Bereshit: The First Murder in History

Good evening. We stopped at the point where the Creator is, as it were, placed in the dock. He let it happen — He let it happen — and now He turns to Kayin to call him to account, and Kayin does not accept it: in principle, it is You who are my brother’s keeper. What can we answer to this silence of G-d, to this indifference of G-d, to this eclipse of G-d, when violence rages in the world and a man kills his brother without truly knowing the essential reason that brought him to this point? Listen: the world of creation functions normally without the Creator having to be constantly involved in its running, and the world does seem to answer the Creator’s original will, since everything proceeds according to that will.

The tree has always been translated as the Tree of Knowledge — the Tree of Knowledge — but da’at is not only knowledge; it is, first and foremost, will. It is the tree that determines the will for good and evil, bearing in mind that good and evil are not in the nature of things; they are not in the nature of creation. Good and evil are the fruit of man’s commitment: it is he who, in a sense, directs his action toward what he considers good — which is what puts his own life at risk. So if man’s original will had not depended on his choice, on his commitment, the world would have answered the Creator’s will just like the other laws of nature. If free will had been removed — if desire, which is the fruit of instinct and impulse, and covetousness, which is the fruit of an intellectual process, had been removed — then man would not have sinned; he would not have had to answer for his misdeeds. All the more so, listen: if an intimate friend whom I trust sets me on a path, I can say that, in the end, I may walk forward with my eyes closed; I have nothing to fear. And at the very beginning G-d gives man the woman, ezer kenegdo (a helper corresponding to him), to be his helpmate, the one who helps him fulfil himself.

I need no longer doubt this initiative of the Creator; of course I rely on it completely. Who could have imagined that a trap truly lay here, and that she would be the cause of it all? But the text teaches us that without desire and covetousness having been injected into man’s path — and this through the very being called upon to complete him, to bring him to full realization — man could not have broadened the scope of his thought or the reach of his achievement in space and in time. He could neither have spread out horizontally nor risen vertically, because he would lack these two important ingredients, which are precisely what open him to the outer world and to the world beyond. And let us keep in mind that for now, man’s life takes place within the family unit, in complete intimacy with his wife and at the level of the children — as if to say that everything depends on the health of this family unit for the future of all humanity.

We cannot project anything at all outward unless, first and foremost, we have sought to make the climate, the atmosphere and the conditions of life within the family unit wholesome: a man in relation to his spouse, and in relation to his children. We have already pointed out the eclipse of the parents in this struggle between the children; perhaps we will come back to it. But the fact is that Kayin is taken to task by the Creator for having killed his brother. For one must not read “Kol demei achicha tzo’akim elai min ha-adamah” (קוֹל דְּמֵי אָחִיךָ צֹעֲקִים אֵלַי מִן הָאֲדָמָה, Genesis 4:10) as “the voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me.” It is not toward Me that it cries; it rises up against Me. It asks Me: why did You let it happen?

So I must intervene. And one can see how, in life, this dialogue between man — between Kayin — and the Creator takes place at the level of conscience. For until now the moral order has not yet appeared; it does not exist. Man does not know that he could kill his brother; but there is indeed a will to diminish the other’s authority, to subjugate it. That is a fact. That is how man functions. Otherwise he feels threatened; he needs to be recognized. Recognition goes from below to above; it is hard to recognize from above toward below — and yet that is what is asked of us, and that is where morality lies: when I reach out toward the other, when I could very well ignore him or do without him. But no — I want to make him a partner in my project. Why? Because I sense that I could multiply tenfold my creative possibilities, my capacity for achievement, if he himself joins in, if he himself is associated with what I do. Now we know very well that the consequences are not limited — are never limited — to the person one is dealing with; they concern his children, his grandchildren, those around him, because that is the cybernetic movement of life here below. So we understand Kayin when he says: You are going to curse me once again! And we have said that the curse is first of all the curse of the ground.

