Heavy Lifting (Gen 4:13)
You Can’t Go Home Again
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V. 12, where Cain is told he will be “restless and rootless,” is his cue to begin singing, “Lord, I was born a ramblin’ man,” but instead …
13 Cain said to YHWH, “My culpability is too large for lifting.”
וַיֹּ֥אמֶר קַ֖יִן אֶל־יְ׳הוָ֑ה גָּד֥וֹל עֲוֹנִ֖י מִנְּשֹֽׂא׃
By the time you read this column, the giveaway will be at the top of the post in bold. Like an author who writes the introduction last, I put the translation on top only after working through the Hebrew words to arrive there. This time, as I sometimes do, I’ll let you can follow my thought process as I decided what “Cain’s enigmatic statement” (as one writer calls it) means.
Tracing the Hebrew syntax — as I like to do in order to encourage learners — we start with גדול מן gadol min ‘bigger than’ or ‘too big for’ something. מן is attached to the last word in the verse, where its final ן blends with the beginning נ of נשׂא; the double -nn- is indicated by the dot (the dagesh) in the one נ that remains. So we have “X is bigger than / too big for Y.” Let’s “solve for X and Y.”
X is עֲוֹנִ֖י ‘my avōn’.
The two basic meanings of עוון both make sense in our context.
my transgression
my punishment
Yes, had Dostoyevsky written his famous novel Crime and Punishment in Biblical Hebrew, he might have boiled the title down to a single word: עוון, which can carry both meanings, as you see from the headings in DCH:
עָוֹן I 233.16.97 n.m. iniquity—
1. iniquity, sin, fault, distinction from §2 not alw. clear
2. guilt (arising from iniquity), distinction from §§1, 3, not alw. clear
3. punishment (for iniquity), distinction from §2 not alw. clear
Dostoyevsky’s contemporary Hebrew translators (according to the website of the National Library of Israel) have kept making the title two separate words, using the Modern Hebrew word for punishment but the word חטא ‘sin’, related to חטאת of v. 7, for the “crime.” What is Cain talking about? In the inimitable words of the Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, it is “not always clear” what this word means. The only English word that comes close to letting me present the same combination seems to be culpability. (חטאת is also used for “punishment,” in Zech 14:19.)
Y is נְשֹׂא n’so, the infinitive construct of נשׂא n-ś-aleph ‘lift, carry’.
The two basic possibilities that make sense in our context for the meaning of נשׂא are:
Cain, carrying a (heavy) burden:
- “It’s too much for me to bear!”
YHWH, lifting off the “burden” of sin, which permits of two understandings:
- “It’s too great to forgive.”
- “Is it too great to forgive?” The question seems more likely if the “lifting” refers to God’s forgiving him. It’s easier to understand why Cain would want forgiveness than why he would reject it.
My translation, “for lifting,” leaves the question open, as the original Hebrew does.
We should also note, not merely for Hebrew learners, that this form follows the standard pattern for a Qal infinitive construct. Why should you care about that if you’re not learning Hebrew? Answering a question with another question, as we Jews are reputed to like to do, Why aren’t you learning Hebrew?
And now I’ll also answer it with the answer: this is not the pattern we expect a root whose first root letter is נ to use. (See Lesson 24 of my Hebrew course, and the chart on p. 98 of the Course Guidebook, for the details.) This may have implications that are more than grammatical — because we saw the expected form just a few verses ago, in v. 7:
הֲל֤וֹא אִם־תֵּיטִיב֙ שְׂאֵ֔ת
ha-lo im-tetiv ś’ēt
As I explained in that column, based on an article by my teacher Mayer Gruber, the “lifting” that was implied there was the lifting of the corners of Cain’s mouth back into a smile. I have no doubt that we’re also supposed to hear an echo of that meaning this time as well: “How can I possibly be happy in these circumstances?” The fact that a different form of the verb is used, one that’s standard for a strong verb but not for a verb that begins with נ, suggests that the “smile” meaning here is an echo. It’s not meant to be the loudest thing we hear from this verb.
Let’s collect some data. The infinitive construct of נשׂא occurs 46 times, in 45 verses, in the Bible. The form found in our verse occurs in Ps 28:2 (and Ps 89:10 has שׂ֥וֹא, which seems like a blend of the two possible forms). The only other times you’ll see it are in Isaiah, which has this form just twice, both times using the form from our verse:
“I cannot endure them [נִלְאֵ֖יתִי נְשֹֽׂא]” (Isa 1:14).
“When a flag is raised [כִּנְשֹׂא־נֵ֤ס] in the hills” (Isa 18:3).
We’ve already seen that נע and נד combine in one verse only in our story (vv. 12 and 14) and in Isa 24:20. That’s just two data points, and they are scattered through Isaiah, not in a single context, so it may just be coincidence. Nonetheless, it’s something to keep an eye on. The first Isaiah reference leans toward one interpretation of our phrase, but the other has no bearing on it. Again, I have left things open with the English expression “for lifting.”
Ibn Ezra, as usual, knows what the words mean and has little patience for those who disagree (quoting NJPS in bold and continuing in my Commentators’ Bible translation):
My punishment is too great to bear! All the commentators agree that he is really confessing and saying, “My sin is too great to be forgiven!” The Hebrew words of our verse are used this way in “forgiving iniquity” (Exod. 34:7). But the translations are correct. There are numerous Hebrew words that mean both an action and the reward or punishment one gets from that action. Our word is used that way also in “the punishment of the Amorites is not yet complete” (15:16); “you won’t get into trouble over this” (1 Sam. 28:10). What Cain says in the very next verse conclusively demonstrates that this is the correct interpretation.
That is, as Radak clarifies, “He was not repentant, just arguing for a lighter sentence.”
Cassuto disagrees:
It is not possible to regard these words as a plea for the mitigation of the sentence … because 'awon [‘iniquity’] is, as a rule, used with nasa' [literally, ‘lift’, ‘carry’] in another sense, namely, ‘to forgive iniquity’.
But these two examples (in the NJPS translation) show it’s not so cut and dried:
“that Aaron may take away any sin [וְנָשָׂ֨א אַהֲרֹ֜ן אֶת־עֲוֹ֣ן]” (Exod 28:38)
“so that they do not incur punishment [וְלֹא־יִשְׂא֥וּ עָוֹ֖ן]” (Exod 28:43)
I’ll give the last word on this to Gary Anderson, excerpting the lengthy discussion he devotes to it in his book Sin:
Cain's words need not be puzzling if we attend to the content of the metaphoric expression. Things become clearer if we translate Cain's response as follows: "The weight of my sin is too great for me to bear." … In Leviticus 5:1, one encounters the case of an individual who does not provide testimony in court even though he is obliged to. This individual, our text concludes, "shall bear the weight of his sin." … The function of the clause "he shall bear the weight of his sin" … marks the person in question as culpable for the crime that has been committed. And so I have argued for Cain.
Do remember that we are not reading the transcript of a trial. This is literature. We’ll go on with Cain’s plea next time.