Genesis 4:14

Summary

This verse records Cain's response to God after being confronted about Abel's murder. Cain describes the consequences of his punishment: banishment from the ground, separation from God's presence, a life of wandering, and fear of being killed by whoever finds him.

Key words

• ge.Rash.ta ("you have driven away", H1644G) — piel perfect, second person masculine singular. The piel stem intensifies the action of expulsion, and the perfect aspect marks it as a completed act from Cain's perspective.
• 'e.sa.Ter ("I will be hidden", H5641) — niphal imperfect, first person singular. The niphal stem is passive/reflexive, indicating Cain will be hidden or will hide himself, not that he hides another; the imperfect marks this as future or ongoing.
• na' ("a wanderer", H5128) and Nad ("a fugitive", H5110) — both qal participles, masculine singular. Participles describe an ongoing state or characteristic action ("one who wanders," "one who flees") rather than a single event, portraying Cain's new condition as continuous.
• mo.tze.' ("[one who] finds", H4672) — qal participle in construct form with the following suffix i ("me"), forming kol-motze'i ("everyone who finds me").
• Ya.har.Ge.ni ("he will kill me", H2026 + H9030) — qal imperfect, third person masculine singular with first-person object suffix. The imperfect here expresses a feared future consequence.

What the text says

The verse opens with the interjection hen ("here!", H2005), drawing attention to the statement that follows. The first clause pairs ge.Rash.ta ("you have driven away") with ha.Yom ("this day", H3117G plus article), a perfect-tense verb describing an action Cain treats as already accomplished. The phrase me.'al pe.nei ha.'a.da.mah ("from on the surface of the ground") uses the construct noun pe.nei ("surface of", H6440J) to specify the location from which Cain is expelled.

The second clause shifts to 'e.sa.Ter ("I will be hidden"), a niphal imperfect paired with mi.pa.nei.kha ("from before you", H6440H with second-person suffix). The same lexical root H6440 appears twice in the verse — once as "surface" (pe.nei ha.'a.da.mah) and once as "before/presence" (pa.nei.kha) — linking the loss of ground with the loss of divine presence through repeated vocabulary rather than syntax alone.

The sequence continues with two sequential perfects (ve.ha.Yi.ti, ve.ha.Yah, both H1961) marking consequences that follow logically from the expulsion: Cain "will be" (ha.Yi.ti) a na' and Nad — two qal participles paired together — "on the earth" (ba.'A.retz), and it "will be" (ha.Yah) that whoever finds him (khol-mo.tze.'i, using a participle in construct with a pronominal suffix) will kill him (Ya.har.Ge.ni, qal imperfect with object suffix).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ge.Rash.ta ("you have driven away", perfect) with a future-tense Greek verb (ἐκβαλεῖς, "you will drive out"), differing from the Hebrew's completed-action perfect. The LXX also translates the paired participles na' ("wanderer") and Nad ("fugitive") as στένων ("groaning") and τρέμων ("trembling"), which conveys emotional states rather than the Hebrew's semantic sense of movement and displacement. The Vulgate's vagus et profugus ("wandering and fugitive") corresponds more closely to the Hebrew's sense of physical wandering than the LXX's rendering does.