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:
“Every New Englander might easily raise all his own breadstuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn, and not depend on distant and fluctuating markets for them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and independence that, in Concord, fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold in the shops, and hominy and corn in a still coarser form are hardly used by any.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“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.
“Sometimes we see a cloud that’s dragonish,
A vapor sometimes like a bear or lion,
A towered citadel, a pendant rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon ‘t that nod unto the world
And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs;
They are black vesper’s pageants.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)