Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/204

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mother, see Benzinger, Archæol.2 116. It is peculiar to the oldest strata (J and E) of the Hex., and is not quite consistently observed even there (426 529 2525f., Ex. 222): it may therefore be a relic of the matriarchate which was giving place to the later custom of naming by the father (P) at the time when these traditions were taking shape.—The difficult sentence (Symbol missingHebrew characters) connects the name (Symbol missingHebrew characters) with the verb (Symbol missingHebrew characters). But (Symbol missingHebrew characters) has two meanings in Heb.: (a) to (create, or) produce, and (b) to acquire; and it is not easy to determine which is intended here.


The second idea would seem more suitable in the present connexion, but it leads to a forced and doubtful construction of the last two words, (a) To render (Symbol missingHebrew characters) 'with the help of' (Di. and most) is against all analogy. It is admitted that (Symbol missingHebrew characters) itself nowhere has this sense (in 4925 the true reading is (Symbol missingHebrew characters), and Mic 38 is at least doubtful); and the few cases in which the synonym (Symbol missingHebrew characters) can be so translated are not really parallel. Both in 1 Sa. 1445 and Dn. 1139, the (Symbol missingHebrew characters) denotes association in the same act, and therefore does not go beyond the sense 'along with.' The analogy does not hold in this v. if the vb. means 'acquire'; Eve could not say that she had acquired a man along with Yahwe. (b) We may, of course, assume an error in the text and read (Symbol missingHebrew characters) = 'from' (Bu. al. after TO). (c) The idea that (Symbol missingHebrew characters) is the sign of acc. (TJ, al.), and that Eve imagined she had given birth to the divine 'seed' promised in 315 (Luther, al.) may be disregarded as a piece of antiquated dogmatic exegesis.—If we adopt the other meaning of (Symbol missingHebrew characters), the construction is perfectly natural: I have created (or produced) a man with (the co-operation of) Yahwe (cf. Ra.: "When he created me and my husband he created us alone, but in this case we are associated with him"). A strikingly similar phrase in the bilingual Babylonian account of Creation (above, p. 47) suggests that the language here may be more deeply tinged with mythology than has been generally suspected. We read that "Aruru, together with him [Marduk], created (the) seed of mankind": Aruru zí-ír a-mí-lu-ti it-ti-šu ib-ta-nu (KIB, vi. 1, 40 f.; King, Cr. Tab. i. 134 f.). Aruru, a form of Ištar, is a mother-goddess of the Babylonians (see KAT3, 430), i.e., a deified ancestress, and therefore so far the counterpart of the Heb. (Symbol missingHebrew characters) (see on 320). The exclamation certainly gains in significance if we suppose it to have survived from a more mythological phase of tradition, in which


literary school of J.—(Symbol missingHebrew characters)] [root] (Symbol missingHebrew characters) (Ar. ḳāna). In Ar. ḳain means 'smith'; = Syr. (Symbol missingSyriac characters), 'worker in metal' (see 422 59). Nöldeke's remark, that in Ar. ḳain several words are combined, is perhaps equally true of Heb. (Symbol missingHebrew characters) (EB, 130). Many critics (We. Bu. Sta. Ho. al.) take the name as eponym of the Ḳenites ((Symbol missingHebrew characters), (Symbol missingHebrew characters)): see p. 113 below.—(Symbol missingHebrew characters)] All Vns. express the idea of 'acquiring' ((Symbol missingGreek characters), possedi, etc.). The sense 'create' or 'originate,' though apparently confined to Heb. and subordinate