Parashat HaShavua 5785: Bereshit

(10) And He said, “What have you done? The voice of the blood of your brother cries out to me from the ground. (11) Therefore, now you are cursed from the earth that has opened to receive the blood of your brother from your hand. (12) When you till the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you, a wanderer and a fugitive on the earth.”

When you work the ground, it will no longer give you of its strength. You will be unsettled, and a wanderer on the earth.

נע ונד A VAGABOND AND A WANDERER — You shall not be permitted to dwell in one place.

[AND A WANDERER.] Some explain nad (wanderer) to mean a mourner, as in to bemoan (la-nud) him (Job 2:11). However, my opinion is that nad is a synonym for na (fugitive). Nedod (wander) in Lo, then would I wander (nedod) far off (Ps. 55:8) is analogous.

(11) When Job’s three friends heard about all these calamities that had befallen him, each came from his home—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They met together to go and to bemoan [with] him and comfort him.

(2) to bemoan Heb. לנוד, as in (Isa. 51:19): “who will lament (ינוד) for you?”; (Jer. 22:10), “neither bemoan (תנדו) him.”

(10) Do not weep for the dead

And do not bemoan him;

Weep rather for him who is leaving,

For he shall never come back

To see the land of his birth!

(7) I said, “O that I had the wings of a dove!

I would fly away and dwell [with the Shekina?]; (8) surely, I would flee far off;

I would wander in the wilderness; selah (9)

I would soon find me a refuge from the sweeping wind, from the tempest.”

“I said: Would that I had wings like a dove; I would fly away and come to rest” (Psalms 55:7). Why like a dove? Rabbi Azarya in the name of Rabbi Yudan said: Because all other birds, when they are weary, they rest on a stone or on a tree, but a dove, when it flies and grows weary, it folds one of its wings and flies with the other wing. “I would wander [nedod] far away” (Psalms 55:8) – movement after movement, wandering after wandering.

(5) Your threshing shall overtake the vintage, and your vintage shall overtake the sowing; you shall eat your fill of bread and dwell securely in your land.

(4) Scripture states, and dwell securely in your land, because people wander from their place in days of famine. Its meaning is similar to [the ground] will no longer yield its strength to you; a wanderer and a fugitive on the earth (Gen. 4:12).

(Lev. 25:14:) “When you sell property to your kinsman.” This text is related (to Prov. 28:22), “An evil-eyed person moves quickly after wealth, [and he does not know that loss will come to him].” This verse speaks about many people. “An evil-eyed person moves quickly after wealth.” This was Cain. The Holy One, blessed be He, said, “You moved quickly to inherit the world. By your life, you shall have a loss [in the matter].” Ergo (in Prov. 28:22), “and he does not know that loss will come to him.” And what happened to him? That he wandered about the world, as stated (in Gen. 4:12), “you shall become a ceaseless wanderer on the earth.”

נע ונד תהיה בארץ, this is yet another curse, one that most certainly applied only to Kayin personally, a curse which resulted in his not being able to feel at home permanently in any one place on earth. This was something psychological, forcing Kayin to adopt a nomadic lifestyle, trying his luck at growing things by moving to a new location every time he experienced crop failure. G’d did not kill him outright, something that every murderer deserves. ...Although G’d had not killed Kayin, he was under sentence of exile in addition to the earth having been cursed as an instrument of providing his livelihood. The words נע ונד are as if the word נע had been repeated, stressing the seriousness of the curse. Our sages, in commenting on the line “anyone killing Kayin, he (Kayin) will be avenged sevenfold,” explain that seeing that Kayin personally had not been executed for his murder, people would reason that murder goes relatively unpunished. In order for people not to draw such a conclusion from what had not happened to Kayin, the curse of murdering even someone already as guilty as Kayin, had to be highlighted in such terms.

Another reason explaining why Kayin was not subjected to immediate execution is that Kayin, being the first murderer, had not known that the penalty for murder is execution. Subsequent generations knowing the penalty for murder, could not expect to be treated so leniently. It is even possible to consider Kayin’s killing Hevel as having been an inadvertent killing, seeing that he did not know what injury would prove fatal. He had never seen a person who had been killed, and when hitting Hevel he had not thought that he had injured him fatally. If that is so, the penalty of exile, “you will not be at home anywhere on earth,” is exactly the penalty devised by the Torah for people who killed inadvertently