No Mark on Cain (Gen 4:15)

You Can’t Go Home Again

¹⁵ Then YHWH set a sign for Cain וַיָּ֨שֶׂם יְ׳הוָ֤ה לְקַ֙יִן֙ א֔וֹת

Nahum Sarna remarks:

This phrase has been persistently misunderstood. The reference is not to a stigma of infamy but to a sign indicating that the bearer is under divine protection. Hebrew ʾot here probably involves some external physical mark, perhaps on the forehead, as in Ezekiel 9:4–6, serving the same function as the blood of the paschal lamb smeared on the lintels and doorposts of each Israelite house in Egypt. It is also possible, though less likely, that the “sign” consists of some occurrence that serves to authenticate the divine promise as being inviolable. In that case, the text would be rendered: “The LORD gave Cain a [confirmatory] sign that no one who met him would kill him.”

Speiser adds:

For various types of protective signs, usually placed on the forehead, cf. Exod 13:16; Deut 6:8, 11:18; Ezek 9:4, 6 (taw); Exod 28:38.

Sarna’s first statement is absolutely correct. There is no “mark of Cain” indicating that he committed a murder. No one can look at him and see that.

However, the example from Ezekiel, and the others cited by Speiser, don’t use anything like the language of our verse. Exod 13:16 and Deut 6:8 & 11:18 are about God’s words serving “as a sign [לְאוֹת]”; these refer to the tefillin that Jews wear for morning prayers — unless, as Christians and Karaites think, the entire concept is metaphorical and not physical. Exod 28:38 refers to the headband worn by the High Priest. In Ezekiel, an actual mark is indeed put on certain people, not a “sign” but the letter ת, and the verb שׂים is not used to put it there.

The most common “synonym” for אות ōt, according to TDOT — really I suppose they mean the word it is most commonly paired with — is מופת mofet, in the phrase “signs and wonders,” and these most frequently refer to the plagues in Egypt that led up to the exodus. These are not signs with words on them (“This Way to the Locusts →”) but events that signal something.

I translated the “signs [אֹתֹת] and seasons” of Gen 1:14 as a hendiadys: “calendar dates.” When Moses in Exodus 4 is given two magic tricks he can do to prove to the Israelites that YHWH sent him, YHWH refers to them in v. 8 as “the first sign [הָאֹ֣ת הָרִאשׁ֑וֹן]” and “the second sign [הָאֹ֥ת הָאַחֲרֽוֹן].” In Exod 3:12, when Moses has tried to get out of going to Egypt to free the Israelites from slavery, YHWH tells him, “I will be with you; that shall be your sign [וְזֶה־לְּךָ֣ הָא֔וֹת] that it was I who sent you.”

So not only is “the mark of Cain” not remotely like the Scarlet Letter, it is not a symbol at all. Apologies to Rashi (all the quotes below are from my Commentators’ Bible translation), who says that it was …