4:9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” 4 And he replied, “I don’t know! Am I my brother’s guardian?” 5 4:10 But the Lord said, “What have you done? 6 The voice 7 of your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!
3:1 I said,
“Listen, you leaders 13 of Jacob,
you rulers of the nation 14 of Israel!
You ought to know what is just, 15
3:2 yet you 16 hate what is good, 17
and love what is evil. 18
You flay my people’s skin 19
and rip the flesh from their bones. 20
3:3 You 21 devour my people’s flesh,
strip off their skin,
and crush their bones.
You chop them up like flesh in a pot 22 –
like meat in a kettle.
3:4 Someday these sinners will cry to the Lord for help, 23
but he will not answer them.
He will hide his face from them at that time,
because they have done such wicked deeds.”
2:9 The one who builds his house by unjust gain is as good as dead. 24
He does this so he can build his nest way up high
and escape the clutches of disaster. 25
2:12 The one who builds a city by bloodshed is as good as dead 26 –
he who starts 27 a town by unjust deeds.
1 tn Heb “and he said.” The referent (the
2 sn Who told you that you were naked? This is another rhetorical question, asking more than what it appears to ask. The second question in the verse reveals the
3 sn The Hebrew word order (“Did you from the tree – which I commanded you not to eat from it – eat?”) is arranged to emphasize that the man’s and the woman’s eating of the fruit was an act of disobedience. The relative clause inserted immediately after the reference to the tree brings out this point very well.
4 sn Where is Abel your brother? Again the
5 tn Heb “The one guarding my brother [am] I?”
6 sn What have you done? Again the
7 tn The word “voice” is a personification; the evidence of Abel’s shed blood condemns Cain, just as a human eyewitness would testify in court. For helpful insights, see G. von Rad, Biblical Interpretations in Preaching; and L. Morris, “The Biblical Use of the Term ‘Blood,’” JTS 6 (1955/56): 77-82.
8 tn Heb “And she again gave birth.”
9 sn The name Abel is not defined here in the text, but the tone is ominous. Abel’s name, the Hebrew word הֶבֶל (hevel), means “breath, vapor, vanity,” foreshadowing Abel’s untimely and premature death.
10 tn Heb “and Abel was a shepherd of the flock, and Cain was a worker of the ground.” The designations of the two occupations are expressed with active participles, רֹעֵה (ro’eh, “shepherd”) and עֹבֵד (’oved, “worker”). Abel is occupied with sheep, whereas Cain is living under the curse, cultivating the ground.
11 tn The Hebrew verb נָסַע (nasa’) means “to journey”; more specifically it means to pull up the tent and move to another place. The construction here uses the preterite of this verb with its infinitive absolute to stress the activity of traveling. But it also adds the infinitive absolute of הָלַךְ (halakh) to stress that the traveling was continually going on. Thus “Abram journeyed, going and journeying” becomes “Abram continually journeyed by stages.”
12 tn Or “the South [country].”
13 tn Heb “heads.”
14 tn Heb “house.”
15 tn Heb “Should you not know justice?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “Of course you should!”
16 tn Heb “the ones who.”
17 tn Or “good.”
18 tn Or “evil.”
19 tn Heb “their skin from upon them.” The referent of the pronoun (“my people,” referring to Jacob and/or the house of Israel, with the
20 tn Heb “and their flesh from their bones.”
21 tn Heb “who.”
22 tc The MT reads “and they chop up as in a pot.” The translation assumes an emendation of כַּאֲשֶׁר (ka’asher, “as”) to כִּשְׁאֵר (kish’er, “like flesh”).
23 tn Heb “then they will cry out to the
24 tn Heb “Woe [to] the one who profits unjustly by evil unjust gain for his house.” On the term הוֹי (hoy) see the note on the word “dead” in v. 6.
25 tn Heb “to place his nest in the heights in order to escape from the hand of disaster.”
26 tn On the term הוֹי (hoy) see the note on the word “dead” in v. 6.
27 tn Or “establishes”; or “founds.”