The Curse Of Cain Reconsidered: A Study Of The Translation Of “Min Ha’adamah” In Genesis 4:11a

by Todd Borger

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

Genesis 4:11a has traditionally been rendered into English with some variation of “You are cursed from the ground.” E. A. Speiser’s interpretation of the Hebrew word ארור (“cursed”) to mean banishment has also had great influence on modern interpretation of this verse. A closer study of the grammar of the sentence and the larger context of Genesis 3 shows that a better translation of this verse is “You are cursed more than the ground.” This translation shows not only the extension of the curse from the serpent to the land and now to Cain, but it also shows the amplification of the curse as Cain is specifically cursed more than the ground was cursed in Genesis 3.

Key Words: Cain, curse, grammar, primeval history, translation

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The story of Cain and Abel in Genesis is fraught with several unsolvable riddles. Hardly a verse goes by in the chapter without some textual, linguistic, or theological problem arising. Genesis 4:11 is no exception to the general tenor of the chapter. Many English translations are unified in rendering the first part of this verse Cursed are you from the ground or with variations and explications. That simple sentence, however, is rife with problems, and there are notable exceptions within the English translation traditions. This essay will look at several of the problems in the verse and focus on one particular translation issue—the rendering of the preposition מן in the expressionמן האדמה (min ha’adamah).

This essay will look first at the variety of published English translation options. The purpose of that section is not to limit our discussion to the range of options chosen thus far. The section summarizing the various translation traditions is illustrative to show the range of possibilities. The following section will contain a brief survey of the history of interpretation of this verse, showing some of the interpretive options and opinions concerning this verse. Following that section will be an analysis of the syntactical options for translating מן האדמה. Finally, we will show how this phrase could be seen in relation to the larger context, both in the immediate context of Gen 4:10–11 and in the larger context of Genesis 3–4. The essay will conclude with the thesis that the best English translation of the phrase מן האדמה in Gen 4:11 is with the comparative you are cursed more than the ground.

English Translation Traditions

In comparing various English versions, we can detect several streams of tradition in translating this verse: (1) cursed from the earth; (2) cursed from the ground; (3) cursed upon the earth; (4) cursed and alienated from the ground; (5) [cursed and] banned from the ground; (6) cursed and driven from the ground; and (7) cursed more than the ground. These variations are grouped below.

Variation (1), cursed from the earth, appears in the Geneva/KJV/Web-ster traditions.

• Now therefore thou art cursed from the earth. (Geneva)
• And now art thou cursed from the earth. (KJV)
• So now you are cursed from the earth. (NKJV)
• And now [art] thou cursed from the earth. (Webster)

Variation (2), cursed from the ground, which only changes the translation of the noun adamah appears in the various Revised versions and in the 1917 JPS version.

• And now you are cursed from the ground. (NRS, RSV, NASB, ESV)
• Now you are cursed from the ground. (NAU)
• and now, cursed art thou from the ground. (YLT, JPS [1917], ASV, RV)
• You are now cursed from the ground. (CEB)
• And now be thou cursed from the ground. (LEE, Darby)
• Now, therefore, accursed, art thou,—from the ground. (ROT)

Variation (3) is unique, found only in the Douay-Rheims English translation. The preposition does not seem to be adequately dealt with in this version until one notes that the Douay-Rheims version was a translation not of the Hebrew Bible but of the Vulgate. Jerome translated the pertinent phrase super terram, which could be taken in a number of ways. The Douay-Rheims translators took the preposition super to mean on or above. It might be, however, that Jerome actually was using super in the sense of beyond, which would add weight to the translation proposed here—you are cursed beyond the earth, or you are cursed beyond what the earth was cursed.

