4:1 She said, “I have gained a man with YHWH.” וַתֹּ֕אמֶר קָנִ֥יתִי אִ֖ישׁ אֶת־יְ׳הוָֽה׃
Get it? His name was Cain because she gained.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time on this blog arguing with or sometimes even making fun of the NJPS translation, so an acknowledgment is in order this time: I have adopted their translation of the more-or-less pun that explains Cain’s name. In Modern Hebrew this verb קנה q-n-h means “to buy,” and when Abraham buys a field with a burial cave in Hebron (Gen 25:10) and Jacob buys a piece of land near Shechem (Gen 33:19) — not far from today’s Nablus — this is the verb that’s used and money does indeed change hands.
But in the Bible the word is used much more broadly. The glaring example that opens the door to our verse is this one, repeated twice in Genesis 14, when both Abram (not yet Abraham) and King Melchizedek of Salem call God קֹנֵ֖ה שָׁמַ֥יִם וָאָֽרֶץ qoneh shamayim va-aretz ‘creator of heaven and earth’.
We know, because we read the story ourselves, that God did not “buy” heaven and earth. (Where, um, would you even shop for such a thing?) This phrase is still in common currency, having entered the Jewish prayerbook, and no one imagines that it means anything but “create.” In our world, however, creating and buying are two different things. Hebrew has other words for creating (we’ve seen a number of these already) and for buying; קנה can refer to both.
Michael Fox explains how, in his Anchor Bible commentary to Prov 8:22, when Wisdom tells us, “YHWH created me [קָ֭נָנִי qanani].”:
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