Torah Tidbits: Parshat Bereishit

1:29-30 - I always thought God gave all the creatures of the earth to humans from the start, to do with as they wish (subject, of course, to subsequent limitations), but these verses seem to give good ammo to vegetarians:  they seem to say, in the Garden of Eden, humans get plants and trees, and the animals get all the green plants, but it doesn't say humans will have any rights vis-a-vis the animals.  (I also wonder, what's the difference between plants/trees and "green plants"?) 

3:22 - God makes a self-referential, plural statement here.  The divine "we" as it were.  "And the LORD God said: 'Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil...'"  That's pretty weird.  Is there any point to this?  Is it interpreted any differently than when God makes singular self-referential statements?

4:13-16 -  Okay, Cain kils Abel and is punnished by God, banished from the soil to become a "wanderer."  But then this interesting thing happens:  Cain complains that he may be killed while wandering, and God responds by marking him and promising that if anyone kills him "vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold..."  Huh?!?  I get the banishment, and I get Cain's complaint, but it seems to me the way God handles the situation is strange.  In the first place, anyone who meets anyone might kill or be killed, right?  Instead of God responding to Cain's complaint by saying, so it goes my friend, next time don't kill your brother, God in effect gives Cain special protection.  Or is this really meant to prolong Cain's suffering?

4:26 - What could it possibly mean to say that, with the birth of Adam and Eve's grandson Enosh, the son of their third son, Seth, "then began men to call upon the name of the LORD"? (JPS translates this as "It was tehn that men began to invoke the LORD by name.")  I understand the momentousness of refering to God by name, but (a) what was so important about the birth of Enosh that it would be the moment to announce this and, perhaps more importantly, (b) why does it say this is when people started to call upon the name of God, when clearly in 4:1, some time before, Eve mentions God's name, saying of the birth of Cain "'I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD"?

5:6-32 - The first of many "begot" littanies.  Seth begot Enosh, who begot Kenan, who begot Mahalalel, etc.  That's all right.  But the ages!  Seth was 105 when he had his son, and lived to be 807 years old.  And let's not forget Methuselah, who had children into his 8th century, dying at the quite ripe old age of 969 years.  I think of these verses every time someone says something about taking the Torah literally.  Yes, I know there are some pretty snazzy explanations for this, and they do kind of make sense.  My point is that it kind of undermines the notion of taking the Torah literally.

6:4 - Who the heck are the "Nephilim?" and what exactly is it they do?  JPS translates this verse as

It was then, and later too, that the Nephilim appeared on earth - when the divine beings cohabited with the daughters of men, who bore them offspring.  They were the heroes of old, the men of renown

but my other online source translates it instead

The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them; the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.

Huh.

The Chabad's Kehot Chumash has an even weirder, interpelated translation (bold is their translation of the original text; plain text is their "interpretation")

The corrupt princes became known as the "fallen ones," for they both "fell" i.e., were wiped out, and caused others to "fall," i.e., wiped out because of their misdeeds.  Although they were not giants like the offspring of the fallen angels, they behaved as if they were, doing whatever they pleased.  They were on the earth in those early days, i.e., in the days of Enosh and the initial descendants of Cain, and also later, when the sons of the rulers consorted with the daughters of man and they bore them children.

So which is it?  Are these Nephilim angels?  Who slept with whom to conceive of whom?!?  Jeez.  I don't rememebr this verse from Sunday school!

6:8 - How was it, exactly, that Noah "found favor with the LORD"?  We're told he is "righteous" and "blameless in his age," but we never learn what, exactly, made him more worthy of saving than any other person in the world.  Strange.