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# Somewhere East of Me 🤷
- URL: https://www.loganmartinisaac.com/somewhere-east-of-me/
- Published: 2026-10-05T20:02:34.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-05T21:22:10.000Z
- Author: Logan Martin Isaac
- Tags: Public Writing

One of the first books I read in Iraq was John Steinbeck's *East of Eden*. I knew it had something to do with Cain and Abel, and it was thick, so I hoped it would occupy me for awhile. It took about week of my 2004 deployment and it was such an interesting read in combat that, a decade later, Steinbeck featured prominently in the gifts i gave to my groomsmen and groomsmaids. 

Steinbeck's most famous idea rests on a word that doesn't exist. In *East of Eden*, Lee, the Trask family's Chinese servant, tells Samuel Hamilton that he and a circle of scholars went back to the Hebrew of Genesis 4:7 and found *timshel*: "thou mayest." Not the King James promise ("thou shalt rule over sin"), and not the American Standard command ("do thou rule over it"), but a choice. This week [the *Forward* pointed out](https://forward.com/culture/film-tv/853199/netflix-east-of-eden-timshel-meaning-hebrew-real-translation/?ref=loganmartinisaac.com), as Hebrew readers have for decades, that the word is really *timshol*, and it means "you will rule." Rabbis have long argued whether that's prophecy or permission. Steinbeck, or his sources, got the grammar wrong, and America has been quoting the mistake as scripture ever since. I suspect it's an American instinct to hear "you will rule" and translate it into "you may choose."

[Watch East of Eden | Netflix Official SiteIn the early 1900s, a fiercely independent woman drives a rift between two brothers, igniting a saga that unfolds across two generations.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/17/6a/176af55d-3866-4b2a-84a2-298ad9e4b215/content/images/icon/nficon2023-c95bb2ff-ee5e-499d-8af6-a5f2a7aad051.ico)Netflix![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/17/6a/176af55d-3866-4b2a-84a2-298ad9e4b215/content/images/thumbnail/AAAABeEN96KcAMyxKksGPwcEdFZ-sl_jpt9BGsgOgWGeKFyB5n_dhTK00ojAlMd-9Wln0GsAw1CdbIws7uCqg6gqj9GWlEivmmwVryGz-5957a2cb-3e4a-4c3c-8686-5c980e4bea57.jpg)](https://www.netflix.com/browse?jbv=81611854&ref=loganmartinisaac.com)

I'm less interested in correcting Steinbeck than in what the mistake kept. The verb underneath is [*māšal*, "to rule,"](https://pewpewhq.com/tfw/h4910?ref=loganmartinisaac.com) and it has a dark record. A chapter earlier it describes a husband over a wife. But English hands us a useful accident: a ruler is both the one who 🤴🏼 rules and the thing 📐 you measure by. Read that way, the person told to 'rule over' sin is being handed a standard expected to be upheld, but Cain becomes the first thing measured against it. **Politics by entitlement will always collapse because righteous rulers are standard-bearers, not monarchs.** 

Steinbeck puts the counterexample at the head of the Trask line. Cyrus Trask is wounded in his first battle, discharged, and becomes a military expert, living off an authority the war gave him once and briefly. He sends his son Adam into the army. Cyrus rules everyone within reach and is measured by no one, so nobody ever asks him the timshol question. He white-knuckles the standard given to him, as though a title is more important than character. But under enough heat and light, a standard like that begins to discolor and fray.

[The Fight Bonhoeffer Refused to JoinHow two German theologians built an argument that couldn’t move — and why the third one got out of it. I’ve spent a long time living with three dead German theologians who spent their whole careers arguing with each other. Two of them built genuinely brilliant, completely opposed systems.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/17/6a/176af55d-3866-4b2a-84a2-298ad9e4b215/content/images/icon/Philosopharma.sq-f2237f45-85aa-4613-b7e7-854c24f30981.jpg)MartinaliaLogan Martin Isaac![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/17/6a/176af55d-3866-4b2a-84a2-298ad9e4b215/content/images/thumbnail/photo-1649294636855-75897ff024f4-64818783-5a1e-4371-bce2-b6884c11f388.jpg)](https://www.loganmartinisaac.com/the-fight-bonhoeffer-refused-to-join/)

Court theology is a framework I've used to make sense of 20th century politics. 

