3 … as a gift to YHWH. מִנְחָ֖ה לַֽי׳הוָֽה׃
Minchah in Judeo-English refers to the afternoon prayer service. The prayer service stands in for the end-of-day sacrificial offering in the Temple, the afternoon tamid. Yet the word itself originally had a much broader meaning: a gift or present. Here’s an abridged version of HALOT on the word:
מִנְחָה (210 times); MHeb. JArm. (pl. מִנְחָתָא) afternoon prayer; Ug. mnḥ gift, tribute (parallel with ʾrgmn, → Heb. אַרְגָּמָן); Arb. minḥat gift: basic meaning gift.
A. (37 times) gift, present (non-sacral) as an expression of respect, thanksgiving, homage, friendship, dependence:
—1. veneration:
—2. thanksgiving:
—3. homage:
—4. (political) alliance:
—5. tribute.
B. offering:
—1. in older texts the sacrifice of homage (either with meat or grain)
—2. in the laws Ex 2941 309 4029 Lev 21-2337 (35 times) Num 416-2939(62 times), never in Dt; Ezek 4213-4620 (15 times); food offering.
—3. other occasions. †
As you can see from the Ugaritic word mnḥ cited in the examples from other Semitic languages, the מ of מנחה is a root letter, not the מ that you attach to a root to make a noun out of it. That’s why the plural of מצוה mitzvah ‘commandment’ is mitzvot, but the plural of מנחה minḥah is not *minḥot but m’naḥot.
Some of you will recognize Menahot as the name of a tractate of the Mishnah. It’s actually a feminine segholate noun, like malka > m’lakhot ‘queens’ (not *malkot). The segholate shape is what accounts for that standard (if surprising) form of the plural. (Learn more about segholate nouns, including what I told David Mamet’s Hebrew teacher to tell him, in Lesson 12 of my Hebrew course; watch the first lesson for free here.)
Remarkably for a word that occurs 210 times in the Bible, the dagger at the end of that dictionary entry shows that all 210 occurrences are included — some of them, admittedly, are just “incorporated by reference,” as scholars like to say. As you can see, the various instructions for bringing offerings in Leviticus and Numbers and the “new Temple” section of Ezekiel account for over half the times this word appears in the Bible.
And yet here it is, in its first biblical appearance, already specified not just as a general gift but as a gift to YHWH, and being presented by Cain, who (spoiler) is going to go down in history as the first murderer. It’s somewhat shocking!
So let’s settle down and try to think about these three things:
Where did Cain bring this offering?
How did Cain bring this offering?
Why did Cain bring this offering?
The first of the three dozen occurrences of this word in Leviticus (see again the dictionary entry) theoretically answers the where and how questions. Here it is in the NJPS translation:
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