Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/211

 (2) he is to be a vagrant and wanderer in the earth. The second is the negative consequence of the first, and need not be regarded as a separate curse, or a symbol of the inward unrest which springs from a guilty conscience.

13-16. Mitigation of Cain's punishment.—13. My punishment is too great to be borne] So the plea of Cain is understood by all modern authorities. The older rendering: my guilt is too great to be forgiven (which is in some ways preferable), is abandoned because the sequel shows that Cain's reflexions run on the thought of suffering and not of sin; see below.—14. from Thy face I shall be hidden] This anguished cry of Cain has received scant sympathy at the hands of comm, (except Gu.). Like that of Esau in 27$34$, it reveals him as one who had blindly striven for a spiritual good,—as a man not wholly bad who had sought the favour of God with the passionate determination of an ill-regulated nature and missed it: one to whom banishment from the divine presence is a distinct ingredient in his cup of misery.—every one that findeth me, etc.] The object of Cain's dread is hardly the vengeance of the slain man's kinsmen (so nearly all comm.); but rather the lawless state of things in the desert, where any one's life may be taken with impunity (Gu.). That the words imply a diffusion of the human race is an incongruity on either view, and is one of many indications that the Cain of the original story was not the son of the first man.

This expostulation of Cain, with its rapid grasp of the situation, lights up some aspects of the historic background of the legend. (1) It

lowed by inf. without (G-K. § 114 m).—] an alliteration, as in 1$2$. Best rendered in anon. Gr. Vns. (Field): ; V vagus et profugus; G (incorrectly).

13. On ([root] ġawa$y$ = 'go astray': Dri. Sam. 134 f.) in the sense of punishment of sin, see the passages cited in BDB, s.v. 3., in the sense of 'bear guilt,' seems peculiar to P and Ezk.; elsewhere it means to 'pardon iniquity' (Ex. 34$7$, Nu. 14$18$, Ho. 14$3$, Mic. 7$18$, Ps. 32$5$). This consideration is not decisive; but there is something to be said for the consensus of anc. Vns. (G ; V veniam merear, etc.) in favour of the second interpretation, which might be retained without detriment to the sense if the sentence could be read as a question.—14. ] instead of suff. is unlike J. In the next v. after inf. was