"Do the Right Thing" (Gen 4:7)

You Can’t Go Home Again

⁷ If you do the right thing, you’ll be happy, won’t you? הֲל֤וֹא אִם־תֵּיטִיב֙ שְׂאֵ֔ת

We begin today with James Kugel’s comment to Jubilees 4:2:

Like most interpreters, ancient and modern, [the author of Jubilees] probably could not make sense of the Hebrew of Gen. 4:7 …

All right, then! By the time you are reading this, I will have come up with a translation for the four Hebrew words above.  This phrase is a crux, “a difficulty which it torments or troubles one greatly to interpret or explain” (OED).

There’s no doubt about the grammatical form of any of these words, and none of them are rare. Here they are, listed one by one. The first two words are clear:

• הֲל֤וֹא ha-lo ‘? not’ — that is, “n’est-ce pas? Is it not so?”

• אִם im ‘if’

It’s the next two whose meaning is difficult to fathom:

• תֵּיטִיב֙ teitiv יטב y-t-v Hiphil 2 m.s., ‘you will do good’ or something of the sort.

• שְׂאֵ֔ת ś’et נשׂא n-ś-aleph Qal infinitive construct, ‘lifting, carrying, bearing’

When Cain says in v. 13 that his punishment (or his crime) is “too great to bear,” he uses an alternate Qal infinitive construct of this same root, נְּשֹֽׂא. (For learners: This is the standard form for a strong verb; the form in our verse is what you expect because of the נ and the א. See “How Hebrew Letters Behave,” Lesson 10 of my Hebrew course, and the chart on p. 42 of the Guidebook. Watch the first lesson for free here.)

Because the “unusual” occurrence is when נ and א don’t behave differently, we’ll discuss that when we get to v. 13. For now, we need two more pieces of information before we can get to work:

• The verse continues with “and if not,” so our two words must be a complete “if” clause.

• The ֙ punctuation mark on תֵּיטִיב֙ indicates a slight pause, so תֵּיטִיב֙ is the “if” clause and שְׂאֵ֔ת must be the “then” clause. “If teitiv, then s’et.”

Now all we have to do is figure out what YHWH means by saying those two words and we are home free.

Jubilees cannot help us. The reason Kugel thinks the author of Jubilees could not make sense of our verse is that he simply omits this line from his retelling of the story. So let’s have a look at some of the usual suspects:

• NJPS: Surely, if you do right, / There is uplift.

  -       They add a cautious note: “Meaning of verse uncertain.”

• KJV: If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?

  -       NRSV modernizes this same translation.

• NETS: If you offer correctly but do not divide correctly, have you not sinned?

  -       Apparently the Septuagint has repunctuated the verse and read the ר of רבץ as a נ.

• Targum: Indeed, if you do well, your deeds will be forgiven you.

  -       נשׂא is often used in the context of forgiveness

• R.E. Friedman: Is it not that if you do well you'll be raised … ?

• Robert Alter: For whether you offer well, or whether you do not …

  -       He comments: “The narrative context of sacrifices may suggest that the cryptic s'eit (elsewhere, ‘preeminence’) might be related to mas'eit, a ‘gift’ or ‘cultic offering’.”

• Speiser (AB): Surely, if you act right, it should mean exaltation.

  -       and he comments: