Then What? (Gen 4:14)

You Can’t Go Home Again

¹⁴ So I shall be restless and rootless on the earth וְהָיִ֜יתִי נָ֤ע וָנָד֙ בָּאָ֔רֶץ

Cain is repeating what YHWH told him at the end of v. 12. Click to find the discussion of those words in the earlier post; what I want to discuss here (just briefly) is the logic of what Cain is saying in v. 14, to introduce his fear of being killed (at the end of the verse).

The Hebrew runs this way:

הֵן֩ גֵּרַ֨שְׁתָּ אֹתִ֜י הַיּ֗וֹם מֵעַל֙ פְּנֵ֣י הָֽאֲדָמָ֔ה [slight pause]

 וּמִפָּנֶ֖יךָ אֶסָּתֵ֑ר                                [major pause]

 וְהָיִ֜יתִי נָ֤ע וָנָד֙ בָּאָ֔רֶץ                         [slight pause]

וְהָיָ֥ה כָל־מֹצְאִ֖י יַֽהַרְגֵֽנִי׃                       [major pause]

That ׃ marks the end of the verse, always a major pause, and the etnaḥta, the wishbone shape under the ת of אֶסָּתֵ֑ר, is the punctuation mark that divides almost every biblical verse into two parts, an equally major pause. The ends of the other two Hebrew lines (remember to read them from right to left!) have a little mark above the word that looks like a : (not the same one as at the end of the verse). That’s a zaqef qaton, marking a pause inside one of the larger sections of the verse. (Learn more about these important marks in Lesson 34 of my Biblical Hebrew course for the Teaching Company.)

Now here's the NJPS translation. I’ll divide it to match the Hebrew punctuation, but will indicate the different punctuation that NJPS itself uses:

Since You have banished me this day from the soil,     [slight pause]

and I must avoid Your presence                                       [no pause]

and become a restless wanderer on earth—                   [major pause]

anyone who meets me may kill me!”                               [major pause]

You remember that הן hen was one of the three little words in the first phrase of this verse that call us back to Gen 3:22. In that verse, it introduced the protasis (I love saying that) — the if of an if-then statement. The apodosis (the then clause) was also introduced in that verse by a distinctive word.

But that’s not the way it always works, even in English. In Dave Frishberg’s song “My Attorney Bernie,” one of the recurring lines is, “Bernie says we sue, we sue; Bernie says we sign, we sign.” We don’t need to be told that if Bernie says we should sue, then we do sue.

In the Bible too the distinct words that say if-then are not always there. The punctuator did us all a favor, a millennium or two later, by putting an etnaḥta into the verse to tell us, with that major pause, that we have reached the end of the if clause. The second half of the verse starts the then clause.

All of that is to explain why I’ve started the second half of v. 14 with “so,” putting a major pause there and starting the “then” clause at that point, as the Hebrew does. Cain has concluded that being “restless and rootless” is not his punishment for killing his brother. It is the result of his being invisible to YHWH.

and it may be that anyone who encounters me will kill me. וְהָיָ֥ה כָל־מֹצְאִ֖י יַֽהַרְגֵֽנִי׃

Nahum Sarna writes: