“Timshel” (Gen 4:7)

You Can’t Go Home Again

⁷ … yet you can govern it. וְאַתָּ֖ה תִּמְשָׁל־בּֽוֹ׃

We are finally finishing up v. 7, which will give us the opportunity — at last! — to shine a brief spotlight on John Steinbeck and his novel East of Eden. Some of you may have been waiting for that since we began our study of Genesis 4; we’ll get to it at the end of today’s post.

I’ve translated this last phrase slightly differently than I did when YHWH spoke essentially the same words to Cain’s mother, so first let me justify that difference in translation, which you see here:

• וְה֖וּא יִמְשָׁל־בָּֽךְ׃ ‘and he will govern you’ (3:16)

• וְאַתָּ֖ה תִּמְשָׁל־בּֽוֹ׃ ‘yet you can govern it’ (4:7)

The difference in the pronouns is obvious and needs no discussion. In 3:16, YHWH is talking to Cain’s mother about her man; in 4:7, he is talking to Cain directly. Here’s what that switch means:

• the woman is the object of the man’s desire and will be governed by him

• Cain is the object of the demon’s desire …

And here you have the difference. Cain is being presented with two alternatives:

• Doing the right thing, which will make him happy again; or

• doing the wrong thing, which somehow (it’s not clear how) how the potential to drag him into the realm of demons and sin.

We see now that the woman will most certainly get pregnant despite the physical discomfort and danger that poses for her. Cain, on the other hand, has a choice.

Radak (David Kimhi, 13^th c. Provence) lived in a era when philosophical questions were top-of-mind for some Jewish thinkers. He comments:

       Yet you can be its master. It will master you if you do not rid yourself of it, but you can master it and force it to submit to you. — The Holy One thereby showed him that he had the power of free will, just as Moses told us: “See, I set before you this day life and prosperity, death and adversity . . . Choose life” (Deut. 30:15, 19).

The verb משׁל m-sh-l, as we saw back on Day Four of Creation, means “to rule” or “to govern.” The midrash associated with that verse, though not the verse itself, makes clear that משׁל can also imply success in a competition for rulership: in plain English, a power struggle. That’s how it is used in the two examples from Genesis 3 and 4 that we are comparing.

All of which means that Cain is being told, just as Kimhi asserts, that the conflict with demon/sin can be resolved in his favor. It is completely dependent whether he chooses to do the right thing or the wrong thing.

What the hell? The guy offers you some of what he worked hard for — from the ground, which (theoretically) you cursed so that raising food would be as grievous as getting pregnant and giving birth — and this is how you treat him? I’m going to say once again that what we are reading reminds me very strongly of the book of Job. God is playing a game with his creatures, pushing this particular one to see how he will react.