Genesis 4:7

Summary

The verse poses a rhetorical question contrasting two outcomes based on conduct — doing well or not — and states that "sin" is positioned at "the door," with a "desire" directed toward the addressee, followed by a statement about the addressee's capacity to "rule" over it. The Hebrew syntax uses an interrogative-negative opening followed by two parallel conditional clauses.

Key words

• tei.Tiv ("you will do well", H3190) — hiphil imperfect, a causative form indicating an action the addressee brings about (doing well/making good), repeated in both conditional clauses.
• se.'Et ("lifting up", H7613) — feminine singular noun, the object/result associated with the first condition ("if you do well").
• ro.Vetz ("[is] crouching", H7257) — qal participle, masculine singular, describing an ongoing state; it modifies chatat ("sin", H2403B), which is grammatically feminine — a gender mismatch between noun and participle present in the text.
• te.Shu.ka.T + -o ("desire...its/his", H8669 + H9023) — feminine singular construct noun with a masculine possessive suffix, forming "the desire of it/him," directed toward "you" ('eleikha).
• tim.shol ("you will rule", H4910) — qal imperfect, second person masculine, paired with the preposition-plus-suffix bo ("in/over it/him", H9033), also masculine.

What the text says

The clause opens with ha (H9008) plus lo' (H3808), producing a rhetorical negative question ("is it not..."), followed by two mirrored conditional clauses marked by 'im (H0518A): "if you do well" / "and if you do not do well." Both use the identical hiphil imperfect tei.Tiv, creating a grammatical parallelism between the positive and negative outcomes. The noun se'et stands as the result tied to the first condition, while the second condition leads into a description: chatat ("sin") is said to be rovetz ("crouching") "at the door" (la-Petach, H6607 with article).

A notable grammatical feature is that chatat is a feminine noun, yet the participle describing it, rovetz, is masculine, and the pronominal suffixes that follow — in teshuqato ("its desire") and bo ("over it") — are also masculine. The Hebrew text does not resolve grammatically to which noun (masculine petach, "door," or feminine chatat, "sin") these masculine suffixes refer; the data show only the morphological forms as given, without disambiguation.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) renders the passage with different verbs — προσενέγκῃς ("you offer") and διέλῃς ("you divide") — and ends the first section with a direct statement, ἥμαρτες ("you sinned"), rather than the Hebrew's image of sin "crouching" at a "door." The Vulgate uses recipies ("you will receive") for the Hebrew se'et ("lifting up"), and peccatum aderit ("sin will be present") for chatat rovetz ("sin is crouching"), replacing the participial image with a future verb of presence.