• Cursed shalt thou be upon the earth. (Douay-Rheims, 1899)
• Nunc igitur maledictus eris super terram. (Vulgate)

Variation (4) is found in the various versions of the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB), now simply the Christian Standard Bible (CSB). The original version of this tradition inserted an explanation “with alienation” using brackets to indicate that they have made explicit in the translation something that was implicit in the original Hebrew. In the 2009 edition the brackets were removed and commas were used to set off the explanation “alienated.” While the commas in that version set the word “alienated” off as explanatory of the word “cursed,” there is no indication that this word is not represented explicitly in the Hebrew text. The new 2017 Christian Standard Bible has removed the second comma from the 2009 translation, apparently removing the explanatory function of the word, and furthering the confusion about its relationship to the original text.

• So now you are cursed with alienation from the ground. (HCSB, 2004)
• So now you are cursed, alienated, from the ground. (HCSB, 2009)
• So now you are cursed, alienated from the ground. (CSB, 2017)

Variation (5) is interesting. In 1985 the Catholic Jerusalem Bible translated the passage “cursed and banned” from the ground, apparently following Speiser’s Anchor Bible commentary on the matter of the meaning of cursed. In 1996, the New Living translators followed this lead but removed the explicative nature of banned and instead translated arur as “banished,” leaving out “cursed” altogether. In 2011, the new Catholic version came out and followed the same line, translating arur simply as “banned.” However, each of the New Living updates have gone the other way, translating the word as “cursed” and including the explicative “and banished.”

• Now be accursed and driven from the ground. (Jerusalem Bible, 1966)
• Now be cursed and banned from the ground. (New Jerusalem Bible, 1985)
• Now you are banned from the ground. (New American Bible, 2011)
• You are hereby banished from the ground. (NLT, 1996)Now you are cursed and banished from the ground. (NLT, 2004)

Variation (6) includes all of the NIV editions—British, American, and Reader’s—which have consistently used “cursed” with the explicative “and driven from.”

• Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground. (NIV, 1984, 2011)
• So I am putting a curse on you. I am driving you from the ground. (NIrV, 1998)

Finally, variation (7) is seen in the 1985 JPS translation, which went a completely different way by translating the phrase “more cursed than the ground.”

These variations show that there is slight variation in the understanding of the term אדמא, whether it is earth or ground. Since these terms can be, but are not always, synonymous in English, the difference is slight. There is greater variation over the meaning of ארור.1 Rather, there is not so much disagreement over the meaning but rather over how much information is implicit in the Hebrew text which must then be made explicit in the English translation. One underlying problem with the phrase ארור מן is that the translation be cursed from is virtually meaningless in English.[2] Perhaps better, it could be said that apart from this particular context, the English phrase be cursed from is virtually gibberish. All of the translation streams except two take the preposition min in a fairly uniform manner. The Douay-Rheims translation and the 1985 JPS translation are the exceptions.

History Of Interpretation

While most English translations have some variation of cursed are you from the ground, the situation was at one time more fluid. Johannes Bartholdy Glenthøj surveyed the interpretation of the Cain and Abel narratives in Syriac and Greek writers of the 4th to 6th centuries. He discovered these opinions about this text: the earth was the instrument of the curse; the earth was hostile and an unceasing enemy; Cain was cursed away from the earth; the curse of the earth was related to both Adam and Cain.[3]

Medieval Jewish commentators took different views of the passage. Rashi, for example, understood the phrase in the comparative sense. He wrote, “Even more than it [the earth] was already cursed for its iniquity, and also with this it continued to sin.”[4] Sellers, in a brief note to the American Oriental Society, agreed with that view, adding that Cain’s words in 4:13 should be taken as hyperbole.[5]

Cassuto followed Ibn Ezra in interpreting the phrase as showing the origin of the curse: you are cursed with a curse that is coming from the ground. For Cassuto the deciding factor was the parallelism between this verse and the preceding verse in which Abel’s blood is crying out “from the ground.”[6]

