“Crime” and “Punishment”: The Curse of Cain and the Bible’s Social Philosophy

Abstract

“My avon,” Cain says to God, “is more than I can bear” (Genesis 4:13). Disconcertingly, “crime” is as often used in English renderings as is “punishment.” On the basis of a close analysis of the verses about Cain and Abel, I offer a translation that splits the difference between “crime” and “punishment.” Avon turns out to mean something like “transgression.” The Bible’s portrayal of the conflictual interaction between the brothers is the template of its normative position (conveyed in the story by God) about clashes between old ways and new ways. The Bible rejects the Marxist equation of morality with class-success. The verbal form of “transgress” expresses what Cain does to the old modus vivendi; the nominal form applies to his new one. With all its uncertainties, the latter is for that reason challenging to him.

The variations among English translations of the word avon in verse 13 of chapter 4 of the Book of Genesis (the word’s first occurrence in the Hebrew Scriptures) goes far beyond what exposure to works in translation prepares one for. Indeed, so great is the variation that a reader of the renderings might think that the original comes in two versions. In many instances, we find “crime” (or some synonym). In just as many, we find “punishment” (or some synonym). Observe that with regard to one of the best-known occurrences of avon in the Hebrew Scriptures, “punishment” isn’t even a candidate. Try plugging it into the English sentence that describes how God treats descendants for the avon of their fathers.

On the basis of a close examination of the mentioned chapter of Genesis, the variation, I’ll show, has a ground in its story of Cain and Abel. On that ground I’ll offer a translation that combines elements of both words. As we’ll see, the use of avon in the description of Cain’s interaction with Abel goes to the heart of the Bible’s normative position on social dynamics.

Here is the whole story of Cain and Abel, in the New Revised Standard Version [NRSV].

¹ Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have produced a man with the help of the Lord.” ² Next she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground. ³ In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, ⁴ and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, ⁵ but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. ⁶ The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? ⁷ If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.” ⁸ Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out to the field.” And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him. ⁹ Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” ¹⁰ And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! ¹¹ And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. ¹² When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” ¹³ Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! ¹⁴ Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.” ¹⁵ Then the Lord said to him, “Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him. ¹⁶ Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

The brothers’ ways of life

God (verse 5) has accepted Abel’s offering. Cain’s offering he has not accepted. Since it’s obvious why Cain is downcast – as we’ll see, Cain doesn’t just hope for a positive answer, he expects one – God’s question in verse 6 comes over as rhetorical.

The biblical narrative is a cornucopia of literary techniques. In and of itself, the presence of a rhetorical question is therefore unremarkable. But because of who it is who asks, this question raises a problem. Isn’t God responding in a cruel way to a person whose hope/expectation he himself had disappointed?

Happily for those protective of God’s good character, the rhetoric in this instance is not in the text. Beneath the interrogative exterior of God’s words is an assertion to the effect that Cain is reacting too quickly. What God says at the start of verse 7 makes this plain. “If you do well, will you not be accepted?”

Here are two paraphrases of the whole of verse 6 and of the first part of verse 7. Observe that the second paraphrase has in it neither of the questions that figure in the original.

What are you so upset about? Won’t everything work out for you, if you do well?

There’s no need to be upset. Do well, and, as Abel did, you too will find favour.

The words that end verse 7 now fall into place. “Will you do well? There are many obstacles that you’ll have to overcome. Time will tell.”

At first sight it seems that Cain, far from conquering the sin that lurks, throws his door open to it. He invites Abel to the field. There he rises up against the brother and, the text says, “kill[s] him.” But the appearances here don’t match the reality. For one thing, “kill” isn’t to be understood clinically. For another thing, what the Bible dramatizes as happening between Cain and Abel is unavoidable.

Preparatorily to developing these negatives, the following composite question should be fielded. “It’s all very well for God to reassure Cain that he might yet be accepted. Why was he treated differently in the first place? Isn’t reward delayed reward diminished? Doesn’t Cain still therefore have a justified grievance?”

