Eve’s Voice Is the Inclusio to the Cain and Abel Story – Maybe It’s Her Story Too

In the late first millennium midrash Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer (ch.21), a raven buries the body of a dead raven “before their eyes,” teaching Adam and Eve how to bury their son. The raven story is included in Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, “The Ten Generations,” 1.113, (Phila.: JPS, 1937; repr. of 1909).

Gen 4:26 is the last verse; Eve’s verse is 4:26. I read v.26 as the text’s confirmation that, as Eve announced with the naming of Seth, his seed continues on.

Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain, The Making and Unmaking of the World (NY: Oxford University Press, 1985), 192.

The אֶת in this phrase is generally understood to be the preposition “with” and not the sign of the accusative/direct object; otherwise she would be claiming that she made YHWH, which makes little sense in context and is certainly unbiblical. Though I lean toward Fox’s “as has YHWH,” he does comment “Hebrew difficult.”

The matriarch Sarah knew this, too. Still called Sarai, she said to Avram, “Behold please, YHWH has kept me from giving birth” (Gen. 16:2). YHWH is involved in all matriarchal pregnancies, as well as Hannah’s (1 Sam 1:19–20), and the wife of Manoah, Samson’s mother (Judges 13:2–3). See also b. Niddah 31a:

תנו רבנן: שלשה שותפין יש באדם, הקדוש ברוך הוא ואביו ואמו.

Our Rabbis taught: There are three partners in the creation of a person: The Holy One, Blessed be He, and his father, and his mother.

Editor’s note: See discussion in Joel Baden, “‘God Opened Her Womb’: The Biblical Conception of Fertility,” TheTorah (2017); Rachel Adelman, “The Paradigm of the Barren Woman: How God ‘Remembers’ on Rosh Hashanah,” TheTorah (2016).

Blood is evidence also in the appearance of Joseph’s murder by his brothers, though in the Joseph tale of contending brothers the evidence is a ruse to fool their father Isaac into thinking Joseph is dead (Gen 37:31–33). Both stories have in common the danger to families when brothers shirk the responsibility to safeguard brothers, even, or especially, against their own jealousy and aggression.

Genesis Rabbah 22.9. See also m. Sanhedrin 4:5, which also offers:

דבר אחר דמי אחיך שהיה דמו מושלך על העצים ועל האבנים

Another interpretation: His brother's bloods [means] his blood splattered on the trees and on the stones.

Avot d’Rabbi Natan (xx). The plural bloods in 4:10–11 “teaches that the blood of Abel’s ...descendants to the end of all generations destined to come forth from him, all stood crying out before the Holy One blessed be He. Thus we learn that one man’s life is equal to all the work of creation.”

Fox translates, “damned by you from the soil.” Translation of the curse of Cain depends on how the preposition מן is rendered. Both translations accord with the story, as Cain is cursed and is sent away, but I prefer the former, as it gives a direct nod to YHWH’s earlier curse of the ground.

אדמה adama and ארץ eretz are separable, which accords with Gen 2:5–7, when the eretz, translated by NJPS as “earth,” couldn’t support growth because YHWH hadn’t provided either rain on the earth or an adam to work the adama (v. 5). A subterranean wetness from the earth moistened the adama (v. 6), and in order that YHWH could form the adam from the dust, more likely clay, of the adama.

NJPS translates “as your presence.”

For a remarkable rereading of the peripatetic Cain, see José Saramago, Cain, A Novel, (Boston, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011).

שת, meaning put or set and also constitute and make, is often translated as “granted.” The JPS translation is “provided me with.” This strikes me as too formal and heavy, with three words when one is all the grateful mother needs.

NJPS isn’t alone in understanding this verse exclusively as labor pains, including the Septuagint (NETS): “with pains you will bring forth children.” Most contemporary translations do, too, including Alter and Fox, who translates as “I will multiply, multiply your pain from (your) pregnancy, with pains shall you bear children.”

Carol Meyers, Rediscovering Eve, Ancient Israelite Women in Context (NY: Oxford University Press, 2013), 93. Meyers’ translation of Gen. 3:16 is on p. 102. For Meyers’ groundbreaking discussion of Genesis 3:16, see chapter 5, “Eve out of Eden: Genesis 3:16.” Meyers isn’t the first to suggest that the woman suffers emotional distress rather than physical pain. See early English translations: John Wycliffe (d. 1384), “in sorrow thou shalt bear thy children”; Douay-Rheims, Catholic Church sponsored translation into English from Jerome's Vulgate (1582), “in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children”; and King James (1611), “in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.” See also b. Eruvim 100b, which connects pain not with the birthing of children but their rearing: צער גידול בנים, the pain of raising children.

Carol Meyers, Discovering Eve, Ancient Israelite Women in Context (NY: Oxford University Press, 1988 (107). In this earlier edition, Meyers translates עצב as travail, a word lost to modern American English for use in childbirth.

See Gen 11:29, where the childless Sarai is described as an עֲקָרָה, an uprooted one.

See Gen 1:11, 12. Like מַזְרִיעַ זֶרַע, in the vocabulary of seeds words are paired: זַרְעוֹ-בוֹ, specifying a particular fruit that has its seeds in it (Gen 1:11, 12); זֹרֵעַ זֶרַע, seeds that seed, translated by NJPS as “seed-bearing” (Gen 1:29). Abundance is rooted in the language and grammar.

Translation mine, via Fox.

The Bible’s first burial and depiction of unconcealed mourning and grief is Abraham’s for Sarah in Genesis.