In modern commentary, Speiser, in both a 1960 article and his Anchor Bible commentary on Genesis, takes the preposition in the separative sense, but does so by reexamining the meaning of the root ארר.7 He is aided in this investigation by his student H. C. Brichto in his monograph on the meaning of curse in the Hebrew Bible.[8] Speiser understands the root ארר as a magical term which finds meaning in the biblical setting as a ban or banishment. The curse on the serpent in 3:14, then, is really a banishment from the rest of the animal kingdom. The curse on Cain in our passage is a banishment from working the land.[9] It is difficult to suggest motivation of a study, but Speiser seems to be motivated by the need to explain this one construction, ארור מן, and extending it out to the other uses of the verb, rather than locating the larger meaning and then bringing that meaning to this passage.

Keil offers two options for interpreting the prepositional phrase. He says it is difficult to choose between the separative and source meanings of the preposition. He concludes, however, that the association with the phrase “which has opened its mouth” lends itself to the understanding of the preposition as showing source. In other words, because the ground has taken in Abel’s blood, it is now giving back to Cain a curse.[10]

Von Rad takes the preposition as showing agent or at least means, but his language seems to push more toward the land itself as the author of the curse. “The earth itself is to deny [Cain] the power of its blessing. . . . Therefore the soil denies him fruit.”[11]

Mathews notes the connection between the curse of Cain and the curse of the serpent in Genesis 3, even going so far as to note the parallel construction of the curse. “Like father like ‘seed,’ both the serpent and Cain . . . receive the same retribution.” Yet even with such strong wording, Mathews preserves the distinction between the comparative use of the preposition for the serpent and the separative use of the preposition for Cain.[12]

Fretheim interprets the preposition ןמ as showing means. The ground mediated the curse from God to Cain by no longer producing fruit in keeping with Cain’s labors. The curse of Cain is thus an intensification of the earlier curse against the ground itself (3:17). The reader can see the intensification also in the themes of banishment, hiddenness from God, and the journey east.[13]

Wenham notes the parallels between the curse of the ground and the curse of Cain—“certainly there is an element of mirroring punishment in the curse pronounced on Cain”—yet he translates the prepositional phrase as separative, noting the comparative sense in a ַfootnote.[14]

From this brief survey, it is evident that the uniformity of modern English translations in regard to the preposition מן was not always the case. The next section will explore other possibilities for understanding the preposition as found in various guides to Hebrew syntax.

Syntactical Options

Having surveyed past interpretations of the phrase מן האדמה, we will now turn our attention to the range of meaning available to us from our understanding of Hebrew grammar. The preposition מןhas the basic idea of separation. Spatially, this meaning comes out as showing the direction from where something is coming. In a related way, it will indicate the origin of some person or thing. The idea of separation can be seen in temporal statements as well. The preposition can indicate the starting time from which some event takes place or is due to take place. Three related but more abstract uses are the partitive, privative, and comparative.

From these descriptions, we might create the following options for our understanding of Gen 4:11. The separative use of the preposition would give us “away from the ground.” This phrase could be understood in two different ways. Statically, it could mean the place the curse is occurring. Dynamically, it would show the direction away from which the cursing is taking place. The former is possible but does not yield a meaningful sentence (“The place where you are being cursed is away from the ground.” Then where is he? Up in the air?). The latter use requires a verb of movement, however. Cursing, normally understood, is not a verb of movement so it is unlikely to be separative without redefining the words. Understood as showing source, our phrase would carry the meaning “you are being cursed, and the curse is coming up out of the ground.” Related to this, we might say the ground is the agent of the curse—“you are being cursed by the ground.” There is some history of this tradition, as seen in Ibn Ezra and Cassuto (source) and Gunkel and von Rad (agent). The preposition used as a partitive marker—“the curse is taken from the curse in the ground”—makes good sense from the larger context of Genesis 3–4 and is related to the meaning of source.

