Comentario sobre Génesis 4:12

נע ונד A VAGABOND AND A WANDERER — You shall not be permitted to dwell in one place.

כי תעבד, G’d cursed the earth because Kayin’s occupation involved getting his sustenance from the earth. לא תסף תת כוחה לך, even though the earth had already been cursed ever since Adam had eaten from the tree of knowledge, now G;d added another curse on account of Kayin. He said that even the amount of yield that the earth had been in the habit of providing since being cursed previously, it would not be capable of producing for Kayin the murderer. It is entirely possible that this new curse was restricted to the results Kayin’s efforts would have, and does not mean that all other human beings, farmers, were made to suffer for Kayin’s act of fratricide. Possibly, it applied only to Kayin and his direct descendants until the time of Noach. Maybe it even applied also to the descendants of Sheth until Noach. It seems that with Noach’s birth, Lemech his father, had knowledge that the curse had run its course. We read in Bereshit Rabbah 22,10 that in the view of Rabbi Eleazar the word לך in our verse means that whereas the earth would not yield up its strength for Kayin, it would do so for others. On the other hand, Rabbi Yossi bar Chanina is on record that the curse applied both to Kayin and to others. It appears more likely that the word לך in our verse is indeed restrictive and means that other people farming the earth would experience better success than Kayin. [Kayin’s failure as a farmer would demonstrate to the others that he, and not they, had indeed been punished on an ongoing basis for his having committed murder, hoping to benefit by it at the expense of his brother. Ed.] There is no question, however, that the first curse earth experienced after Adam had eaten from the tree of knowledge was a permanent curse still in effect nowadays. The word בעבורך in 3,14 has a different connotation entirely from the word לך, meaning “on your account,” not “for you personally.”