Cain

The ground had always been his. Cain worked it while his younger brother walked behind the flocks, and when the time came to bring something to God he brought what the soil had given him. Abel brought the firstborn of his animals and their fat. God looked with favour on Abel and his gift. On Cain and his, God did not.

Genesis tells the whole of it in sixteen verses and explains almost nothing. No reason is given for the preference. Cain’s face falls, and God speaks to him before anything has happened, which is the strange and generous part: sin is lying in wait at the door like an animal, God says, and it wants him, but he can master it. Cain makes no answer. He says something to his brother, they are out in the open field, and he rises up and kills him. The Hebrew text does not record what was said, and it does not name a weapon.

Then comes the question. God asks where Abel is, and Cain replies that he does not know, and asks whether he is supposed to be his brother’s guardian. The reply he gets is that Abel’s blood is crying out from the earth. The sentence that follows fits the man exactly. The farmer is cursed away from the soil that drank the blood. It will no longer give him its strength, and he will be a restless wanderer on it.

Cain’s protest is the first sign of feeling he shows. The punishment is more than he can carry, he says, and anyone who meets him will kill him. So God sets a sign on Cain, with a promise that whoever kills him will pay for it seven times over. He walks out from the presence of God and settles in the land of Nod, east of Eden, a name that simply means wandering.

He was the first child ever born. Eve named him with a pun on a Hebrew verb for getting, saying she had gained a man with the Lord’s help. He was also, by the reckoning of the text, the first to make an offering, the first to kill, and the first to build. In Nod his wife bears a son, Enoch, and Cain founds a city and names it after the boy. Five generations on, his descendant Lamech fathers Jabal, ancestor of those who live in tents and keep livestock, Jubal, ancestor of all who play the lyre and pipe, and Tubal-cain, who forged tools of bronze and iron. Their sister was Naamah. The murderer’s line invents a fair share of civilisation. It is an uncomfortable thing for a holy book to say, and Genesis says it flatly.

Every silence in the story was filled by later hands. The rabbis of the midrash Genesis Rabbah argued over the quarrel: the brothers had divided the world between them, one taking the land and the other everything movable, until each ordered the other off his property; or they fought over where the Temple would one day stand; or over a sister. They argued over the weapon, a stone by one account and a staff by another. The second-century BCE Book of Jubilees gives Cain a wife, his sister Awan. A darker strand, found in the Aramaic Targum Pseudo-Jonathan and in Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer, removes Adam from his parentage altogether and makes him the child of Samael, the angel who rode the serpent.

The sign drew the most guesses of all. One teacher said a horn grew from his forehead. Another said God gave him a dog to walk beside him. Others proposed a skin disease, or a single letter of the divine name written on his body. The Bible commits to none of these. What it does say is often turned upside down in memory: the sign was a protection, not a brand of shame.

His death is likewise missing from Genesis and supplied twice elsewhere. Jubilees has his own stone house fall on him in the same year that Adam died, killed by stones because he had killed with a stone. The midrash Tanhuma tells a stranger tale. Lamech, old and blind, went hunting with a boy to guide his aim. The boy saw something horned moving in the distance, Lamech loosed his arrow, and they walked up to find Cain dead on the ground, the dry grass still around him.

The rabbis kept two portraits side by side. In one he is a man who gave in to rage, confessed that his sin was too great, and was sent into exile to atone. In the other he is a rebel who denied that there was any judge or judgement at all, and whose repentance was a performance. The Mishnah drew a law out of a point of grammar: the Hebrew speaks of Abel’s bloods, in the plural, because Cain destroyed his brother and every descendant his brother would have had. Whoever destroys one life, the teaching runs, has destroyed a whole world.

Christian writers made him a type. The First Letter of John holds him up as one whose deeds were evil where his brother’s were just, and the Letter of Jude warns against walking in his way. The Quran tells the story of the two sons of Adam without naming them; later tradition calls them Qabil and Habil. There the killer stands helpless over the body until God sends a raven that scratches at the earth and shows him how to bury the dead, and he is overcome with regret. Centuries later the English poet of Beowulf traced the monster Grendel back to Cain’s kin.

Some historians read the tale as a tribal memory. Cain’s name is close to that of the Kenites, a wandering people of smiths known to the Israelites, and the story may once have explained why they roamed.

What strength Cain has is given to him. He cannot be killed without a sevenfold reckoning, he fathers a line of makers, and he raises the first walls. His limits come from the same hand. The earth will not feed him, he cannot stay in one place, and he is shut out from the presence he once brought gifts to. He was warned before he did it. That is the part the story never lets him escape.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Cain?

Cain is the firstborn son of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis and the first murderer in Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition. He was a farmer who killed his younger brother Abel after God favoured Abel’s offering over his. In Islamic tradition he is called Qabil.

Why did Cain kill Abel?

Genesis says only that God looked with favour on Abel’s offering and not on Cain’s, and that Cain was angry. The rabbis of Genesis Rabbah added other motives, including a dispute over dividing the world, a quarrel over the future site of the Temple, and rivalry over a sister.

What was the mark of Cain?

The mark of Cain was a sign God placed on Cain to protect him, with a promise that anyone who killed him would suffer sevenfold vengeance. Genesis never says what it looked like. Later rabbis suggested a horn on his forehead, a dog that walked with him, a skin disease, or a letter of the divine name.

What happened to Cain after he killed Abel?

Cain was cursed so that the ground would no longer yield its strength to him, and he became a wanderer. He settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden, where his wife bore a son named Enoch and Cain built a city named after him. His descendants included Jabal, Jubal, Tubal-cain and Naamah.

How did Cain die?

Genesis does not record the death of Cain. The Book of Jubilees says his stone house fell on him and killed him in the same year that Adam died. The midrash Tanhuma says his blind descendant Lamech shot him with an arrow while hunting, after a boy mistook the horned Cain for an animal.

Related Entries

Abel, Adam, Eve, Samael, Yahweh, Noah, Nephilim, Gehinnom and Gan Eden, Lilith, Satan, Iblis, Grendel