Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/213

 16. and dwelt in the land of Nôd] The vb. is not necessarily inconsistent with nomadic life, as Sta. alleges (see Gn. 13$12$, 1 Ch. 5$10$ etc.). It is uncertain whether the name is traditional (We. Gu.), or was coined from the participle = 'land of wandering' (so most); at all events it cannot be geographically identified. If the last words belong to the original narrative, it would be natural to regard Ḳayin as representative of the nomads of Central Asia (Knob. al.); but the phrase may have been added by a redactor to bring the episode into connexion with the account of the Fall.

The Origin of the Cain Legend.—The exposition of 4$1-16$ would be incomplete without some account of recent speculations regarding the historical or ethnological situation out of which the legend arose. The tendency of opinion has been to affirm with increasing distinctness the view that the narrative "embodies the old Hebrew conception of the lawless nomad life, where only the blood-feud prevents the wanderer in the desert from falling a victim to the first man who meets him." A subordinate point, on which undue stress is commonly laid, is the identity of Cain with the nomadic tribe of the Ḳenites. These ideas, first propounded by Ew., adopted by We., and (in part) by Rob. Sm., have been worked up by Sta., in his instructive essay on 'The sign of Cain,'[E] into a complete theory, in which what may be called the nomadic motive is treated as the clue to the significance of every characteristic feature of the popular legend lying at the basis of the narrative. Although the questions involved are too numerous to be fully dealt with here, it is necessary to consider those points in the argument which bear more directly on the original meaning of vv.$2$.

1. That the figure of Cain represents some phase of nomadic life may be regarded as certain. We have seen (p. 110) that in v.$2$ the name Cain has a collective sense; and every descriptive touch in these closing vv. is characteristic of desert life. His expulsion from the and the phrase, express (though not by any means necessarily,—*

V septuplum punietur; S ; T$1-16$ (hence the idea that Cain was killed by Lamech the 7th from Adam [see on v.$13ff.$]).—16. ] [E], G (?) with variants (see Nestle, MM, p. 9).—ΣΘV (habitavit profugus in terra) [T?] take the word as a participle; but the order of words forbids this.—] see on 2$O$. 'In front of E.' and 'East of E.' would here be the same thing (3$24$).[Footnote: E ''Ak. Reden'', 229-73.]
 * Σ. ; Θ. ;