Similar to the use of source is that of means. This use would yield a similar meaning but would preserve the agency of God and restrict the ground to a mediatorial role. This use is made explicit in Barnwell and Kuhn’s Translator’s Notes for the book of Genesis prepared for Bible translators.[15]

Finally, the comparative use of the preposition must be considered.

This use makes the best sense of the grammar of the sentence. The structure of noun + adjective/passive participle + min + noun is the basic form of the comparative expression. There is no information left implicit and no terms need to be redefined.

When making decisions about grammar, we must remember that native speakers do not go through these processes. Or rather, the process of making syntactic decisions happens at a subconscious level. The use of one form over another, or the proper interpretation of a term that has several uses, does not need to happen cognitively. This can be seen in the language use of children who are able to make proper decisions and interpretations with no explicit external knowledge of the language system. On the other hand, a more comprehensive awareness of the language system allows one to make puns and other word jokes.

Also, it is a mistake to think that one use of a preposition is more or less “literal” than another use. When students are learning the uses of the preposition מן it is often tempting for them to think or say something like “The Hebrew expression for ‘David is greater than Saul’ literally means ‘David is great from Saul.’” Of course, this is nonsense. The second sentence—David is great from Saul—is ungrammatical and gibberish. The Hebrew sentence that we translate as “David is greater than Saul” cannot literally mean something that is ungrammatical. The important point here is that when we are deciding between various uses of the preposition, it is a mistake to suppose that one of the meanings is more “literal” than another one. The literal meaning, if we must use that term, is the meaning that the speaker intended.

Contextual Translation

In considering the use of the preposition in this sentence and the meaning of the sentence as a whole, it will be good to consider the larger context and in particular, the prior context. There are several layers of context from which to draw.

First, we have within verse 11 another use of the preposition min. The ground has opened its mouth to take the blood of Abel from the hand of Cain. This use of the preposition is clearly separative. The blood is coming away from or out of Cain’s hand. It could be considered instrumental, but that seems unlikely. Keil followed this line of thinking in his commentary.[16]

A nearer context than this, however, is found at the end of the previous verse 10. The entire phrase מן האדמה is used there to indicate the source of the cry going out to God: “the sound of the blood of your brother crying out to me מן האדמה.” This sentence leads directly into our passage “And now, you are cursed מן האדמה.” The preposition is used to show the source or origin of the cry. It was coming from out of the ground. If we took this as parallel to our present passage, it would require the understanding that the curse was coming from out of the ground. Cassuto followed this opinion.[17]

Moving further away from our passage, we find the preposition used in 4:3, 4, 13, 14, and 16. None of these occurrences, however, have any grammatical relationship to the phrase under discussion here.

If we expand our context to include the word cursed, however, we find more interesting information. The phrase . . . ארור. . . מן occurs twice in the OT. Beside our context in 4:11 we find that the serpent was cursed מן כל הבהמה ובכל חית השדה in 3:14. The scarcity of this form is striking given two considerations. First, the root ארר occurs 63 times in the OT. The use of this root as a passive participle occurs 54 times. That we only find it in 2 of the 54 occurrences with the following preposition מן seems odd, or at least remarkable. But second, given that much of the usage of the curse formula in the OT is reserved for the blessings and curses in Numbers and Deuteronomy, and then given the dominant theme of cursing leading to expulsion from the land in Deuteronomy, if there were a typical formula with the meaning you are cursed and removed from the land, you would find it in Deuteronomy. But we don’t. Since we don’t find the passive participle used in this manner in the many formulaic uses of it, it would seem likely that we have a different understanding of its use in Genesis 3 and 4.

Two other passages in chapter 3 bear mention in regard to our passage in 4:11. First, we find cursing and the ground together in 3:17. We read that the land was cursed because of Adam’s sin: ארורה האדמה בעבורך. It is remarkable that in Genesis 3, humanity is not cursed, or at worst, is cursed secondarily through the curse of the land. The curse that befalls the earth in 3:17 certainly links to the curse of Cain in 4:11. The result of the curse of the land was felt most importantly in the difficulty of Adam’s future toil. The land would no longer easily yield its strength to Adam at his work. The produce would be difficult and only obtained through hard labor. Likewise, however we understand the curse of Cain in 4:11, it is clear that the result of that curse affected his ability to work the land and have it produce for him. In the same way, the curse of Cain affected his relationship with the land in similar, but more serious ways.