Readers, wrestling with the divergent treatment of the brothers, scour the text for a relevant difference. The rabbis of Bereishit Rabbah (chapter 22) find a character flaw in Cain. The description of Abel’s offering to God contains, they point out, a qualification that has no counterpart in the case of Cain: “firstlings of his flock, the fat portions.” The absence of stickers like “Grade A” and “Choice” on Cain’s offering implies, the rabbis say, that he gives grudgingly. Robert Sacks, in his perceptive commentary, repeats this (The Lion and the Ass, p. 69): “Abel was careful to bring the best, whereas nothing is said about which fruits Cain brought.” Generosity, certainly, is a virtue generally to be encouraged. More to the point, where God is concerned, tight-fistedness is to be denounced.

The word “implies” used just above is too strong. Note that in the case of a rivalry between Esau and Jacob, it’s Esau, the more giving of the brothers (see Genesis 33:9), who doesn’t get accepted.

In fact, the answer to the composite question is supplied in the text. Turn from how the brothers give to what they give and you’ll see it. The contrast here is indicated in verse 2. “Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground.” The callings are even marked in the names of the protagonists. “Cain” is cognate with the idea of property. What does a farmer do, if not fence off land for proprietary use? “Abel” connects to the idea of breath. What does a shepherd do, if not move his flocks freely across the land, as exhaled breath moves through the air? The word for breath, which appears as “vanity” in Ecclesiastes, we might render as “so much hot air.” It’s odd, therefore, that even commentators knowledgeable in Hebrew miss the point. Discussing the matter in his translation of Genesis, Richard Elliott Friedman writes: “[The story] never tells us, exactly, why [Cain] kills [Abel]. … Sometimes a silence in the Torah is revealing. In this case it suggests that the concern [over God’s preference for Abel] is not the immediate motive, but rather the deeper, essential, fact of sibling rivalry.” Pace Friedman, the Bible tells us precisely why the killing occurs. As with the conflict between Esau and Jacob, where the issue is national leadership, the Bible conveys its message by describing friction within a family. But rivalry of the specifically sibling sort has nothing to do with friction between Cain and Abel.

Friedman can’t plead lack of Hebrew. Not that this lack absolves the others. Close students of the Bible will know that names are almost always thematically significant. This is no exception. Observe that Eve, in bestowing the name “Cain,” (4:1), supplies an informative gloss. The NRSV is not exactly helpful here, though. But the verb translated as “produced” also has the sense of “purchase.” Think “Louisiana Purchase.” I’ll note that Abel’s animals are of course his property. The operative distinction is between real estate (immoveable) and chattel (moveable).

We have here a contrast between ways of life; more specifically, a description of what happens when different ways of life intersect. Often enough, as in this case, the ways conflict.

The farmer’s enclosure of land blocks the movement of the herder. Indeed, land gets fenced off expressly to prevent the grazing animals from destroying the crops.

E. A. Speiser, in his excellent Introduction to the Book of Genesis, recognises the anthropological theme – “the conflict between the pastoral and the agricultural ways of life” (p. 31). Disappointingly, he does not pursue the theme to shed further light on the text.

“Can’t shepherds lock horns?” They can. Imagine that each of two herders insists on sole occupancy of some patch of grass. The dispute could easily escalate. But with a little goodwill, or if one of the disputants is fearful enough to back down, a peaceful settlement is possible. In Genesis 13, we find the description of precisely such a dispute with precisely such an outcome.

⁷ and there was strife between the herders of Abram’s livestock and the herders of Lot’s livestock. At that time the Canaanites and the Perizzites lived in the land.⁸ Then Abram said to Lot, “Let there be no strife between you and me, and between your herders and my herders; for we are kindred. ⁹ Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left.”

Everything changes once farming emerges. The worker of the land cannot move their crops to accommodate the shepherd. To do so would be to lose their livelihood; or, as the Bible more forcefully puts it, to spill their lifeblood.

“Everything changes once farming emerges.” Cain and Abel, as the formulation indicates, stand in the relation of earlier and later. Cain’s economic way comes after Abel’s. From this we see that the writers do not flip a coin to determine the order of sacrifices in the story. Of the two, the response to Cain’s offering is the one that must wait. “Isn’t Cain older in years than Abel?” By making the biologically older the socio-economically younger, the Bible sharpens the message. Cain might aptly be characterized here as a forward-looking thinker. Having reflected on the way of his brother, which is a going concern, he appreciates that it’s only a matter of time before there will be too many mouths for the shepherding way to feed, and hence that some mode of production that increases the supply of food will be needed. Sacks (p. 69) makes the point, though too vaguely to give us a grip on the story’s clockwork. “Cain has higher goals.” In a historically specific way, and by reference to the eastern part of the Fertile Crescent where the biblical action is set, Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel) supplies a compelling account of the emergence of Cain’s way. The fact that the sequel to the part of Cain’s story that we are looking at begins with the report that Cain and his wife give birth to sons and found a city – “Cain knew his wife, and she … bore Enoch, and he built a city and named it Enoch” (17) – further supports this anthropological reading.

