This page was migrated in August 2022 from my older website, biblicalambiguities.net.
2 August 2022 Navigate 'up to the Genesis index: index-genesis.
KJV: And the LORD said unto Cain, Where [is] Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: [Am] I my brother's keeper?
Unfortunately, the use of stilted language can make us miss the meaning of a translated text. Brother's keeper sounds solemn, and philosophical, and weighty. We are all our brother's keeper, some politician or preacher will intone meaningfully.
But Cain asks, in Hebrew, Am I my brother's shomer? Cain is not, as I see it, answering God's question about Abel's whereabouts by musing about the nature of one man's responsibility to another. He is dodging the question, feigning annoyance. To paraphrase a little bit, Cain asks, What am I? His babysitter?
I don't know if the Yahwist had any notion of something like divine omniscience. Certainly he thought that Yahweh knew more than he was letting on. Cain, on the other hand, certainly doesn't seem to assume God's omniscience at all.
As with other pages migrated from biblicalambiguities.net, this page may contain material paraphrased or even outright copied without direct attribution from a limited set of public domain resources described at biblicalambiguities-general-disclaimer and biblicalambiguities-translation-disclaimer.
This page is released under the CC0 1.0 license.