cain is a "sharpener."

The verb harash is to manufacture cutting instruments, and the word heresh is a cutting instrument itself, so by analogy the participle horesh (which occurs only here in the ba-hebrew-bible) would seem to mean "smith", or more specifically, "forger of cutting instruments". The cutting instruments, of course, are of bronze and iron, like swords or plows or what have you.

But here we run into a problem. In what sense might we say that Tubal Cain is a "sharpener-hammerer of every cutting-instrument-maker"? If we instead read heresh for horesh, then Tubal Cain is the "sharpener-hammerer of every cutting instrument". Better, but still odd.

The previous two brothers of Tubal Cain are each described as the "father" of something, while the word "father" is missing from his description. If we suppose that the word "father" was originally included in the verse, then Tubal Cain is described as lotesh abi kol horesh, "a sharpener-hammerer, the father of every clutting-instrument-maker."

Other suggestions have also been made: see Kittel and Dillmann for more. An ASV note reads loteš kol ḥoreš as "instructor of every artificer".