The Land of Nod (Hebrew: eretz-Nod, ארץ נוד) is a place in the Book of Genesis of the Hebrew Bible, located "on the east of Eden" (qidmat-‘Eden), to which Cain was sentenced by the Lord God after murdering his brother Abel. According to Genesis 4:16:
And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden."Nod" (נוד) is the Hebrew root of the verb "to wander" (לנדוד) and is possibly an etymological etiology intended to explain the nomadic lifestyle of Cain and his putative descendants, the Kenites. One interpretation of Genesis 4:16 is that Cain was cursed to wander the land forever, not that he was exiled to a "Land of Wanderers" otherwise absent from the Old Testament. Genesis 4:17 relates that after arriving in the Land of Nod, Cain's wife bore him a son, Enoch, in whose name he built the first city.
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Famous quotes containing the words land of, land and/or nod:
“You must not eat with it anything leavened. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it -the bread of affliction -because you came out of the land of Egypt in great haste, so that all the days of your life you may remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 16:3.
“For four hundred years the blacks of Haiti had yearned for peace. for three hundred years the island was spoken of as a paradise of riches and pleasures, but that was in reference to the whites to whom the spirit of the land gave welcome. Haiti has meant split blood and tears for blacks.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“For sleeping, like death,
Must be won without pride,
With a nod from nature,
With a lack of strain,
And a loss of stature.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)