Zither and Shawm (Gen 4:21)

You Can’t Go Home Again

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[Note: I’ve changed the original “Zither and Flute” to “Zither and Shawm” (to mimic “hither and yon”). Wasn’t bright enough to think of that when I first posted this.]

²¹ His brother’s name was Yuval. וְשֵׁ֥ם אָחִ֖יו יוּבָ֑ל

Ḥavvah at least “went on to give birth to [Cain’s] brother Abel” (v. 2). It’s interesting to observe that interpreters ancient and modern are obsessed with deciding whether Cain and Abel are twins, only Hizkuni (to the best of my knowledge) bothers to say that the lack of another “she gave birth” here tells us that “obviously” Yaval and Yuval were twins, as the sounds of their names and their shared resemblance to Abel’s name hével might suggest.

It’s worth noting as well that calling Yuval “his [Yaval’s] brother” is another feature that mimics the beginning of the chapter. It would have been easy enough to call him “her [or Ada’s] son” or “his [or Lemekh’s] son” or even “their second son.” Because Yaval is mentioned first, we assume that he was born first. But other biblical lists of children sometimes seem to violate that assumption.

The truth is that these boys (like Abel, after whom they are named, for that matter) are not actually characters in the story. They are something closer to encyclopedia entries. If we thought of this section of the Bible as mythology, we might call them “culture heroes.” Like Prometheus, who brought fire down from heaven in Greek legend, they introduce new capabilities to humanity — in this case, as we’ll see in a moment, capabilities that enable creativity.

He was the godfather of everyone who has a grasp of the zither and the flute.

ה֣וּא הָיָ֔ה אֲבִ֕י כָּל־תֹּפֵ֥שׂ כִּנּ֖וֹר וְעוּגָֽב׃

Just as Yaval was the godfather of “whoever dwells” followed by X + Y, Yuval is the godfather of “everyone who seizes” or “holds” followed by X + Y. Those who follow their lead are indicated by a participle, the “dweller” or “seizer” of something. Yuval, though he comes second, has that relationship with “all” those who do it, unlike his brother.

We are, of course, not talking about someone who grabs your instrument out of the trunk while you’re hauling the amp into your gig. Usually t-p-ś does mean to “grab” or at least “clutch” something (and toféset, spelled with a ס, is the Modern Hebrew word for the game “tag”), but you can also תפשׂ a tool or something else usable.

I’m emboldened by a verse in the Song of Songs to say that Hebrew, like English, employs the idea of “grasping” something to say that one “has a grasp” of a subject:

^{Song 3:7} There is Solomon’s couch,

         Encircled by sixty warriors

         Of the warriors of Israel,

⁸        All of them trained^c in warfare [אֲחֻ֣זֵי חֶ֔רֶב],

         Skilled in battle [מְלֻמְּדֵ֖י מִלְחָמָ֑ה] …

The Hebrew could be read to say simply that they were all “holding swords”; the NJPS note justifies their translation this way:

^c Cf. Akkadian aḫāzu, “to learn.”

But the parallel phrase is literally that they had been “taught” warfare, a parallel suggesting that “holding” too refers to intellectual grasp. I think our verse provides a second example of this quite natural semantic extension of “holding” an area of knowledge. A responsible opposing viewpoint comes from David Kimhi:

The Hebrew literally says “of all such as handle the harp and pipe” (OJPS), referring specifically to the fingering of these instruments, with the left hand.

But as Abraham ibn Ezra points out in his comment to Gen 45:8, where Joseph tells his brothers that he has become “a father to Pharaoh” (both men are quoted in English from my Commentators’ Bible translation), “father” means “instructor”:

A father to Pharaoh. That is, an instructor, like Jubal, who was the “father of all who play the lyre and the pipe” (4:21).

Now (I know you’ve been waiting) for the zither and shawm. Here are some of the translations you might see for these instruments:

• KJV: the harp and organ

• NETS: the harp and lyre

• NJPS: the lyre and the pipe

Nowadays, there is general agreement that the first of these instruments, the כִּנּ֖וֹר kinnor, is a stringed instrument and the other, the עוּגָֽב ugav, is what we would call today a woodwind. A kinnor in Modern Hebrew is a violin, so it was tempting to say “fiddle and flute,” but the biblical kinnor apparently did not have a neck. I quote the OED’s definition of zither:

1. A musical instrument of central European origin …

2. More generally: any of various other musical instruments consisting of a string or strings stretched across a soundboard of some type (and frequently also a resonator) without extending past the body of the instrument [emphasis added].

What Christians call the Sea of Galilee is locally called by its biblical name (e.g. Num 34:11) Lake Kinneret, because (as you’ll see if you click the link) it looks more or less like an ancient harp.

And here’s what the OED says about shawm:

A medieval musical instrument of the oboe class, having a double reed enclosed in a globular mouthpiece.

The kinnor is relatively common in the Bible, but the ugav occurs only three more times, all in close poetic connect with kinnor: twice in the book of Job, and once at the end of the book of Psalms:

^{Ps 150:3} Praise Him with blasts of the horn;

         praise Him with harp and lyre [וְכִנּֽוֹר].

⁴        Praise Him with timbrel and dance;

     praise Him with lute and pipe [וְעוּגָֽב].

When you look עוגב up in the old Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon, you’ll see they think it derives from a root עגב meaning (and I quote) “have inordinate affection, lust.” The somewhat amorphous connection between that verb and our noun is in Ezek 33:32, where the phrase ‏כְּשִׁ֣יר עֲגָבִ֔ים k’shir agavim occurs, translated variously as:

• KJV: a very lovely song

• NRSV: a singer of love songs

• NJPS: a singer of bawdy songs

• Robert Alter: a song of lust

Have I mentioned that you need to learn Biblical Hebrew if you want to read the Bible? Just saying.

In this case, I’m merely pointing out that a shir agavim sounds like an obvious connection between the verb agav and the instrument ugav. Whether or not this is linguistically correct, I think it would certainly have sounded so to the users of the language. I don’t want to put too much significance on this, but since the next verse in our story hints at violence, I thought I would mention that our verse might be hinting at sex.

Let me also mention the word agape, which comes into English (via Latin) from Hellenistic Greek ἀγάπη ‘love, charity, communal meal held in the early church’ (all per OED), which in turn derives from ancient Greek ἀγαπᾶν ‘to love’, “of unknown origin.” I’m sure I’m not the first to wonder whether Greek agape and Hebrew agav are related.

A number of scholars have pointed out that not only do Yaval and Yuval seem to echo the name of Abel; their professions seem to echo the name of Cain. A kinnor is spelled with a כ, not a ק, but it does evoke the qina, a dirge but none the less musical. Yaval’s miqne ‘livestock’ has the correct spelling to evoke קין qáyin alongside hével.

That combination will recur once more next time, when we meet Brother #3.