Second, the curse of the serpent in 3:14 must be compared to an earlier passage about the serpent. Genesis 3:1 reads והנחש היה ערום מכל חית השדה (“The serpent was more crafty than all the wildlife”). So the curse in 3:14 takes on a special meaning in that context: . . . מכל חית חשדה ארור אתה(“You are cursed more than all the wildlife”). The serpent changed from being arum to arur. In both of these verses, almost all English versions take these as comparative uses of the preposition.[18]

So we see the following progression in Genesis 3–4:

3:1	והנחש היה ערום מכל חית השדה the serpent was crafty min all the wildlife.
3:14	ארור אתה מכל הבהמה ומכל חית השדה You are cursed min all the cattle and min all the wildlife.
3:17	ארור האדמה בעבורך The ground is cursed because of you.
4:11	ארור אתה מן האדמה You are cursed min the ground.

 These connections alone lead the reader to hear a repetition of a formula. It is more than a formula, however, because the reader is hearing the repetition of an idea or concept. The serpent changed from being the most clever to the most cursed. Then the reader learns that the ground has been cursed, but that in turn Cain becomes more cursed than the land. While it is difficult to speak for what an ideal reader or an original audience might suppose concerning a story, it would seem both from the structure of the language and from the larger, prior context that the story is advancing along the lines of this curse. The curse is expanding and deepening as it moves from serpent to land to Cain. It not only expands to Cain, but it also deepens if we take the comparative understanding of מן.

If this connection were all that we saw between chapters three and four, there would be sufficient cause to read the prepositional phrase in 4:11 as a comparative. There is another connection, however, that serves to connect the two narratives.

In the second half of God’s declaration to Eve in 3:16, he said, “Your desire will be to your husband, and he will rule over you.” Note the Hebrew:ואל־אישך תשוקתך והוא ימשל־בך. Compare this statement with God’s words to Cain in Gen 4:7 concerning sin’s relationship to Cain:ואליך תשוקתו ואתה תמשל־בו. Allowing for the inflectional changes in person and gender, the two sentences are identical. The context of each statement, however, would seem to be entirely different, yet God expressed himself in the same way to both Eve and Cain about the way Eve would relate to Adam and personified sin would relate to Cain. While it is outside the bounds of this essay, I would argue that the translations of these two verses should be as similar as language and sense allows in order to mimic the matching of the two Hebrew sentences.

The patterning in these two chapters indicates that we do not have a new story in chapter four, but rather a continuation of the tragedy begun in chapter three.[19] As Sellers notes, the three blessings of chapters one and two—animals, mankind, the seventh day—have been followed by the three curses of chapters three and four—the serpent, the land, and Cain.[20]

If we shape the translation of 4:11 to match the translation of the same formula in 3:14, we must take one of two tacks. We can eliminate, it would seem, the instrumental sense of the preposition. That the curse against the serpent would come either through or from the other animals seems odd. We must conclude that the preposition should be taken as separative or comparative. Speiser, it was noted above, argues that both prepositions should be taken as separative and he does so by redefining the word ארר to mean “ban” or “banishment.” His argument on the meaning of the word has been followed by some and has made its way into several translation traditions. The argument seems circular, however, because he seems intent on finding a definition that fits this particular context and then extending that definition to other passages rather than establishing a definition outside of this passage and then applying it here. In other words, while his definition can be seen to fit in many, but not all, other passages, it would nowhere else be thought of as the primary meaning.

He seems to be intent on finding a consistent separative use of the preposition and then imposing his own definition on the verb to make it fit.