In approaching the sacrificial altar, Cain, one therefore reasonably infers, must be thinking this thought. “God will be delighted with my offering. Am I not doing like he does? Am I not rendering the world less hostile to the creatures inspired with his breath of life? Abel is engaged in an activity that has no forward direction.” As I said earlier, he expects a favourable response. Is it any wonder that he is described as “very angry.”

So why, again, is God unhappy with Cain? It has to do with the overlapping phase between the brothers’ ways. When farming emerges on the scene, a friendly settlement of occupancy claims is no longer a possibility.

We come back here to verse 8 of chapter 4.

⁸ Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out to the field.” And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him.

This translation is contested. The Masoretic Text has in it no “Cain said to his brother” and hence has no “Let us go out to the field.” Speiser (p. 29) notes this. But he thinks that the words are implicit. He therefore includes them, fenced off in brackets. The editors of the NRSV take a similar line. Citing in justification the Samaritan text of Genesis, the (Greek) Septuagint, and the (Latin) Vulgate, each of which contains the spoken words, they follow a long tradition of inserting them. Friedman, discussing 4:8, offers a conjecture: “Cain’s words appear to have been missed in the Masoretic text by a scribe whose eye jumped from the first phrase containing the word ‘field’ to the second.” There is however a problem with this line. How likely are the Masoretes to have missed the objectless “said”? Sacks, addressing the matter (p. 70), displays his usual combination of subtlety and diffidence. “King James translates ‘Cain talked with Abel,’ but this translation is not acceptable because the Hebrew word [rendered here as ‘talked’], like the English word ‘said,’ must be [accompanied] by a direct or indirect quotation. The early translations seem to include a gloss which was intended to make sense of the verse. The present commentator is at a loss and has no suggestion to make.” But since Sacks himself (pp. 32-3) had earlier remarked on what appears to be the ungrammatical character of the very first phrase of the Bible. How could the Masoretes have allowed the objectless preposition to pass? Sacks believes that the difficulty about Genesis 1:1 can be overcome, and I believe the same here. Indeed, there are grounds, concerning the word “field,” for rejecting the interpolation

Cain, as we say in English, had words with Abel. Rashi, in his comment on 4:8, glosses the passage in this way. But he proceeds to claim that Cain is seeking a pretext to do harm to Abel. In my view, Cain has a reason, Still, I would agree with what I understand Rashi’s thought to be, namely that given what immediately happens, a rendering like “Cain talked with Abel his brother” is too weak.

Given what immediately happens, Cain’s words will be understood thus. “It’s either me or you.” For drama’s sake, we might even put these rather more triumphal words into his mouth. “Your days are numbered.” The killing, it’s then said, occurs “in the field.” Why mention the location? This too is obvious. The two are in dispute over the field. Unlike gatherers and shepherds, or gatherers and farmers, they are both present on it. In Hebrew as in English, “field of battle” is idiomatic. The field is, that is, their field of battle both literally and figuratively. Commenting on 4:8, Friedman asks: “why is a field mentioned?” Since Friedman misses the nature of the dispute – “Why,” he should have asked, “are the brothers’ callings mentioned?” – his wrinkled brow here is not surprising. Ignoring the fact that fields are mentioned seven times in Genesis prior to 4:8 (2:5, twice, 2:29, 2:20, 3:1, 3:14, 3:18), he conducts us on a tour of biblical cases of sibling rivalry.

The first part of verse 8 can be rendered without “and when.” Here is my preferred version of verse 8, smoothed out a bit:

And it was in the field that Cain had words with his brother Abel, and Cain rose up and killed him.

The rendering of the NRSV, which is fairly representative among the English renderings, is revealing. Revealed is failure to appreciate what the dispute is about, namely the field, and hence failure to grasp the meaning of the episode.