I know the type. The court theologian, like Adolf Harnack, isn't necessarily a civilian. He's anyone who has the minimal requisite qualifications, who has had *borrowed* more credibility than his or her experience can cover, and can't say no to an audience. They are the opposite of the quiet professional. And the need for an audience is the tell. 

I was in the room when a fellow Iraq veteran activist [testified in 2008 to a war crime](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7BI3WxQYk0&ref=loganmartinisaac.com) he later said never happened; by his own account, the activists were "the only people who welcomed me home." The outlet that [exposed him a decade later](https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/24/veteran-kristofer-goldsmith-war-crimes/?ref=loganmartinisaac.com) had its own use for him. That is the culture war in miniature: both sides want a veteran who confirms them, and both punish him when the story turns ambiguous.

I'm not above this. A magazine once put my face on its cover because, its editor explained, a cover's job is to create "a powerful emotional response." [I've written about a friend](https://www.loganmartinisaac.com/sullied-no-more/) , whom I called S., who measured himself against louder, more decorated soldiers, came up short in his own accounting, and embellished to be taken seriously. I don't offer that as a story about him. **The market that pays for the most compelling account over the truest one is the same market we were both serving.** The fear that made S. inflate and the appetite that keeps a court theologian at the microphone are one debt, owed to the wrong ruler. 

Here is what the real Hebrew adds. If it's "you will rule," then **rule isn't an option you pick up; it's a vocation you're handed, and refusing it isn't neutral.** Whether you read *timshol* as promise or permission, the verse puts the burden where Lee says it lands: on the person. Not on the other side, not on the audience, not on the war. The standard is smaller than the stage: the true, unglamorous account of what you actually did, offered at its actual size.

Lee names the shadow of his own word: *thou mayest not.* Here is the one I'd add. You may decline the mic. If having an audience begins to poison your soul, then maybe you *should* decline the mic. You may say less than the audience wants, and let your experience be exactly as large or small as it was. A country that wants its veterans to be heroes or frauds will take that as a disappointment, and for a while it will cost you something. But a standard you can hold honestly is the only kind that doesn't melt away when the light shines on it. 

[![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/17/6a/176af55d-3866-4b2a-84a2-298ad9e4b215/content/images/2026/10/wars-torn-covers-1.jpeg)](https://www.loganmartinisaac.com/free-loading-spirits/)

I burned the remaindered copies of the June 2015 Christianity Today. Because why not? 

When I closed Steinbeck's novel in Iraq, I remember taking a deep breath. I'm a deep reader, texts weigh on me because I let them. In that moment, I thought not of *timshol* or free will, but the title, *East of Eden*. On the one hand, I was in the same arid basin where Biblical speculators say Genesis placed the garden paradise. On the other, Adam Trask read to me as incapable of escaping the privilege of his sex, of getting any closer to Eden by examining his (or Steinbecks) own sexual privilege. Like his Biblical namesake, Adam passes his poisoned paradigm to his (similarly male) offspring, bringing his family no closer to heaven than he managed to get; somewhere shy of the real deal. 

Cain was told to 📐 rule sin, and he 👑 ruled his own sibling instead. That is the court theologian's whole career: a standard meant for the self, wielded on everyone else. Lee's *thou mayest not* belongs to the same sentence. [You *may* decline the mic](https://www.loganmartinisaac.com/mic-never-put-down/). You *may* let your story be exactly as large as it was. When I closed the book in Iraq I didn't have words for it. I think I do now: the first thing a 📐 ruler measures is the one holding it. I may not be in heaven, but i feel like Steinbeck is somewhere east of me.