Problems

Speiser does note one problem with a uniform comparative translation. He says that we have a problem with a comparative translation in 3:14. Could it accurately be said that the serpent was cursed more than the animals when they had not explicitly been cursed at that point in time? It does not seem a stretch, however, to say that God’s statement to the serpent could be a use of hyperbole to emphasize the extent of the serpent’s curse. Besides, to say that the serpent was cursed more than the other animals does not logically necessitate that the other animals had been cursed, but only that the serpent’s curse was more severe than the non-existent curse of the animals.

Perhaps a more serious objection to translating our preposition in 4:11a as comparative lies in Cain’s understanding of the curse. He complained after God’s word to him that Yahweh had cast him out from upon the face of the earth and that he would be hidden from the face of Yahweh. Apparently whatever was meant in the curse, Cain took it as resulting in banishment.

This is a more serious problem but need not defeat the argument presented here. One could, as Sellers did, dismiss Cain’s speech as hyperbole. I am not certain about the warrant for the hyperbole in this case, but if it suffices as a solution, then so be it. There are other options, however. More interesting, perhaps, is the possibility of an intentional wordplay that results in a rather clear example of Janus parallelism, in which one literary element has one meaning when seen in the preceding context, but then changes meaning in light of the succeeding context. If our understanding of the grammar of Genesis 3 is correct, then the reader who is approaching this text for the first time and who reads only as far as 4:11, I believe, would have no option but to understand the curse of Cain as a comparison showing the severity of Cain’s curse compared to the curse on the ground in 3:17. It is only when one arrives at 4:14 that one sees a different possibility for understanding the grammar. Could it be that Yahweh and Cain, and then the author of Genesis, created a sort of wordplay with the prepositional phrase מן האדמה? I do not believe that the existence of this Janus parallelism here is necessary for the argument of this essay. It could simply be that Cain understood that the effects of this curse on him would include his banishment from the cursed land that he had polluted with his brother’s blood.[21] The existence of a wordplay at this point, however, would completely sew together the narratives of Genesis 3 and 4 into a whole piece. The destructive behavior of mankind in ever- increasing wickedness would be inescapable.

Conclusion

Based upon the larger context of Genesis 3 and 4 as well as the syntactic possibilities for the phrase ארור מן האדמה, I have concluded that it is best to translate Gen 4:11a as “you are more cursed than the ground.”

If we translate the preposition in 3:14 as a comparative, then how does our translation affect our understanding of 4:11? If God said to Cain that he was cursed more than the land, we would seem to have a very important addition to our understanding of these chapters. It has been often noted that while the serpent and the land are cursed in chapter three, the two humans avoid directly being cursed. They did suffer the effects of the curse on the serpent and the land, but only secondarily. Now, with the murder of Abel in Genesis 4, mankind entered directly into the world of the cursed, joining the serpent and the earth. The curse on Cain, however, was not simply an addition to the curses of Genesis 3 but was specifically worse than those curses.

The narrative of the fall in chapter three is not a climax (or anti-climax) to which additional stories are added, but is rather the beginning of a longer decline. This decline is seen here in chapter four with the curse of Cain, continues with the boasting of Cain’s descendant Lamech about his own evil in comparison to Cain (4:23–24), and then comes to a low point in Noah’s generation in which “every inclination of his heart was only evil all the time” (6:5, 11–12). Cain’s curse was not merely another type of curse or a kind of retelling or reapplication of the curse of the land in chapter three. Rather, it was very specifically an intensification of the tragedy of Genesis 3. While Adam’s sin may have led to the sin of all men, it was clearly not the worst that mankind could or would do, as we see in the very next generation. Even Cain’s sin was not the worst that mankind would do, as Lamech’s boast would show and as Noah’s generation made universal.

