I Hear You (Gen 4:15)
You Can’t Go Home Again
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Today, we start with a phrase that’s extremely easy to translate, followed by a word that’s also extremely easy to translate but shouldn’t be.
15 YHWH said to him, וַיֹּ֧אמֶר ל֣וֹ יְ׳הוָ֗ה
Not “to Cain” as in vv. 8 and 9, presumably because their conversation is ongoing.
“All right, then — לָכֵן֙
Before we get to the famous mark of Cain, we must solve the very first word of YHWH’s reply. Look it up in your Biblical Hebrew dictionary, or click on it in some electronic text, and you will see the word “therefore.” End of story, right?
But no. לכן lakhen is one of those words that has an automatic, one-to-one translation in English — but it’s not something you can point to, like an apple or a cow. It’s a relationship word, something that will tell us how what YHWH is about to say relates to what Cain has just said, so the automatic translation simply prevents us from devoting some thought to it. Let’s do that now.
The translations of this word are surprisingly diverse:
KJV: Therefore
NJPS: I promise
NRSV: Not so!
Speiser: If so
Fox: No, therefore
LXX: Οὐχ οὕτως
Vulgate: nēquāquam ‘in nowise, by no means, not at all’
לכן lakhen ‘therefore’ occurs 200 times in the Bible. So what is the problem? The problem is that we expect the same person to be saying, “X is true; therefore, Y naturally follows.” Here we have a different speaker responding with “therefore.” In that case, “therefore” is a somewhat awkward translation. NJPS says “I promise” to render the effect of Speaker 2 offering Speaker 1 a “therefore.”
The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament comments:
Conjunction (lāḵēn). The conjunction lākēn introduces a result clause and often correlates with yaʿan (ʾᵃšer/kı̂), “it is the case that.” … The translation “therefore” is probably too weak; a better rendering would be “in view of which, on my word of honor.”
You see how “I promise” fits into this pattern.
But where are all those other translations getting no or not? The answer is, they are getting it from the Septuagint, which is getting it not from לכן lakhen but from לא־כן lo-khen ‘not so’. Ronald Hendel, in his Genesis edition, attributes this to “linguistic or exegetical revision” — meaning that he doesn’t think the Greek translator was looking at לא־כן, an actual Hebrew text differing from the one we have.
Rather, he was thinking that “therefore” didn’t quite make sense and either (1) must be a mistake that he ought to fix (“linguistic revision”) or (2) was so confusing that he needed to write something that made the text more clear (“exegetical revision”). It’s easy to see how a scribe might have written lakhen instead of lo-khen, especially since lakhen is ten times as common in the Bible.
“I promise” of NJPS is the “exegetical” kind of revision, and so is the translation I’ve chosen. Cain has just complained to YHWH — for the first time, I might add — and YHWH, also for the first time, is about to respond positively to Cain. This calls for something more than just “therefore,” something that will introduce his positive response.
anyone who kills Cain will incur seven-fold revenge.” כָּל־הֹרֵ֣ג קַ֔יִן שִׁבְעָתַ֖יִם יֻקָּ֑ם
Before we get to the two unusual words in this phrase, let’s take a moment to notice that “anyone who kills Cain” perfectly balances and matches “anyone who encounters me” of v. 14, cutting directly to the problem that “it may be that [any such [person] will kill me.” Perhaps it’s worth quoting Cassuto’s comment as well:
The verse says, if any one slays Cain, not if anyone slays you, because this is a proclamation addressed to all mankind.
Again, we see YHWH not merely answering Cain, but responding to his problem with a solution. I’ll come back to this point before today’s column is over.
Now, “seven-fold.” There really is a suffix on the word שִׁבְעָתַ֖יִם shiv’atáyim, and it really does seem to mean the same as English -fold — but only with the number 7, just half a dozen times (and once, in 2 Sam 12:6, with the number 4). Ordinarily it is what we called in our discussion of Gen 2:7 a dual ending, saying that something (like your eyes, your ears, etc.) comes in pairs. It’s also used with three particular numbers that can be thought of as coming in pairs: 2, 200, and 2000. In fact, the Italian commentator Obadish Sforno thinks our word means “fourteen-fold,” not “seven-fold,” because it has a dual ending.
Oh, yes, you’ve caught me doing automatic translation. All right — since you ask — I’ll stop and think for a moment. What can it possibly mean to incur “seven-fold revenge”? Rashi’s grandson Rashbam, Ibn Ezra’s contemporary in the 12th-c. Renaissance, has the answer:
“Seven” is not meant to be precise; it means “multiple,” much more than he harmed his brother. Compare “the light of the sun shall become sevenfold [שִׁבְעָתַ֔יִם]” (Isa. 30:26); “seven times [שֶׁ֨בַע] the righteous man falls and gets up” (Prov. 24:16).
Well, Cain’s brother is dead. Anyone who kills Cain will be dead … not seven times, but at least multiple times? Let’s go to Targum Onkelos for another attempt:
Then the Lord said to him, “Therefore, whoever kills Cain, he (Cain) will be avenged for seven generations [לְשִׁבעָה דָרִין] from him.”
Again, we must imagine an unusual set of circumstances for this to take place: Cain’s killer will have a son, who will have a son who will have a son, on down to the seventh generation — all of whom will be killed (but not until they’ve had children) because their original ancestor killed Cain.
What, in any case, is meant by “revenge”? This particular verb form, יֻקָּ֑ם yuqqam, occurs only here, in v. 24, and in Exod 21:21, where no vengeance is taken for a slave killed by his owner if the owner is presumed not to have meant to kill him. Is it Hofal or Qal Passive? Your guess is as good as mine. (See Lesson 15 of my Hebrew course for the grammar involved.)
The details are fuzzy, then. YHWH’s “I promise” (to quote NJPS) is not really committing him to anything. What he is telling Cain is, “No one is going to get away with killing you.” A better response, closer to what Cain actually wants, would be to prevent anyone from killing Cain. We’ll see next time whether that does indeed happen or not.