Cain, it is written, killed Abel. That is: he took over the field. This description of the enclosure of land and the displacement of the nomadic types is a one-frame version of the classic Western movie. We know how the movie ends. The raising of livestock is now a matter for feedlots. Animals are effectively vegetables with legs and wings.

This last point sheds light on God’s claim that if Cain does well he will be accepted. But before addressing it, I’ll pause to deal with a matter that deserves comment but is usually passed over in silence.

The brothers sacrifice to God. One generation into the story of men and women, and a sacrament of this complexity is part of the story? Who said that the Lord wants sacrifices?

It’s of course true that the sacramental practice is well-known from surrounding cultures. But the internal time of the Bible precedes these cultures. The presence of the practice in the story is anachronistic, like the clock striking the hour in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. I must, with regret, dispute Sacks’s claim (p. 69) that according to the Bible Cain is the initiator of sacrificing. This reads an anthropological point out of a textual device.

Suppose a writer wants to convey, in dramatic form, the idea that while some authority over a group of men and women is indifferent to whether they do A or B, the authority, in order to ensure predictability, arbitrarily designates A for performance. The writer, to capture the arbitrariness, has the authority flip a coin – “Heads it’s A, tails it’s B.” This makes clear the indifference; makes it clear to readers. I quoted Abraham saying something like this to Lot. “If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left.”

The Bible wants to express a preference. Those responsible for the text press into duty a functional equivalent of a coin-tossing that their readers know well. Is shepherding acceptable (to God)? Is farming acceptable (to God)? Is either more acceptable (to God)?

“Who said that the Lord wants sacrifices?” The point of my question will now be plain. The story of the sacrifices is not for the actors within the story. It’s for the target audience, whose members seek guidance from the book about how to live.

Just as the sacrifices make extra-religious sense (recall Sacks’s claim, referred to a moment ago, that Cain initiates the sacrament of sacrifice), so the explanation given for God’s favourable response to Abel can be rewritten Godlessly. Shepherding is preferred because, by some measures (relative simplicity, absence of real property, etc.) it’s preferable. If all other things remained equal, shepherding would not lose its preferential status. But the Cain and Abel story is part of a wider story of an increasingly complex world, and an armchair interrogation of the issue of what the morally proper response is under conditions of social and economic stress, specifically the morally proper response on the part of those who are rising (Cain) to those who are falling (Abel).

A natural thought about the mark of Cain is that it’s a version of an animal brand. Since the practice of branding belongs to Abel’s way, there would be some poetic justice to Cain’s being so marked. Substantively: there is an issue of non-poetic justice between Abel and Cain. The Abelites are unlikely to let the killing pass. But in the absence of courts, they will take matters into their own hands. God’s putting Cain under his protection (ironically, God becomes Cain’s keeper) is the Bible’s way of saying that issues of justice pre-exist institutions of justice. God’s action with regard to Cain prefigures what Athena in Aeschylus’s Oresteia offers in instituting the Areopagus – an unprecedented formal system to adjudicate between those who cause harm and those to whom they cause it. And, to gallop to the Old West, eventually the central authority sends out judges to do the same.

The Marxist view is that social change has an internal, economic, dynamic, and that moral issues are irrelevant to it. That is not the Bible’s view. The Bible is clearly critical of Cain, despite that the displacement (“killing”) of shepherds by farmers is inevitable. So what’s the meaning of “If you do well, you will be accepted”? The condition for acceptance is not “If your way of life enables men and women to prosper.” “Doing well” refers also, perhaps even mainly, to the effects on Abel. “If in implementing your way of life you do well by your brother, you will be accepted.” Cain’s answer to God’s “Where is your brother?” is unforgettable. We can appreciate that the answer, which is given in the form of a question, is two-sided. One side of “Am I my brother’s keeper?” is rhetorical. Here the question elicits a categorical “No.” Agriculture puts an end to shepherding. The other side is moral. Here, the answer, which the text, i.e. God, gives is “Yes.” Agriculture, or something that has its capacity to get a greater response from the earth, may be inevitable as the population grows and the pressure on the land increases. That does not however mean that those whom the revolution negatively affects have no claim on those who displace them. Cain has in effect blocked his ears to words that he would otherwise hear. “Brother, can you spare a dime?” And for this he deserves reproach.

