נוֹד

From the study of Genesis 4:16

Range of meaning

As a place name, found only here. It is built from the root nûd (H5110), 'to move to and fro, wander, flutter, be homeless'. The same root also gives 'to shake the head' in sympathy or mockery, and the noun nōd, 'wandering', in Psalm 56:8 [Heb 56:9]: 'You have counted my wanderings.'

Against the English

English versions transliterate it as 'Nod', which hides the pun completely. Only footnotes (NIV, NLT and others note that Nod means 'wandering') or YLT, which translates it as 'moving about', let the reader hear it. In modern English 'the land of Nod' means sleep, which has nothing to do with the Hebrew.

How it drifted

The sleep sense is an English pun on 'nod off'. It was popularised in the eighteenth century (Jonathan Swift's Polite Conversation, 1738, is the usual citation) and later in nursery verse. It is a joke on the English sound of the word, not a reading of Genesis.

Used elsewhere in the period

Genesis 4:12, 14 uses the participle nād in Cain's sentence: nāʿ wānād, 'a wanderer and a drifter'. The LXX transliterates the name as Ναιδ (Naid) but, tellingly, translated Cain's sentence in 4:12 as 'groaning and trembling'. Jerome's Vulgate translates the name here instead of transliterating it: habitavit profugus, 'he dwelt as a fugitive'. Josephus (Antiquities 1.60) calls the place Ναΐς (Nais). Aramaic Targums also render it interpretively, in terms of exile and wandering.