Notes

1. For general works on the concept of curse, see Hans Ulrich Steymans, “Blessing and Curse: Old Testament,” in Religion Past and Present (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 2:126-28; George Scheper, “Cursing,” in Encyclopedia of Religion (2nd ed.; Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2005), 3:2097-2108; Herbert Chanan Brichto, The Problem of “Curse” in the Hebrew Bible (Journal of Biblical Literature Monograph Series 13; Philadelphia: Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, 1963); Douglas Stuart, “Curse,” in Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 1:1218-19.
2. It would make sense in English only in used temporally. For example, He was cursed from his youth.
3. Johannes Bartholdy Glenthøj, Cain and Abel in Syriac and Greek Writers (4th– 6th centuries) (Louvain: Peeters, 1997), 178.
4. Genesis, Volume One: Bereshith, Noach, Lech Lecha, Vayera: Translation of Text, Rashi, and Other Commentaries (trans. A. J. Rosenberg; New York: Judaica Press, 1993), 69.
5. Ovid R. Sellers, Journal of the American Oriental Society 50 (1930): 336.
6. Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary of the Book of Genesis (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1978), 219.
7. E. A. Speiser, “An Angelic ‘Curse’: Exodus 14:20,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 80 (1960): 198-200; idem, Genesis: Introduction, Translation, and Notes (AB; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964), 24.
8. Brichto, The Problem of “Curse” in the Hebrew Bible, 77-117.
9. Speiser, “An Angelic ‘Curse’,” 198; idem, Genesis, 24.
10. C. F. Keil, Commentary on the Old Testament (vol. 1, Pentateuch; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996 [Reprinted from Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1866-91]), 1:71
11. Gerhard von Rad, Genesis (rev. ed.; OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972), 106. Von Rad very much reflects Gunkel’s earlier interpretation of Genesis as a book of legends. Hermann Gunkel, Genesis (trans. Mark E. Biddle; Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997).
12. Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26 (NAC 1A; Nashville: B&H, 1996), 275.
13. Terence E. Fretheim, “The Book of Genesis,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible (vol. 1; Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), 374.
14. Gordon J Wenham, Genesis 1-15 (WBC 1; Waco: Word, 1987), 107.
15. Katherine Barnwell and Hanni Kuhn, Translator’s Notes on Genesis 1:1-11:26 (Dallas: SIL International, 2007). These works are important for understanding the significance of explicit and implicit information in any text. While one may not agree with the decisions of the authors, these linguists and translators are often more sensitive to the presence of implicit information than the casual or even the academic reader.
16. Keil, Commentary on the Old Testament, 1:71.
17. Cassuto, Genesis, 219.
18. One notable exception is Speiser’s commentary, which consistently translates the formula arur min as separative. The Common English Bible takes 3:14 in a partitive sense you are the one cursed out of all the farm animals. The 1991 New American Bible translates this passage with a separative understanding of the preposition “you shall be banned from all the animals.” The 2011 revision, however, changed this language to the comparative use.
19. Cf. Alan J. Hauser, “Linguistic and Thematic Links between Genesis 4:1– 16 and Genesis 2-3,” JETS 23 (1980): 297-305, and Devora Steinmetz, “Vineyard, Farm, and Garden: The Drunkenness of Noah in the Context of Primeval History,” JBL 113 (1994): 193-207. While Hauser points out several interesting links between these passages, he misses completely the connections made in the present work. He does not deal with the meaning of the curse in 4:11 other than to apparently accept uncritically Speiser’s view. Steinmetz extends the links to include the conclusion of the Noah narrative.
20. Sellers, 336.
21. In a similar way, Steinmetz implicitly accepts a bifurcated view of the meaning of the prepositional phrase. She accepts both the earth as the means of the curse and also in a separative sense taking Speiser’s understanding of the curse as banishment. “[B]ecause Cain has violated the earth, the earth is the vehicle of Cain’s punishment . . . and this curse constitutes a banishment from upon the earth” (Steinmetz, “Vineyard, Farm, and Garden,” 201).