In the Land of Nod

In the Land of Nod

Somewhere along the way in my education, I always thought of the Land of Nod as being in the state of sleep and drowsiness, referring to that haziness that occurs when we traverse the land of wakefulness into deep sleep. The reference seemed onomatopoetically appropriate since it envisioned someone’s head nodding off into slumber, but just barely such that there was still borderline consciousness. It is in that moment when we can either see so very little or so very much depending on our state of mind and openness to suggestion. It was a sort of twilight of our consciousness. This definition and interpretation comes from the writings of Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels and Robert Louis Stevenson in A Child’s Garden of Verses, both written hundreds of years ago. But that is not the original meaning of the Land of Nod.

The first meaning of the Land of Nod was written some three thousand years ago by none other than our cultural progenitor, Moses, in his writing of Genesis and the book of Exodus. The Land of Nod is that dubious area East of Eden where the desert is barren, making it the perfect place of exile for the vileness of Cain after his expulsion from the Garden of Eden on account of his sins against his brother Abel. The root word of Nod in Hebrew is to wander and thus to get no rest, but be left to trudge through life in the worst of nomadic fashion. It’s interesting to note that if the human species were to be divided into primordial categories of hunters and gatherers, they are generally considered either wanderers or cultivators with the cultivators leading the stable and godly existence while the wanderers lead the rough and tumble life that nature throws at them. The word nod is very close to the Hebrew word for vagabond, which seems logical and has the most negative connotation of wandering. Vagabonds are aimless and without godliness for the most part. Their wandering is thought to be more of a curse than a blessing even though those inclined to wander might justifiably disagree and say that they lead more exciting lives and are always in search of perfection, which is a form of worship that can be quite ethereal.

Early Jewish writing says that Cain and his trek through Nod was the origin of wickedness and evil. That certainly stands to reason for the same reason that history belongs to the victors. History is also written by those who bother to sit and write it, which is more likely to come from the likes of the gatherers who settle down and seek peacefulness above all else. Nod is the place of craftiness and deceit. It is where people care about property rights and the self-interest that comes from distrust. When you are a wanderer you are naturally leery of anything and everyone because nature is a fickle master and there is little or no quarter to be had on the road to Nod. This is undoubtedly the origin of the notion that there is no rest for the wicked. So perhaps Nod is that place of final rest where the wanderer can take himself to seek peace. It all starts to make sense taken in that context.

This all forces me to an analogy in today’s world. The innocence and righteousness of Abel is what represents the goodness and some would say naïveté of liberalism. It is about love for mankind, good shepherds and Samaritans (that Israelite sect of controversial origin and composition that lives in the borderland of Judaism). The Kenites are thought by some to be the surviving descendants of Cain, ones that survived the great flood and form the base of a people that harbor the sense of injustice foisted upon them such that they feel they are due consideration. They emphasize their rights to adjudications that include rights to property and commercial success that they feel they must scrap and fight for in eternity. The most famous Kenite was likely Jethro, who was the father-in-law of Moses and so there we are again, full-circle, with Moses prescribing the historical interpretation of what turns out to be the juxtapositioning of the ages. The pitting of good versus evil. Given this history, is it any wonder that in-laws get such a bad rap in common vernacular? Those Kenites were crafty people, people who favored metalsmithing and the commercial arts. They sound a lot like conservatives in today’s parlance and they seem to represent nature versus grace with nature taking the role of evil and grace taking the place of grace.

We may very well all be living East of Eden at this moment in our history. It is said of the Kennedy years that we were in Camelot. Camelot was the 1960’s version of the Garden of Eden. We were living in a moment of grace when we all felt that the world was getting better and better. And then suddenly it wasn’t. And that’s the problem with grace, it is only one ( or perhaps several) bullets away from oblivion and the terms of the jungle. Those terms are normal for half the world it seems and disappointing to the other half. It was thus in the days of JFK and was probably equally so in the days of Moses. It seems to be the human condition that human nature is no better than a coin toss. There are moments that feel like Camelot and then we realize that 50/50 eventually prevails. Half the world seeks enlightenment while the other knows better than to expect it, so it remains fleeting at best.

The biblical reference to the Land of Nod makes us believe that only the outcasts suffer the wilderness when the truth may be that we are all destined to live in the Land of Nod, East of Eden and to come to grips with the reality that Eden is unattainable except for very short stays. It has taken me a long time and perhaps the horrible and divisive times we have suffered through for the past five or so years to come to grips with the reality that humans are flawed creatures and that they are rarely more than half good with the evil twin lurking around the corner. We can hope and we can strive, but we must realize that we may never be allowed to inhabit Eden and that the best we can do is to keep pushing toward it even if it means we have to live in the Land of Nod.