Now the ground, the adamah, is what allows Adam to grow, to flourish, to develop; it is the ground that nourishes him. From the moment the ground is cursed, it is man who is deprived of his possibilities of growth. If the ground does not let me take root — because to fulfil oneself, to develop, one must be able to drop anchor — if we are condemned to wandering, “na va-nad tihyeh ba-aretz” (נָע וָנָד תִּהְיֶה בָאָרֶץ, Genesis 4:12), “a restless wanderer shall you be in the land,” if the land rejects us, if in the end we are forced to start everything over, to move from day to day, to remake ourselves constantly, then that is no life. Yet this exile is not an exile from the adamah, from the ground that nourishes me; it is an exile from that will — because eretz is ratzon, the cosmic will.

I am no longer in harmony with this world of creation. But then, what is the remedy? If one felt that for the slightest failing, the slightest fault, everything is called into question without offering man any solution whatsoever — and man is always beset by his impulses, his desires, his cravings — then there is a will that does violence to me, and this will that does violence to me condemns me to go on living. For, as we pointed out, G-d does not condemn Kayin to death. On the contrary, He grants him grace; He grants him a reprieve. Because Kayin says: once this violence is tolerated, then I too become a victim of this violence — and it will not be for extraordinary ideals or sublime reasons; no, violence will become banal.

It is violence that will govern relations between people. And so it seems that this argument of the banalization of violence is what leads the Creator to give Kayin a sign. What sign? The dog which, until this day, guarded Hevel’s flock will henceforth be at your service, and it will guard you against all who seek to avenge Hevel’s death — yet it is not Hevel’s blood they will be avenging. They will simply justify every act of violence against you by your own misdeeds. The dog appears here in the midrash; the text does not say what sign He gave him. There are different interpretations. One of them is that He gave him a mark of the sun on his forehead, meaning that he would no longer be the victim of the forces of the night and could reach a new life.

A new day, a new sun. The principle of the city of refuge, for someone who has killed inadvertently, is granted to Kayin, because he did not know that death would follow. Until then he did not know what death was. So the Creator agrees to regard it as a shegagah (an unintentional act) — yes, insofar as a man indeed no longer belongs to himself, is possessed by a mad rage, by madness, and no longer controls himself. How can he be held entirely responsible for his deeds? This is a lesson served here in passing, and it is what makes G-d say: “Lachen kol horeg Kayin shiv’atayim yukkam” (לָכֵן כָּל הֹרֵג קַיִן שִׁבְעָתַיִם יֻקָּם, Genesis 4:15) — whoever kills Kayin, he shall be avenged sevenfold.

Sevenfold — why sevenfold? Quite simply to tell you that he will not be able to leave this movement of creation in which everything is condemned to live and to vanish, and this at the end of a year, of an annual cycle. The model our Sages offer is Hanoch. Hanoch is a tzaddik, a righteous man; Hanoch lives three hundred and sixty-five years — three hundred and sixty-five, recalling a cycle of creation that runs from every new germination to total decay, and then comes round again. Could that be the fate of humanity? Could that be the fate of man? No. It is not the tzaddik Hanoch who is taken as the model — “ve-einenu ki lakach oto Elokim” (Genesis 5:24), “and he was no more, for G-d took him.” The model of Hanoch is that of the man closed and turned in on himself.

And however righteous his life may be, he will never be able to lay claim to a future world, a World to Come, and he will remain locked in this repetitive cycle of life and death. The text tells us that when the L-rd gave this sign to Kayin — some say it was a horn. A horn: would it be a horn of defence, or the horn of human intelligence, or that of a vision reaching beyond one’s own perception of things? The text is silent on the matter. But once Kayin had received this assurance from G-d — “Va-yetze Kayin milifnei Hashem” (וַיֵּצֵא קַיִן מִלִּפְנֵי ה’, Genesis 4:16), the text tells us: Kayin went out from before the L-rd. What does it mean to go out from before the L-rd? It is a way of moving beyond one’s fault, beyond one’s sin, of not stagnating in one’s downfall — without seeking to forget it or ignore it.

We do not live twenty-four hours a day with Hashem. We do not live twenty-four hours a day with our own conscience. It is difficult, because there is a great deal of dead time in our lives. And that dead time is what casts into shadow certain attitudes, certain behaviours, that do not always do us credit. But to live before the Creator, accounting for one’s misdeeds, means not minimizing them. It means being able to integrate them into a way of life through which one moves beyond them. And that is what it is to love the L-rd: “be-chol levavecha” — with all your heart — “bi-shnei yetzarecha,” with both your inclinations, “be-yetzer tov u-ve-yetzer ra,” with the good inclination and the evil inclination; with that which calls upon the will that governs reason and the will that governs desire.