It’s a commonplace of moral philosophy that A is morally obliged to avoid doing things that harm B, and that when what A does harms B, A has a moral obligation to make B whole again. “If it’s a commonplace,” the reader might ask, “what does it have especially to do with the Bible?” The answer is that its commonplace status is due to the acceptance in the West of teachings about human identity that trace back to the story of Adam and Eve. Marx, taking classes rather than individuals as basic (and hence remaining in the field of Genesis chapter 1, where the unit is the species), rejects these teachings as “bourgeois.”

This is not the first instance in which the issue of competing ways of life arises. God had acted in the non-Cain way with respect to Adam and Eve, in preparing them for life outside the garden. “And then Lord made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them” (3:21). God may put an end to (“kill’) their way of life; but he does not deny that he is their keeper.

The pattern that we discern in the two episodes is woven deep into the Bible’s fabric. Abel’s shepherding way follows the gathering way of his parents, and Cain’s eventual city-fathering moves agriculture in the direction that agriculture takes once specialization develops. (“If killing refers to the extinction of ways of life, why,” it may be asked, “isn’t Abel represented as killing Adam and Eve?” A plausible answer is that the new ways are developed from within gathering. Gatherers are suicides, so to speak. See again Jerrod Diamond.) Whatever field anthropologists find, I’ve rarely heard another story from the anthropological armchair.

The Bible’s issue of Cain and Abel is alive and well. In my youth, the pools of typists and the telephone switchboard operators were on the verge of extinction. But breadmen and milkmen still visited our street several times a week. The men and women who made a living in these ways did not die when the new modes of production and marketing and transportation appeared.

Each reader, suitably to their time and place, will be able easily to supply additional illustrations.

Translating avon

We can now turn, suitably prepared, to the translation of verse 13.

va-yomer kayin el adodai gadol avoni mi-nso

The contested word is avoni, ” the first-person possessive of avon. The NRSV renders the word as “punishment.” This reads smoothly. But a choice is being made that other translators don’t make.

Reuben Alcalay’s widely-used Hebrew-English Dictionary, which is restricted to reporting actual latter-day usage, contains the following entry for the word: “sin, transgression, iniquity, trouble, suffering, punishment, evil, wickedness, misdemeanor.” (Because of the history of Hebrew language, modern dictionaries are not irrelevant to the Bible.) In today’s Hebrew, the word is, this source notes, part of the phrase “criminal offense.”

The more scholarly Even-Shoshan Dictionary has as the first entry “sin,” “transgression.” “Punishment” is specified, as an extension. (The Even-Shoshan is exclusively Hebrew. The translations into English are mine.)

In Francis Brown’s A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, these meanings are given. “1. iniquity.” “2. “Guilt of iniquity,” the latter with the comment “not always easy to disting. from 1.” The most revealing entry is “3. Consequence of, or punishment for, iniquity.” Following is this parenthesis, which refers to the contested verse. “(SS include most of these under 2, and do not recognize 3; Buhl thinks this meaning rare, giving only Gn 4¹³ IS 5¹⁸).”

Karl Feyerabend’s Dictionary to the Old Testament contains more of the same: “perverseness, sin, guilt, crime, punishment, suffering.” The ordering is not alphabetical.

The problem is clear. What Cain says does not make much sense if the word is translated as “crime.” It reads smoothly with “punishment.” Yet “punishment” is not specified by any source as the straight translation.

A survey (my database consists of the translations on the Bible Gateway site plus the renderings by the scholars whom I have cited) finds that the contested word is most often translated into English as “punishment.” In a few translations, it is observed, in a footnote, that the word so rendered could mean “transgression” or “sin.” But there is no justificatory explanation of why that word isn’t used. In a small number of cases, “transgression,” “sin,” or some equivalent is used.

Here, with no claim to either comprehensiveness or systematicity, is a run through.

King James and New King James, for the contested word, both have “punishment.” The latter notes that the word can be rendered as “iniquity.”

Peshitta (from the Aramaic), has “crime.” DouayRheims (a 16^th century translation commissioned by the Catholic Church) has this for 4:13. “My iniquity is greater than that I may deserve pardon.” The last part goes well beyond the text, which is more naturally rendered as “too much for me to bear.” How a crime can be too much to bear isn’t clear.

