Genesis 4:2

Summary

The verse reports that Eve gave birth again, this time to Abel, and then states the occupations of the two brothers: Abel became a herder of flocks, while Cain worked the soil. The Hebrew frames these as two parallel but grammatically distinct statements about each brother's activity.

Key words

• toSef ("she repeated/added", H3254G) — hiphil (causative) verb combined with the infinitive laLedet ("to give birth", H3205), together meaning "she continued/added to give birth," marking this as a second birth event.
• Ro'eh ("a herder of", H7462B) — qal participle in construct form describing Abel's ongoing activity as an inherent characteristic ("the one doing" the herding).
• tzon ("sheep/flock", H6629G) — common-gender singular noun, the object of Abel's herding.
• 'oVed ("a tiller of", H5647I) — qal participle in construct form, parallel to Ro'eh, describing Cain's ongoing activity.
• 'adamah ("ground", H0127G) — feminine singular noun, the object of Cain's tilling, echoing the word used elsewhere for the soil from which humans were formed.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative construction va-toSef la-Ledet ("and she continued/added to give birth"), using the hiphil of H3254G with an infinitive of H3205, a Hebrew idiom for repeated or additional action — here, a second birth following the naming of Cain in the prior verse. The direct object marker 'et precedes both 'aChi ("brother", H0251G, in construct with the suffix "his") and Havel ("Abel", H1893), identifying the one born.

The description of the brothers' occupations uses two participial constructions in construct form: Ro'eh tzon ("herder of sheep") for Abel and 'oVed 'adamah ("tiller of ground") for Cain. Participles in Biblical Hebrew often denote ongoing or characteristic activity rather than a single completed act, so both phrases present these occupations as settled roles. Notably, the verb introducing Abel's clause is vayehi ("and he was", H1961, narrative form), while Cain's clause uses hayah ("he was", H1961, perfect form) preceded by the conjunction ve. Both derive from the same root but appear in different verbal forms — the sequential narrative form for Abel and a plain perfect for Cain — a variation not distinguishable in most translations.

Differences between versions

The LXX inserts the particle δὲ ("but/while") before Cain's clause, and the Vulgate uses autem ("however"), both introducing an explicit contrast between the brothers. The Hebrew text, by contrast, joins the two clauses with the same simple conjunction ve ("and", H9002) used elsewhere in the verse, without a marked contrastive particle.