And so, you see — “va-yeshev be-eretz Nod” (וַיֵּשֶׁב בְּאֶרֶץ נוֹד, Genesis 4:16), “and he dwelt in the land of Nod” — at that point one can indeed make one’s home in this wandering of the land of Nod, because wherever we are, we do not change; we keep the same values, we carry them with us. That is what is called settling east of Eden. East of Eden means being able to bring up to date what we have made of our life, with awareness — with the awareness of moving forward. That is what Kayin does. And indeed, we began the chapter with Adam, who knew his wife; now it is Kayin. One chapter, the chapter of Hevel, has been closed. Kayin tries his hand at a new life — but one tries a new life through one’s children. It is through them that we will carry on what we could not accomplish alone. Paradoxically, with this son born here to Kayin — Kayin’s son — he is a boneh, a builder: he builds a town, he builds a city; the family expands; the wandering is virtual, lying more in the process of thought than in the material fabric of life. So this is the secret of Hanoch — the secret of chinuch, of education — the secret of a ben, a son.

Now, as we know, up to this point we have not seen the word ben, son, which derives from the verb banah, to build — not at all. A child is not always a builder of the house. He is not necessarily a builder of the family. Unfortunately, he can at times even be an element of destabilization, a destructive element. We will find the word ben only later. But this fragrance of ben is present, let us say, in “va-yehi boneh ir” (וַיְהִי בֹּנֶה עִיר, Genesis 4:17), “and he was building a city,” in this will to build a city. The error lies in “va-yikra shem ha-ir ke-shem beno” (וַיִּקְרָא שֵׁם הָעִיר כְּשֵׁם בְּנוֹ, Genesis 4:17), “he called the city by the name of his son” — in wanting to perpetuate one’s life through the name of the city, through monuments. It is to go no further than the stage of stone, instead of inscribing one’s life in another time.

And that is why the text tells us — all these names are negative names. They weaken faith in a Creator; they have set aside the idea of an original will in creation. “U-Mechiyael yalad et Metushael, u-Metushael yalad et Lemekh” (Genesis 4:18): Mehuyael begot Metushael, and Metushael begot Lemekh. One may ask why all these details, since the Torah, later on, when it sets out before us the succession of the generations, will simply say that they had sons and daughters, and that is how they multiplied. It does not tell us their story; whereas within this first family unit, we are told that there was a loss of faith, even though at the outset there was this will to educate. But why did this education miss its goal?

It is because it became frozen, fixed solely on the name of the town, of the city, which is the name of the children. They gave their names to monuments. So where do we end up, in the sixth generation? For if we count the descendants named here — Hanoch, Irad, Mehuyael, Metushael, Lemekh — we are at the sixth generation, on the eve of the seventh. And there, bigamy makes its appearance. Man was building the extended family — and he vulgarized it, he trivialized it, by recognizing the status of two wives: “shem ha-achat Adah ve-shem ha-shenit Tzillah” (שֵׁם הָאַחַת עָדָה וְשֵׁם הַשֵּׁנִית צִלָּה, Genesis 4:19), “the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the second Tzillah.” The one, Adah, is there for adornment, for beauty, for seduction. And the second, Tzillah — is she the one who lives in the shadow of the children of the large family she has borne?