Orthodox Jewish Bible: “And [Cain] said unto [God], My avon (iniquity, punishment for guilt) is greater than I can bear.” This, like the DouayRheims, is circumlocutory. The roundaboutness is needed because, again, it’s hard to see how iniquity can be too much to bear.

Wycliff’s Bible: “And Cain said to the Lord, My wickedness is more than that I deserve forgiveness (for).” Same problem.

What about our experts/scholars?

Friedman’s rendering, since he avoids the circumlocution, makes no sense. “And Cain said to YHWH, “My crime is greater than I can bear.”

Speiser: “My punishment is too much to bear.” A footnote is added: “Literally, ‘iniquity’ and its consequence.” “Literally”? Surely not.

Sacks: “And Cain said unto the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear.” No annotation.

I believe it’s a clue here that in verse 7 God says “sin is lurking at the door.” The word used is hatat, a modification of the usual word for “sin.” I take this to suggest that the contested word doesn’t straightforwardly mean “sin.”

Look at the exchange that includes the problem passage. Here, again, is the NRSV.

¹² When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” ¹³ Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear!”

Cain is reacting (it certainly seems) to God’s claim about his activity, and to the claim that he will be a wanderer. A lot is compacted onto this.

“No longer” is significant (“won’t continue to” would be better). The implication is that up to now the ground has yielded its strength. Is it, then, that God will command the earth henceforth not to respond because of the killing of Abel? It can’t be that. The whole point of the story is that until Abel is out of the way, Cain’s success is blocked. The point must be that Cain will find that the earth responds less as he continues to work it. Which is what he does find. It’s a fact of agriculture, not a punishment from on high, that yields diminish. Cain might have thought that the problem he addresses has been solved. But other problems arise in its place because of what he did, namely till the ground. And in the face of reduced returns, he will have to move: precisely what he thought was peculiar to the earlier economic ways, and something that for him requires more than whistling for the sheepdog.

God does not say to Cain “because you did this.” He does say it to Adam and Eve. And the sequel to the saying of it, the loss of strength of the earth, is mentioned. Here’s the passage, from Genesis 3.

¹⁷ And to the man [God] said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife,

and have eaten of the tree

about which I commanded you,

‘You shall not eat of it,’

cursed is the ground because of you;

in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life

¹⁸ thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;

and you shall eat the plants of the field.

¹⁹ By the sweat of your face

you shall eat bread.”

“Because of what he did” as applied to Cain can be read both as a reference to the agricultural revolution and as a reference to the elimination of Abel.

As to being a fugitive and wandering, this fits in with what I’ve just said. (More accurate than “fugitive” would be “vagabond.” More accurate than “vagabond” would be “mover.” Those who put “fugitive” have an eye on what Cain next says. But it’s God who speaks the word, not Cain.) The Bible’s presentation here is especially fine. The claim that Cain settles in the Land of Nod doesn’t remit, let alone negate, God’s punishment. In Hebrew, “Nod” is cognate with “to wander.” In his new way of life, Cain finds himself unsure of his circumstances and unclear about what awaits, but unable to go back.

“You can’t go home again” is a deep biblical motif, starting with God barring the man and the woman from returning to the garden. The only sure return is the ultimate one, to the earth.

Conclusion

“Crime” or “punishment”? The variation among translations has a basis in the text itself – in the story, that is. The punishment is part and parcel of the crime. When equilibrium is disrupted, the disequilibrators are disequilibrated. A better word to label the package is “transgression.” In transgressing, going beyond extant ways, Cain has put himself into a transgressive state, one of uncertainty. Cain did not meet with the stable outcome that he expected. Bearing his new condition is hard – harder than he anticipated. Bear it he must, however. There’s no going back. A word that also works is “deviation.” If a person deviates, they and their state can both be described as “deviant.” “Sinfulness” has been proposed. But I rate it lower, on the ground that if Cain were asked why he finds his sinful state hard to bear, an informative answer would be that it’s because it transgresses. If not for the phrase’s idiomatic sense in English, “living in sin” would be excellent. In addition to what I said earlier about God’s words in verse 7, against “sinfulness” there’s also the following point. Many readers are shocked by the disproportionate character of God’s response to the killing of Abel. I’ve explained that the shocked reaction rests on a misunderstanding. Murder is avoidable; what Cain does is inevitable. Mutatis mutandis, I would have thought, for sinfulness.

