Genesis 4:13

Summary

Cain responds to Yehovah with a short exclamation built on the noun avon ("punishment"/"iniquity", H5771I), stating that this avon is too great — using a comparative construction with the preposition min ("for", H9006) plus an infinitive — for him to bear or have it borne.

Key words

• va-yomer ("and he said", H9001+H0559) — narrative vav + qal verb, opening Cain's direct speech as a new narrative beat.
• gadol ("great", H1419A) — adjective, masculine singular, functioning as the predicate: "[is] great."
• avoni ("my punishment", H5771I+H9020) — construct noun + 1st person suffix; the construct form ties it grammatically to the following clause, and the suffix marks it as Cain's own.
• mi-nneso ("for bearing", H9006+H5375H) — preposition min attached to a qal infinitive of nasa ("to bear/carry"); this combination with the preceding adjective gadol forms a comparative idiom, "too great for bearing."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is compact: gadol avoni minneso — literally "great [is] my-avon from-bearing." There is no verb "to be" in Hebrew; the adjective gadol ("great", H1419A) stands alone as predicate, with avoni ("my punishment", H5771I) as subject. The construction gadol...min + infinitive is a standard Biblical Hebrew comparative pattern meaning "too [adjective] to [verb]" — here, "too great to bear" or "too great for [someone] to bear."

The pivotal word is avon (H5771I). This noun can denote either the wrongdoing itself ("iniquity," "guilt") or the consequence of that wrongdoing ("punishment," "penalty"). The Hebrew text does not disambiguate which sense is intended — the same word covers both the offense and its consequence. The infinitive nasa ("to bear", H5375H) also carries a double possible sense: it can mean bearing a weight/burden or, in some Biblical Hebrew usage, being the object of forgiveness (i.e., a burden being "lifted" or "borne away"). This double lexical ambiguity — avon as sin-or-punishment, nasa as bear-or-be-forgiven — creates the well-known interpretive tension in this verse.

Differences between versions

The versions resolve the ambiguity of avon (H5771I) and nasa (H5375H) in different directions. The LXX renders avon as ἡ αἰτία ("the cause/guilt") and pairs it with τοῦ ἀφεθῆναί με ("that I be forgiven/released"), leaning toward "my guilt is too great to be forgiven." The Vulgate similarly reads major est iniquitas mea quam ut veniam merear ("greater is my iniquity than that I should deserve pardon"), also taking avon as "iniquity" and nasa in the sense of obtaining pardon. The BSB and SBLIBRE, by contrast, render avon as "punishment"/"castigo" and nasa as "bear"/"soportar," yielding "my punishment is greater than I can bear" — treating the clause as Cain's complaint about the severity of consequence rather than a confession of unforgivable guilt.