Genesis - Parashath Bereshith - Fourth aliyah to end.

FOURTH ALIYAH TO END: CAIN, ABEL, AND VIRTUE ENVY. FOURTH ALIYAH: THE HOUSE OF CAIN. We now come to the story of Cain and Abel [4:1 - 16]. Two things stand out for me about this episode: (1) Cain's murderous jealousy of Abel is not motivated by envy for some desirable worldly possession - wealth or fame or the love of a woman - but for the favor of G-d; and (2) Cain and Abel are not employed in the same enterprise (Cain is a farmer, Abel a herdsman) - they're not playing the same game - so it's not as if they were competing to see who could be the best farmer or the best shepherd. Humans are competitive, like all living things; unlike the other animals, we have the ability to follow a moral code, and we are competitive even in that. I'm going to use the term "virtue envy" to refer to the envy of another person's moral standing. Mundane envy - the desire for another's worldly attainments - is quite bad enough. It is among the most pernicious of emotions, and with good reason is it included in the Ten Commandments. And it's always easier to tear the other guy down than to build ourselves up: if Reuben is conspicuously wealthy, and Simon is struggling to get by, then Simon might be tempted to wish ill fortune upon Reuben. This is the basis for the idea of the "evil eye" [ עין הרע | ayin ha-ra] in Jewish tradition. If mundane envy is a destructive emotion, how much more so is virtue envy. When we encounter a person known to be of excellent moral character and reputation, we might feel uncomfortable about ourselves. And we should! But the correct response is to work on oneself to improve. So when Cain's offering is rejected and Cain is "grieved and downcast", the Creator takes notice, and even tries to rehabilitate him: [4:7] "If you improve, there is advancement; but if you do not improve, sin crouches at the gate. And its desire is towards you, but you shall rule over it." In that last phrase, the language unmistakably parallels 3:16, describing the woman's desire for the man; and in fact the Hebrew word used here for "desire" [ תְּשׁ֣וּקָת֔וֹ| teshuqah] is very rare in the Bible, occurring only in these two verses and in Song of Songs 7:11. But Cain won't hear of it. He remains unredeemable. In 4:8, Cain kills his brother Abel. The Creator confronts Cain and sentences him to be "a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth" (4:10). Why did Cain kill Abel? Did he observe his younger brother's sacrifices [4:1 - 4] and think, "I, too, am a firstborn - perhaps he means to sacrifice me as he sacrificed those sheep"? And so, projecting his own violent impulses on his brother? Yoram Hazony makes the case that the story of Cain and Abel prefigures a recurring theme in the Hebrew Scriptures, where "the shepherd and the farmer are taken as representing contrasting ways of life, and two different ethics, which come into sharp conflict time and again." (Hazony, Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, p. 104.) Here I'll just point out the irony of Cain's punishment: he is sentenced to be a perpetual wanderer, re-creating his murdered brother's nomadic lifestyle. He must literally walk a mile in his brother's shoes. Cain, still the victim in his own eyes, complains that [3:13 - 14] "my sin is too great to bear ... whoever finds me will kill me!" The Creator declares [4:15] "whoever kills Cain shall be avenged sevenfold" and sets a distinguishing mark on Cain's forehead "so that none who find him shall harm him". So Cain is protected from vigilante justice - but a fateful precedent is set. In 4:15, the key word [ שִׁבְעָתַ֖יִם | shiv'atayim] may mean either "sevenfold" (and that's how I'm reading it here) or "seven generations". The descendents of the exiled Cain are named in short order in 4:17 - 18. We learn nothing about their lives until we get to Lemekh. FIFTH ALIYAH: LEMEKH'S WIVES. Lemekh's wives Adah and Zillah are the first women mentioned by name after Eve, and Zillah and her daughter Na'amah are the first mother/daughter pair identified in the Bible. And there is a Rabbinic tradition that Na'amah was the wife of Noah. SIXTH ALIYAH: LEMEKH'S BOAST. [4:23] "I have slain a man for wounding me, and a lad for bruising me. For sevenfold is Cain avenged, and Lemekh seventy-seven." The passage is cryptic and difficult to translate, and other interpretations exist. (Rashi offers a rather elaborate explanation involving a hunting accident.) But I think the most straightforward - and also the most disturbing - is simply that he is boasting about his willingness to kill. "Perhaps, then, what Lamech is saying (quite barbarically) is that not only has he killed a man for wounding him, he has not hesitated to kill a mere boy for hurting