The Bible presents us with a person who, unable to bear his transgressive state, did try to restore himself to his previous condition, and, in a fashion that confirms our reading, on this person the Bible delivers the harshest judgement. The person is Lot.

The way of life explored in the story of Lot is the urban way. This is a way closely associated with farming. Following the incineration of Sodom, Lot, allowed to flee, asks God to permit him to dwell at least in a hamlet, a middle term between city and country, so “my [way of] life will be saved” (19:20). God grants him what he asks. But Lot “was afraid to stay [even] in Zoar; so he lived in a cave with his two daughters” (3). Observe that just as “Land of Nod” means “Land of Wandering,” so “Zoar” means “Small Place.” (Compare “Smallville” and “Littlehampton.”) This justifies the interpolated “even.” Whatever the problem with metropolitan life, return to bestial status isn’t the solution. To be sure, not everything goes. But accommodation often has to be made. The message here is partly captured by an old saying. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again.” God did so after the flood, of which the destruction of Sodom in a downpour of fire and brimstone is represented as a repeat. It’s not therefore a surprise that he does so here.

One last word about the city. Urban living, i.e. living in a community with many who are not part of one’s family, multiplies the possibilities of social interaction. Constituent to it, therefore, is the capacity to disrupt the family unit. Where is Lot’s wife when the angels come to call? She has options unavailable to Sarah, who is within the tent when the angels visit her husband. (The homosexual element in Sodom is, I would argue, just a graphic way of making the point.) Having Lot couple with his daughters in a cave is a twisting of the dialectic to great effect. The family turns in on itself.

The word avon appears in the story, in verse 15. God’s messengers tell Lot to flee, lest he be consumed in the avon of the city. The NRSV puts “punishment.” If a choice has to be made, I’d choose “crime.” Not departing Sodom means continuing to live that objectionable way of life. From the foregoing it’s clear however that “transgression” is superior to both. The city is a transgression in the way that Cain’s farming is a transgression; it’s the next form of social existence. Urbanization is even harder on the natural world than cultivation is. Lot shows himself unable to accommodate to change; and so, whatever promise he might have had to extend God’s new way in the world is lost.

Light is reflected back by all this on the story of Eden. Here too we get a transgression. The Christian tradition requires this transgression to be a sin (against God), and hence sees the consequence, banishment, as a punishment, the remission of which is out of the hands of the transgressor. Neither of these is self-evident. Adam and Eve would not have said (and they do not say, as David later does in the case of Uriah) “we have sinned.” Here as in the Cain case, to be in a transgressive state is to live the human predicament. While nothing comes easy, and while our days are numbered, we still must act. If the non-Christian translations avoided “punishment,” I would say that the usual majority renderings attest to a Christian tendency. But many of the non-Christian sources use the word too. And there’s no denying the psychological truth in the Christian approach.

The transgression, the crime, is the punishment. Cain’s “my crime is too much to bear” can, and in the light of this discussion should, be made sense of in a non-Christian way. Even saints, I daresay, sometimes find themselves in Cain’s shoes, though they may react with greater forbearance when God’s regard is withheld.

Observe, finally, that the Septuagint sometimes uses (the Greek) hamartia for avon, e.g. in Exodus 20:4. The word can be read as “missing the mark,” or as “erring,” in which case we have a version of “crime,” and the verse makes good sense. But a different term is used in rendering Genesis 4:13: aitia. This indicates the translators’ appreciation that “crime” is a poor fit. This further supports the suggestion that avon combines elements both of “crime” and of “punishment.”

Coming upon the word hamartia, students of the Bible who know the classics will think of Aristotle, for whom it means “tragic flaw.” With this sense of the term in mind, one can dimly see a reason for the thought that Cain has a personality defect. And recall my claim that Cain is upset because he thought he was doing what the Lord wanted. If looked at from a great distance, Oedipus-type over-reach might be discerned. The thought-provoking “take” is however at odds with what I understand to be the (non-Greek) spirit of the Hebrew Scriptures. Cain is not at odds with God. That would require that he fully understand, and reject, what God represents. But the text gives us no reason to believe that he would not take the lesson, adjusting his conduct as a result. Having left the garden behind, we all live in the Land of Nod.

God too, in arranging things for the world’s men and women, is engaged in a Prometheus-type transgression with respect to the ways of the “other gods.”