Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
Genesis 4:1
I have gotten a man from the LORD. Or: a man, the LORD. The little word between them decides which.
Genesis 4:1, in every translation this tool compares.
I baked a cake, the winner. Read that as an appositive and you just said the cake is the winner. Read the comma as separating two items and you said something else. Hebrew's et normally marks exactly the appositive-style reading, and that is the problem here.
Because Eve's first sentence about her firstborn contains a Hebrew word that is usually the marker for a direct object, and if it is doing that job here, Eve is naming her son alongside the LORD rather than crediting the LORD for him.
Every English version reads from the LORD, with the LORD's help, or a similar rendering that treats et as the preposition with. None reads the more literal, and far stranger, a man, namely the LORD.
אֶת et (with קָנִיתִי qaniti, I have gotten) · H853 / H7069
Et is overwhelmingly the marker introducing a definite direct object, not a preposition meaning with. Read that way, qaniti ish et YHWH would mean I have gotten a man, the LORD, an equation most readers find unthinkable in Eve's mouth. Grammarians have proposed et functioning here as with the help of, but no clearly parallel case elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible confirms that use, which is why the question stays open rather than settled by grammar alone.
English with and English the marker of a direct object are different words doing different jobs, so a translator has to choose one before the sentence reaches an English reader. The ambiguity that makes Hebrew scholars argue about this verse cannot survive into English at all; the English sentence necessarily picks a side.
When a small grammatical word carries the whole weight of a verse's meaning, check whether its unusual reading here is attested anywhere else in the same corpus. An unparalleled use should be held more loosely than a common one, however theologically attractive it looks.
With the LORD's help is the reading every version prints, and it fits ordinary Hebrew usage of et poorly but fits the context comfortably. A man, the LORD, keeps the ordinary grammar but produces a claim nothing else in the passage supports. Both options have a real cost.
- Et as the standard direct-object marker: any standard Hebrew grammar (e.g. GKC, Joüon-Muraoka)
- Dillmann's commentary on Genesis, noting no clearly parallel instrumental use of et elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible
- Targum Onkelos and most premodern Jewish and Christian readings take the 'with the LORD's help' sense
