Nod

נוד


Genesis 4:16 names it as the place where Kayin (Cain) was made to wander as a punishment for murdering his brother. The text states that it was "the land of Nod", as though this were an actual, physical, geographical location, whereas it is clearly intended figuratively; in the same way that we speak of mortgages or credit-buying as borrowing on the "never-never", Nod was possibly an idiom for "exile", though more likely a general euphemism for "nomadism".

Lenadned (לנדמד) came to mean "to wander", but etymologically we can identify this as very late Yehudit, because it stems from a four-letter root, based on syllabic echoing, using the intensive Pi'el form, and four-letter roots simply do not exist until very late Yehudit. The original root is the Chaldean Nud (נוד) = "exile" or "flight", a name that links it very closely to that of Hagar (הגר), the mother of Yishma-El and concubine of Av-Raham - Hijrah, or Hejira, in the Arabic, is associated with Muhammad's flight or exile from Mecca, and it was at Mecca that Hagar, who is known by the Moslems as Haajar, and Yishma-El, ended their flight into exile. Her search for water upon arrival, running between the Al-Safa and Al-Marwah hills, is remembered in one of the key ceremonies of the Haaj, and known as the Sa'i.

Psalm 56:9 already uses Nud in this way, so the term must have entered Yehudit long before the exile. To the Chaldeans it meant eternal exile, or the caste-status of a Bedou/Habiru, something akin to that of the Harijan in Hindu India - a term of abuse. It was almost certainly in this sense that the Egyptians understood the term Habiru, and how we should read the "slavery" in Egypt; not as "work-slavery" at all, but as a social status - or complete absence thereof.

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