The Scene of the Crime (Gen 4:8)

You Can’t Go Home Again

⁸ While they were in the countryside … וַֽיְהִי֙ בִּהְיוֹתָ֣ם בַּשָּׂדֶ֔ה

The literal translation of שָּׂדֶ֔ה śadeh is “field,” but even if Cain told Abel “Let’s go out to the field” (as the Samaritan Torah and various ancient translations have it) the question remains: Uh, what field? So, as I sometimes do, I’m avoiding automatic translation in order to be able to think about śadeh afresh.

Richard Elliott Friedman asks:

What is the significance of informing us that they are in a field at the time? Early biblical commentators searched for the meaning of this seemingly inconsequential detail. But to understand it we must observe, first, that fratricide recurs repeatedly in the Tanak … Next, we must observe that the word "field" repeatedly occurs in these stories.

It’s not as if all the episodes of one brother killing (or trying to kill) another occur “in the field.” Rather, the Hebrew word occurs somewhere in all seven of the stories he lists. It doesn’t feel to me like a deliberate signal of any kind, though conceivably it is the unconscious mark of a particular writer.

I prefer to begin by thinking about the word śadeh itself. It is generously sprinkled throughout Version 2 of creation (and does not occur at all in Version 1), so here at least it may indeed be indicating that a single writer put Genesis 2–4 together. As I pointed out when that word first appeared (click for a more detailed discussion):

שָׂדֶה is often used in the Bible to refer to the countryside as opposed to the city. In Gen 34:28, NJPS goes so far as to translate the Hebrew phrase ‏אֵ֧ת אֲשֶׁר־בָּעִ֛יר וְאֶת־אֲשֶׁ֥ר בַּשָּׂדֶ֖ה as “all that was inside the town and outside.” 

Crops are certainly grown in a field, but so too are sheep grazed there. That means Cain is no more at home in “the field” than Abel is. Why must the killing take place there? The answer, I think, comes from these two points:

• This story was taken from a completely different context and integrated into the Creation story (or into Version 2).

• “In the field” [בַּשָּׂדֶ֔ה ba-śadeh], no one can hear you call for help.

I’ve written about the first point a number of times. The book of Deuteronomy will help us see that second point.

^{Deut 22:23} In the case of a virgin who is engaged to a man—if a man comes upon her in town and lies with her, ²⁴ you shall take the two of them out to the gate of that town and stone them to death: the girl because she did not cry for help in the town, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. Thus you will sweep away evil from your midst. ²⁵ But if the man comes upon the engaged girl in the open country [בַּשָּׂדֶ֞ה], and the man lies with her by force, only the man who lay with her shall die, ²⁶ but you shall do nothing to the girl. The girl did not incur the death penalty, for this case is like that of a man attacking another and murdering him. ²⁷ He came upon her in the open [בַשָּׂדֶ֖ה]; though the engaged girl cried for help, there was no one to save her.

Our story is the exact example given in Deut 22:26, the case of “a man attacking another and murdering him.” In fact, that verse uses language very similar to what follows here in v. 8 (which we’ll examine in more detail on Sunday):