Genesis 4:11

Summary

God announces to Cain a curse connected to the ground itself, the same ground that has "opened its mouth" to receive the blood of his brother Abel, spilled by Cain's hand. The verse is a direct divine speech marking a consequence following the murder narrated in the preceding verses.

Key words

• 'a.Rur ("[is] cursed", H0779) — qal passive participle, masculine singular; describes a state imposed on the subject, not a simple past-tense verb, indicating a fixed condition rather than a single completed action.
• pa.tze.Tah (" has opened", H6475) — qal perfect, third person feminine singular; the perfect aspect marks the opening of the ground's mouth as a completed event, referring back to the moment blood was absorbed into the earth.
• la.Ka.chat ("to receive", H3947H) — qal infinitive construct with prefixed preposition la ("to"); expresses purpose — the ground opened in order to take in the blood.
• de.Mei ("[the] blood of", H1818) — masculine plural construct noun; the plural form of "blood" in construct linking to "your brother," a construct pattern also found elsewhere in the passage (e.g., Pi / mouth-of, ya.De / hand-of).
• min ("from", H4480A) — preposition governing ha.'a.da.Mah ("the ground", H0127G), establishing the source or origin of the curse.

What the text says

The verse opens with ve.'a.Tah ("and now", H9002 + H6258), a temporal marker shifting from narrative to direct address, signaling a formal pronouncement. The core clause, 'a.Rur 'A.tah ("cursed [are] you"), places the participle 'a.Rur before the pronoun 'A.tah ("you", H0859A), a word order that in Hebrew emphasizes the curse itself as the predicate condition befalling the addressee.

The phrase min-ha.'a.da.Mah ("from the ground") is then qualified by a relative clause introduced by 'a.Sher ("which", H0834A): the ground itself is described as having performed an action — pa.tze.Tah 'et-Pi.ha ("it has opened its mouth"), using the construct noun Pi ("mouth of", H6310G) with the pronominal suffix ha ("its", H9024), personifying the ground as an agent with a mouth. The purpose of this opening is expressed through the infinitive construct la.Ka.chat ("to receive"), governing the object 'et-de.Mei 'a.Chi.kha ("the blood of your brother"), where de.Mei is grammatically plural though referring to blood as a single substance. The final phrase mi.ya.De.kha ("from your hand") uses the construct noun ya.De ("hand of", H3027G) with the suffix kha ("your"), locating the origin of the bloodshed specifically in the addressee's own hand.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders min-ha.'a.da.Mah as epi tēs gēs ("upon the earth"), using a different preposition (ἐπί, "upon") than the Hebrew min ("from"), which shifts the sense from origin/source to location. The Vulgate's super terram ("upon the earth") follows this same locational sense as the LXX rather than the Hebrew's "from." The BSB reflects this divergence by adding "and banished from the ground," an interpretive expansion not present as a separate verb in the Hebrew, which contains only the single participle 'a.Rur ("cursed").