Genesis - Chapter 04 - Line 00087

Contemplative Summary

Is it not so: if you do well, lifting? But if you do not do well—at the opening, sin is crouching. Toward you is its desire, but you may rule over it.

The divine voice speaks again, not to condemn, but to reveal. The Hebrew halo im-teitiv se’et — “is it not so: if you do well, lifting?” — holds within it the rhythm of rising, the movement of consciousness toward coherence. Yet if not, la-petach chattat rovetz — “at the opening, sin is crouching” — the image shifts: awareness meets its threshold, the field between harmony and distortion. Sin is no longer abstract; it lives, crouched like a creature of the in-between, desiring entry. Its teshuqah, its longing, mirrors the woman’s in the earlier line — the same gravitational pull of relation, now turned inward, seeking the human heart.

But then the turning: ve-atah timshol-bo — “and you may rule over it.” This is not command but capacity, the reminder of sovereignty that still hums beneath the turmoil. The divine does not erase tension but situates freedom within it, teaching that mastery is not suppression but alignment — coherence restored through awareness.

To contemplate this line is to stand at one’s own petach — the doorway of decision — and feel the life waiting there, crouched yet not victorious. Every moment offers this same exchange: the pull of distortion and the quiet authority to rise. Choice, like breath, is the way back into harmony.