Burning with Anger or Shame? (Gen 4:5)

You Can’t Go Home Again

⁵ Cain was really depressed, crestfallen. וַיִּ֤חַר לְקַ֙יִן֙ מְאֹ֔ד וַֽיִּפְּל֖וּ פָּנָֽיו׃

I have the great pleasure in today’s post of relying for my translation on one of my teachers and on one of my students. Let’s begin at the beginning, with what for some people will be the more surprising aspect of the translation. That’s because older translations, still followed by some of the newer ones, usually depict Cain here as angry, not depressed:

• Fox: Kayin became exceedingly upset and his face fell.

• KJV: And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.

• NRSV: So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.

• NETS: And it distressed [ἐλύπησεν] Kain exceedingly, and he collapsed in countenance.

• Targum: And it was very hard [וּתקֵיף] for Cain, and his face was subdued.

• Friedman: And Cain was very upset, and his face was fallen.

• Alter: and Cain was very incensed, and his face fell.

• Speiser: Cain resented this greatly and his countenance fell.

Speiser’s comment in the Anchor Bible will get us started on our discussion.

5. resented. Literally “his anger was kindled.”

Even more literally — that is, literally rather than idiomatically, as Speiser translated — the Hebrew phrase וַיִּ֤חַר לְקַ֙יִן֙va-yíḥar l’káyin means “it burned to/for Cain.” Before we say more about our specific text, a few words on this idiom. What does חרה really mean, and what exactly is “it” that is “burning”?

First, חרה. This verb occurs some ninety times in the Bible, almost always with regard to an emotion of some kind. The lexicons are confident that it really does somehow involve the concept of “burning” because the root חרר clearly does refer to burning with fire and/or glowing red hot:

^{Ezek 24:10}         Pile on the logs,

         Kindle the fire,

         Cook the meat through

         And stew it completely,

         And let the bones be charred [יֵחָֽרוּ].

¹¹       Let it stand empty on the coals,

         Until it becomes so hot

     That the copper glows [וְחָ֣רָה].

We’ve spoken earlier in more detail about the assumption that some triliteral (3-letter) roots that share two of their consonants are related if you dig far enough back in linguistic history. Everyone seems to make that assumption automatically in the case of חרה. The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament writes:

The verbs ḥārâ and ḥrr have the basic meaning “burn.” Both most probably derive from a biliteral ḥr in Old Hebrew. Ugar. ḥrr means “burn,” “scorch,” or “roast.”

 In fact, חרה doesn’t involve actual fire in the Bible unless you count “The LORD heard and was incensed [‏וַיִּ֣חַר אַפּ֔וֹ]: a fire [אֵ֣שׁ] of the LORD broke out against them” of Num 11:1 — as if YHWH’s own heat had ignited it. But, as you see there, what is “incensed” (which is a “burning” word in English; think about incense) is not God himself but his אף, appo, “his nose.”