Anon asked Staff ago Hello.
I am religious and wear a crocheted kippah. When doing reserve duty a friend asked me the meaning of the odd verse, “Now Cain said to his brother Abel, and while they were in the field.” What did Cain say to Abel? Does this not demand an explanation?
I am specifically asking you because I want an honest answer and not an evasive one.
One of the religious
jsadmin Staff answered 20 years ago
Hello.
There is no doubt that this verse looks as though it were cut off and as though words were missing from it.
The biblical story tells of Cain’s envy of his brother Abel, which caused Cain to kill his brother Abel. Within the story this cut-off and unclear verse appears: “Now Cain said to his brother Abel, and while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him” (Genesis 4:8). We are not told what Cain said to Abel, as though the words were cut out of the verse. We find what has been lost in the ancient text of the translation to Greek (the Septuagint): “Now Cain said to his brother Abel, ‘Let’s go out to the field.’ And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.”
But Chazal, who had the Masoretic text, the incomplete text, before them, made up what was missing from their own imaginations.
In the medrash (Bereshit Rabba parasha 22) it is asked: “What were [Cain and Abel] discussing [before Cain killed Abel]?” Three answers are given in the name of three different sages:
1. They argued about property.
2. They argued about in whose lot the Holy Temple would be built.
3. They argued about a woman.
Had the text of the Septuagint been before them Chazal would not have had to make up what they did.
The Septuagint, the translation into Greek, was made in the third century BCE, based on a Hebrew text which preceded the Masoretic text (the text we use today), which was crystallized only some 300 years later.
Sincerely,
Daat Emet