Are Adah and Tzillah two different women, or one and the same woman? Why a separation? The woman who is all grace, all beauty, all charm is also the mother of the family. Such a confusion carries, let us say, different cultures, a civilization which the text points out in passing. For “va-teled Adah et Yaval” (וַתֵּלֶד עָדָה אֶת יָבָל, Genesis 4:20) — Adah gave birth to Yaval. Notice: they tried to kill Hevel, yet his name returns through the descendants of Kayin — Yaval; Yuval, Yaval’s brother; and “ve-Tzillah gam hi” (וְצִלָּה גַם הִוא, Genesis 4:22), Tzillah too gave birth to a child — she could allow herself only one — Tuval. You see, the word Hevel appears in each of these names. The one develops herding, agriculture. The other develops — “kol tofes kinnor ve-ugav” (כָּל תֹּפֵשׂ כִּנּוֹר וְעוּגָב, Genesis 4:21), all who handle the lyre and the pipe — music, the art of instruments; and then Tzillah too, and Tuval-Kayin. And the one who casts shade — forgive me, I made a mistake there, because it is Adah who casts shade, who casts her husband into the shade by her grace, by her beauty, and Adah is the one who raises a large family. So Tzillah, for her part, is the one who generates violence, instruments of war. She is the one who sharpens weapons of iron and copper.

And the sister of Tuval-Kayin — sometimes there is the thorn, but with a rose — is Naamah, who will be the wife of Noach, and she was called Naamah because she was pleasant in her ways. That is to say, in a world that develops three great cultures, she stands more on the side of the woman than of the man — she who will, in a sense, neutralize this violence that Tuval-Kayin developed to protect himself. And what becomes of this Lemekh who legalized bigamy? Here he is, called to justify himself before his wives: “Adah ve-Tzillah shema’an koli, neshei Lemekh ha’azenah imrati, ki ish haragti le-fitz’i” (עָדָה וְצִלָּה שְׁמַעַן קוֹלִי נְשֵׁי לֶמֶךְ הַאְזֵנָּה אִמְרָתִי כִּי אִישׁ הָרַגְתִּי לְפִצְעִי, Genesis 4:23), “Adah and Tzillah, hear my voice; wives of Lemekh, give ear to my words: for I have slain a man for my wound.” He returns to the crime of his forefather Kayin — and, inadvertently, he killed; and his wives

draw away from him. If, in the end, the children to come are destined to be swept away […], [he urges them] not to give in to despair. If Kayin is to be avenged sevenfold, this time Lemekh seventy-seven times — “ki shiv’atayim yukkam Kayin ve-Lemekh shiv’im ve-shiv’ah” (כִּי שִׁבְעָתַיִם יֻקַּם קָיִן וְלֶמֶךְ שִׁבְעִים וְשִׁבְעָה, Genesis 4:24) — a verse which is somewhat [difficult], but it was simply meant to say: if Kayin was granted a reprieve even though there truly was, at the outset, a will, a reason to wish to neutralize his brother, then he, Lemekh, had no such intention — it was by confusion. But this cannot escape [consequence] from the moment we develop a world of armament. And then, the text says, Adam reappears.

He too had condemned himself never again to found a family, if in the end the family is condemned to failure and brothers to killing one another. The midrash tells us that Adam met Kayin and asked him how he had fared before G-d, how he had escaped the sentence. And Kayin said to him: “I acknowledged my fault; I said that G-d’s judgment of me is just; yes, my sin is heavy to bear; but I ask today that I be given the possibility of remaking myself, of re-creating myself.” When Adam heard this, he too said: these children have been nothing but the disastrous consequence of my casting the responsibility onto my wife — onto that magnificent gift of G-d, given to me to assist me — of this lack of gratitude. So this time he knew his wife, “va-teled ben” (וַתֵּלֶד בֵּן, Genesis 4:25), and she bore a son. It is the first time we see this word. This time there is a son; these are no longer merely offspring. Here, “va-teled ben” — “va-tikra et shemo Shet,” and she called his name Shet: he is this new seed that will take the place of Hevel, killed by his brother Kayin. It is a way of counteracting that notion of hevel (vanity, breath) which was somewhat negative. And when Shet in turn had a son — “u-le-Shet gam hu yullad ben va-yikra et shemo Enosh, az huchal likro be-shem Hashem” (וּלְשֵׁת גַּם הוּא יֻלַּד בֵּן וַיִּקְרָא אֶת שְׁמוֹ אֱנוֹשׁ אָז הוּחַל לִקְרֹא בְּשֵׁם ה’, Genesis 4:26) — he was named Enosh; then people began to call upon the Name of G-d — or, according to another interpretation, to profane the Name of G-d, on the basis of this expression.

Next week, perhaps, the continuation. If you have any questions, please ask them — with pleasure.