Cain, Redux (Gen 4:23–24)

You Can’t Go Home Again

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²³ Yes, I would kill a man for wounding me כִּ֣י אִ֤ישׁ הָרַ֙גְתִּי֙ לְפִצְעִ֔י

A boy, for bruising me וְיֶ֖לֶד לְחַבֻּרָתִֽי׃

Before our unexpected break (and I’m glad to be back with you) we were working our way through the Song of Lemekh by focusing on what comparing each set of “parallel” lines can tell us. (If you missed it, please do have a look at the free Sunday post about biblical poetry.) In the last post before the break, we saw that it’s quite possible Lemekh is not a warrior and hasn’t killed anyone at all. The apparent violence in these lines is counteracted by the fact that every aspect of the repetition in Line B is so much smaller than its counterpart in Line A.

Today we’re going to look at a few more possible ways to understand the end of v. 23 before we go ahead with v. 24 and the return — at last — of Cain, the apparent central character of Genesis 4. As you know, one of my major goals in this column is to convince people not to assume that whatever English translation they are reading happens to be “the Bible.” You may not necessarily accept my own translation, but at least I’m explaining how I arrived at it.

In this particular case, I’ve accepted James Kugel’s overall understanding of the verse (which he adapted from that of Abraham ibn Ezra and David Kimhi). But here are some alternate explanations for Lemekh’s “boast” or “war cry” or whatever you want to call it:

• Rashi (11^th-c. France, citing NJPS in bold):

I have slain a man for wounding me. Rather, “have I slain this man for my wound?” Do you think I did it deliberately, so that the wound I gave him should be called mine, attributed to me? And a lad for bruising me. Similarly, “for my bruise.” Should the bruise I gave this lad be attributed to me? I did both of these things accidentally, not deliberately. This is not “my” wound or “my” bruise.

[this, Rashbam’s, and Radak’s comments are all given in my Commentators’ Bible translation]

Rashi is alluding to the midrash that Lemekh killed both his ancestor Cain and his son Tubal Cain, which we’ll talk about shortly. As the 15^th-c. Spanish commentator Isaac Abarbanel (working in Italy) asserts, “Lamech’s statements are tremendously obscure; they are impossible to explain without resorting to midrash.”

• Rashbam (12^th-c. France, Rashi’s grandson):

“Have I slain a man, that I should be wounded for it, or a lad, that I should be bruised for it?”

• David Kimhi (12^th–13^th-c. Provence):

There is an alternative to the translation “wounding me” and “bruising me”; he might be saying, “I have slain a man by my wound [the wound that I gave him], and a lad by my bruise.” The question is whether the possessive suffix is meant to be understood as a subjective genitive or an objective genitive. A wound is one that draws blood, a bruise one that does not. A bruise would not kill a grown man, but it might kill a boy.

• Umberto / Moshe David Cassuto (20^th-c. Italy and Israel/Palestine):

A man I slew, as soon as I wounded (him),

and a young man, as soon as I bruised (him).

Lamech wounded a certain youth, who was his foe, and slew him; he then boasts with great bravado of this cruel murder … Eve gloried in the fact that she had formed and given birth to a man; Lamech prides himself on having cut off the life of a man.

V. 1 is in fact the only other time that the word אישׁ ish ‘man’ occurs in Genesis 4. When we continue on into v. 24, we will indeed see that our chapter is bringing us full circle to Cain.

²⁴ Yes, let Cain incur sevenfold revenge כִּ֥י שִׁבְעָתַ֖יִם יֻקַּם־קָ֑יִן

And Lemekh seventy-sevenfold! וְלֶ֖מֶךְ שִׁבְעִ֥ים וְשִׁבְעָֽה׃

Whether or not you agree with Cassuto’s translation about the man and boy, he focuses our attention on an important point: Lemekh’s song is here because this chapter is about Cain. That same “sevenfold revenge” was discussed in v. 15, which said כָּל־הֹרֵ֣ג קַ֔יִן שִׁבְעָתַ֖יִם יֻקָּ֑ם ‘anyone who kills Cain will incur sevenfold revenge’. You can read about the two unusual words in this phrase in this earlier column. Two points are important for our current discussion:

• The earlier phrase was in prose, in a conversation between YHWH and Cain. This one is in poetic form, in “the Song of Lemekh.” Midrash assumes that Cain’s descendants knew what YHWH had said to Cain. More on this in a moment.

• “Sevenfold” has been promoted to the front of this poetic line (after the asseverative ki that Lemekh likes to punctuate his poetry with). We’ll save a detailed discussion of the parallelism in these two lines of the poem for our next post. Teaser: it’s chiastic!

For now, let’s begin our discussion of the meaning of “sevenfold” with Rashi’s comment on v. 15, where it originally occurred. As I mentioned earlier in today’s post, midrash understands Lemekh literally — he is announcing that he has killed a man and a boy. Why do we care? Because the man he accidentally killed was Cain, and the boy he accidentally killed was his own son Tuval-Cain, who had been leading his blind father on a hunting expedition and directed Lemekh’s bow at what seemed to be an animal moving through the forest.

Upon their discovering that the dead “animal” was actually Cain, Lemekh clapped his hands together in despair, thereby also killing his own “boy” Tuval-Cain. Rashi (to v. 15) makes the connection, again quoting NJPS in bold:

I promise, if anyone kills Cain. The Hebrew literally says “Therefore” (OJPS). This is one of the biblical verses where the text is abridged, alluding to its meaning but not spelling it out. It is an unspoken threat: thus and so will be done to him (without specifying precisely what). Sevenfold vengeance shall be taken on him. This part of the verse is, therefore, a separate sentence, “Sevenfold vengeance shall be taken on Cain.” But the word translated “sevenfold” really means “after seven.” “I have no intention of taking vengeance on Cain just yet, but after seven generations I will indeed take My vengeance on him, when his descendant Lamech will arise and kill him.” The “vengeance” in this phrase is to be taken against Cain, on Abel’s behalf. So the first phrase is obviously an unspoken threat against anyone who might harm Cain.

We’ll do our own analysis of v. 24 next time.