To navigate up to the Genesis index, see index-genesis
And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.
I have gotten a man from the LORD (KJV) is in Hebrew qaniti ish et Yhwh.
Two of the words are easy to understand; two are harder. ish is “man”, and “Yhwh” is Yahweh. No problems there. The verb is qaniti, which could be read as “I have acquired” or “I have created.” Both meanings are attested. And the et is the strangest thing of all. The most common meaning of et is to point at direct objects. On that interpretation, we might read “I have created a man: Yahweh.” Or we might read, “I have obtained Yahweh as a husband” a suggestion which Dillmann raises and rejects.
But this would require Eve to believe her child is Yahweh, which is absurd and has nothing to do with the rest of the story, or else that Eve is married to Yahweh, which is similarly without foundation in the rest.
Another meaning of et is “with.” So one way to read the text is to say, “I have created a man with (the help of) Yhwh.”
There’s a problem with this, though. If we can trust Dillmann, there is no other case in the Hebrew Bible where et is used to mean “with someone’s help.” So we have no way to confirm that the word is ever actually used this way. We’re guessing. Another guess is that the phrase means “I have created a man just like Yahweh did”, that is, Eve compares her creation of Cain to God’s creation of Adam.
Kittel suspected that something may have gone wrong in the transmission of this verse. Various emendations have been proposed. On the basis of Targum Onkelos, it has been suggested (see Dillmann, Kittel) that instead of et we should read me’et “from.” Or instead of et Yhwh (Kittel) we should perhaps read ot Yhwh “a sign from Yahweh” or etaveh “that I longed for” (Gunkel). Or, again, that instead of et Yhwh we should read itti Yhwh, “Yahweh is with me.” [1]
On top of these problems, there is a text-critical issue. The Septuagint and Vulgate read “God” (theos, deus, as if translating a Hebrew elohim) instead of the “Lord” (kyrios, dominus) that we would expect when the Hebrew has “Yahweh.”