Genesis 4:12

Summary

Genesis 4:12 describes a consequence directed at Cain: when he works the ground, it will no longer yield its produce to him, and he will become a restless wanderer on the earth. The verse combines an agricultural curse with a description of perpetual movement.

Key words

• ta'avod ("you will till", H5647I) — qal imperfect, expressing a future/ongoing action of working the soil.
• tosef ("will repeat/continue", H3254G) — hiphil imperfect, causative form; here it governs the infinitive tet to express that the ground will not "continue to give."
• koach-ah ("its produce/strength", H3581B + H9024) — construct noun with pronominal suffix "her," literally "the strength/produce of it," referring to the ground's yield.
• na' ("wanderer", H5128) — qal participle, masculine singular, describing an ongoing state of movement rather than a single action.
• nad ("fugitive", H5110) — qal participle, masculine singular, paired with na' to intensify the description of instability.
• tihyeh ("you will be", H1961) — qal imperfect of the verb "to be," projecting the participles na' and nad into a future/durative state.

What the text says

The verse divides into two clauses joined by structural contrast. The first clause opens with the conditional/subordinating particle ki ("if/when", H3588A), followed by ta'avod ("you will till") governing the direct object ha'adamah ("the ground", H0127G) marked by the untranslated object marker 'et. The negated verb tosef ("will [not] repeat", H3254G) is a hiphil imperfect that works together with the infinitive tet ("to give", H5414G) — a construction where the hiphil verb expresses continuation and the infinitive supplies the action being continued, yielding "it will not continue to give." The object of that giving is koach-ah ("its produce/strength"), a construct noun with a feminine suffix referring back to ha'adamah.

The second clause shifts from agricultural language to a description of persistent condition. The two participles na' ("wanderer") and nad ("fugitive") are paired asyndetically-then-joined-by-conjunction (na' va-nad), both qal participles denoting an ongoing state rather than single events. These participles function as the predicate of tihyeh ("you will be"), a qal imperfect of "to be." The grammatical combination of participle + imperfect verb "to be" typically expresses a durative or habitual state extending into the future — the text presents the wandering not as a single act but as a continuing condition "on the earth" (ba'aretz, H0776G).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the participles na' and nad with the Greek participles στένων ("groaning") and τρέμων ("trembling"), which describe an emotional/physical state rather than the Hebrew's sense of spatial movement ("wanderer," "fugitive"). The Vulgate's vagus et profugus ("wandering and fugitive") aligns more closely with the Hebrew's semantic field of displacement than the LXX's rendering does.