The Story of Cain and Abel (part 1): What’s in a Name?

Author: Hebrew-Bible.net

In the following few posts, we will delve into the story of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4).

It is among the most familiar stories of the Bible: God prefers Abel’s offerings over Cain’s. In his jealous rage, Cain murders Abel. God punishes him, making him an eternal nomad, yet providing him with a mark to stop people from killing him.

But as we delve into the Hebrew language, we will see that this is merely a simplified interpretation of the story, one of many. But before we start with the plot, let’s look at the first verse. This is the perfect place to contemplate the meaning of a name (Gen 4:1).

The translation seems straight forward. All except for a subtle point: The man’s name is never mentioned. In English and many other languages, including Hebrew, we call him Adam. But reading the text, he has no name. The Bible simply refers to him as the man (ha-a-dam).

We will discuss the importance of this (and whether a single man or many men were created) when we read chapters 1–2 about the creation. But for now, let’s contemplate What is the meaning of a person without a name?

God does not give names. This is the job he assigns to the man, as we can see in Gen 2:19–20. The following is only a rough translation, as we will translate it in detail when we analyse that chapter.

Eve, as well, was created without a name. When God first brings her to the man, he simply call her a woman, just like he had been doing to everything else.

Only in chapter 3, after God has told them their punishment for eating from the fruit of the garden, the man gives his woman a name. He calls her Eve (Cha-va).

But the man needed separation; the separation created by names, and God assigned the naming job to him. But in the Garden of Eden, the man, still not far away from being ‘in the image God’, his separation is still minimal, only as necessary: a fish, a bird, a woman. Proper names are not needed.

But getting banished, he separates and not only from the garden. Now everything, every item, every detail needs a name. It is not enough to know that the person with him is a woman. He feels obliged to give her a name. She becomes Eve. The separation from the oneness is compete.

This feeling of separation is the yearning we all feel towards the oneness we once had. We try to satisfy this yearning, often by creating more separations. Few and far between manage to discard names and get closer to the original state in which no names exist. But only the man, the one who had experienced the oneness first hand, remains nameless forever.

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