him." (Alter, p.21, note.) Dennis Prager agrees: "Lamech boasts that if any man touches him, he will kill seventy-seven of his opponent's men in retaliation. This type of unbalanced retribution was the norm in all societies." (Genesis: God, Creation, and Destruction, p. 74) Notice the connection with Cain: Lemekh invokes the precedent of Cain's mark to justify his own ability to kill with impunity. Man has taken God's mercy and perverted it into a literal license to kill. The result is society's descent into barbarism. Is it any wonder the Creator is angry? The line of Cain disappear from the text, seemingly without trace. We do not know whether they intermarried with the descendants of Seth (chapter 5). [4:25 - 26] Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son, and she named him Seth ... and a son was born to Seth, and he named him Enosh. Then it was begun [or: it became profaned] to call upon the name of the L-rd. We can only guess at Eve's anguished state of mind as we meet her again, for the last time in Genesis. There's an ambiguity in the last part of 4:26: the Hebrew word [huchal] can mean either "it was begun" or "it became profaned". The descendants of Seth are chronicled [4:6 - 31] in formulaic fashion. Each entry in the list is given with a lifespan in years, and all but one end with the words "... and he died". Of Enoch, we are told cryptically that "he walked with G-d, and was not, for G-d took him". (In the later list of Shem's descendants [11:9 - 26], the phrase "and he died" is omitted because there are no exceptions to the pattern.) The names of Seth's descendants appear to echo the names of the line of Cain. Zvi Grumet (Genesis: Creation to Covenant, pp. 72-74) offers an interesting interpretation of this, arguing that "the descendants of Seth are intentionally giving themselves names that mirror Cain and his line ... [the] two genealogies paint for us an image of six generations desperately trying to counteract a divine curse." (This refers to the "seven generations" reading of 4:15, see above.) SEVENTH ALIYAH: LEMEKH II, NOAH, AND THE DECREE AGAINST MAN. And here we see the appearance of the second Lemekh [5:25]. This Lemekh has a son whom he prophetically names Noah (pronounced "noach" with a guttural “ch” - it's not the same as the popular girls' name No'ah, which is spelled and pronounced differently in Hebrew). The text ties the name Noah - [noach] in Hebrew - to the verb [nachem], which incidentally has two meanings, both of which are in play here. Usually [nachem] means to comfort or to console, and that's how it is explained as relating to Noah's name [5:29]. But also, and much less commonly, it can mean "to regret", and it is also used in that sense here, when the Creator is described as having "regretted" making man [6:7]. Noah's three sons [5:32] are apparently the first multiple birth in the Bible. Shem, Ham, and Japheth were born in the same year to the same woman (Noah is not recorded as having a second wife or concubine) and so must have been triplets. It's also worth noting that Noah becomes a father late in life, relatively speaking, compared to his ancestors. At 500 years old, he is past middle age (500/950 = 10/19) when he begets his three sons. Chapter 6 opens with a description of the lawless violence that has engulfed the world. There's also a reference to the "Nephilim", whose exact identity remains a mystery. The Creator places a limit on man's lifespan - perhaps to force man to start thinking beyond his own immediate gratification, and about the future. I want to zoom in on [6:2]. "The sons of the mighty [ בְנֵי־הָֽאֱלֹהִים֙| bnei ha-elohim] saw the daughters of man ..." Now this is tricky to translate, because "elohim" can mean either "God" or "mighty ones", but it's clearly used in the second sense here. Also notice that this verse very subtly echoes the refrain of 1:4, etc., "... and God [Elohim] saw that it was good," only here of course it's in a negative sense. And there's an irony in the juxtaposition of "bnei ha-elohim", as the bad guys, with "bnoth ha-adam" as the innocent party. Now the next part of the verse is often translated in English as "... [they] saw that the daughters of man were fair (or, "beautiful", etc.)", but the word that's actually used [ טֹבֹ֖ת|tovoth] simply means "good". (See Rashi on Numbers 24:5.) And in fact that's how the Artscroll edition renders it, and I think it's the most straightforward understanding of the verse - and here we see another instance of virtue envy. The daughters of man may have been beautiful or not, but they carried themselves with decency and dignity - they were morally good. And it was this goodness that the corrupt, powerful men saw in them - and they despised them for it. [1734]