Biblical Hebrew Forum

[John Ronning <ronning AT ilink.nis.za>]

Peter_Kirk AT SIL.ORG wrote:

> Interesting, I had never looked at the X + qatal in Gen 4:1 before.
> Two possibilities: this is sequential and a genuine exception to the
> regular pattern;

Peter (or anyone), is it a "regular pattern" that when you have the
start of a new episode (as opposed to X + qatal within a story), X +
qatal is a flashback/pluperfect?

> or at least the first clause here is a flashback, an
> incident which took place before the preceding expulsion from Eden.
>
> Why does Randall take this as sequential? Why do (most at least)
> translations? Does it have something to do with a doctrinal
> presupposition that sex is evil and could not have been practised in
> paradise? I would have thought that Genesis 2:22-25 rather suggests
> that (in the view of the author) sex was appropriate in heaven.

Gen 5:3 indicates Adam fathered children in his likeness, who died. 
Seth is clearly post-fall.  Can Cain be pre-fall?  Presumably, any
children conceived before the fall would be like Adam and Eve in their
pre-fall innocence - part of God's good creation, unspoiled by sin. 
Cain, however, is clearly modeled after the serpent (liar, murderer,
cursed), so the question has nothing to do with whether sex was
appropriate in paradise.

>
>
> But there is also a question of how far the flashback continues. If
> the first clause of 4:1 is a flashback, do we have any reliable means
> of determining the end of the flashback. Were Cain and Abel born in
> Eden? (Eve's words at Cain's birth fit better in Eden, perhaps; and
> 3:20 makes more sense if Eve already "had become" (HFY:TFH) a mother).

A note re. the context: since Adam had been threatened with immediate
death for eating the fruit, Adam's naming of Eve may be taken as Adam's
recognition of God's mercy to them, that they did not immediately die
but would become parents (as Gen 3:15 indicates).

>
> Did they take up their different callings there? Presumably Cain did
> not murder Abel until after the expulsion! How, from the text, can we
> tell what the author meant?

Like with everything, which view makes the most sense of the context -
in this case, that Gen 4:1 chronologically follows the expulsion from
the Garden.

Regards,

John Ronning