page_title: Bereshit (parashah)
section_title: Genesis chapter 4
hierarchical_section_title: Bereshit (parashah) / In classical rabbinic interpretation / Genesis chapter 4
context_page_description: Bereshit, Bereishit, Bereshis, Bereishis, B'reshith, Beresh't, Beresheet, or Bereishees is the first weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading. The parashah consists of Genesis 1:1–6:8.
  In the parashah, God creates the heavens, the world, Adam and Eve, and Sabbath. A snake convinces Eve, who then invites Adam, to eat the fruit of tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which God had forbidden to them. So God curses them and expels them from the Garden of Eden. One of their sons, Cain, becomes the first murderer, killing his brother Abel out of jealousy. Adam and Eve have other children, whose descendants populate the Earth. Each generation becomes more and more degenerate until God, despairing, decides to destroy humanity. Only one man, Noah, finds God's favor.
  The parashah is made up of 7,235 Hebrew letters, 1,931 Hebrew words, 146 verses, and 241 lines in a Torah Scroll. Jews read it on the first Sabbath after Simchat Torah, generally in October, or rarely, in late September or early November.
context_section_description: It was taught in a Baraita that Issi ben Judah said that there are five verses in the Torah whose grammatical construction cannot be decided. (Each verse contains a phrase that a reader can link to the clause either before it or after it.) Among these five is the phrase "lifted up" (שְׂאֵת‎, seit) in Genesis 4:7. (One could read Genesis 4:7 to mean: If you do well, good! But you must bear the sin, if you do not do well. Or one could read Genesis 4:7 to mean, in the usual interpretation: If you do well, there will be forgiving, or "lifting up of face." And if you do not do well, sin couches at the door. In the first reading, the reader attaches the term "lifted up" to the following clause. In the second reading, the reader attaches the term "lifted up" to the preceding clause.)
  The Rabbis read God's admonition to Cain in Genesis 4:7 to describe the conflict that one has with one's Evil Inclination (yetzer hara). The Rabbis taught in a Baraita that Deuteronomy 11:18 says of the Torah, "So you fix (וְשַׂמְתֶּם‎, ve-samtem) these My words in your heart and in your soul." The Rabbis taught that one should read the word samtem rather as sam tam (meaning "a perfect remedy"). The Rabbis thus compared the Torah to a perfect remedy. The Rabbis compared this to a man who struck his son a strong blow, and then put a compress on the son's wound, telling his son that so long as the compress was on his wound, he could eat and drink at will, and bathe in hot or cold water, without fear. But if the son removed the compress, his skin would break out in sores. Even so, did God tell Israel that God created the Evil Inclination, but also created the Torah as its antidote. God told Israel that if they occupied themselves with the Torah, they would not be delivered into the hand of the Evil Inclination, as Genesis 4:7 says: "If you do well, shall you not be exalted?" But if Israel did not occupy themselves with the Torah, they would be delivered into the hand of the Evil Inclination, as Genesis 4:7 says: "sin couches at the door." Moreover, the Rabbis taught, the Evil Inclination is altogether preoccupied to make people sin, as Genesis 4:7 says: "and to you shall be his desire." Yet if one wishes, one can rule over the Evil Inclination, as Genesis 4:7 says: "and you shall rule over him." The Rabbis taught in a Baraita that the Evil Inclination is hard to bear, since even God its Creator called it evil, as in Genesis 8:21, God says, "the desire of man's heart is evil from his youth." Rav Isaac taught that a person's Evil Inclination renews itself against that person daily, as Genesis 6:5 says, "Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil every day." And Rabbi Simeon ben Levi (or others say Rabbi Simeon ben Lakish) taught that a person's Evil Inclination gathers strength against that person daily and seeks to slay that person, as Psalm 37:32 says, "The wicked watches the righteous, and seeks to slay him." And if God were not to help a person, one would not be able to prevail against one's Evil Inclination, for as Psalm 37:33 says, "The Lord will not leave him in his hand."
  Rav taught that the evil inclination resembles a fly, which dwells between the two entrances of the heart, as Ecclesiastes 10:1 says, "Dead flies make the ointment of the perfumers fetid and putrid." But Samuel said that the evil inclination is a like a kind of wheat (חִטָּה‎, chitah), as Genesis 4:7 says, "Sin (חַטָּאת‎, chatat) couches at the door." (The Talmudic commentator Maharsha read Samuel's teaching to relate to the view that the forbidden fruit of which Adam ate was wheat.)
  Reading the words of Genesis 4:8, "And Cain spoke to Abel his brother," a Midrash imagined the subject of their discussion. The Midrash taught that they divided the world between them. The first took the land and the second took the movables. The first told the second that he was standing on the first's land. The second retorted that the first was wearing the second's clothes. The second told the first to strip off his clothes. The first retorted that the second should fly off his
caption: Cain leads Abel to death (watercolor circa 1896–1902 by James Tissot)
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