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Cain killed Abel and God cursed Cain, sentencing him to a life of transience. Cain then dwelt in the land of Nod ( נוֹד , 'wandering'), where he built a city and fathered the line of descendants beginning with Enoch .
Cain murdering Abel is one of the most well-known – and unfortunate – stories in the Old Testament. We believe it to be the first murder in history, confirming what most readers of Genesis assume: things are heading downhill for mankind.
- The Background: The Rejected Offering
- The Common Interpretation: Jealousy
- Destined For Evil: Life of Adam and Eve
- Premeditated and Gruesome: Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan
- A Theological Argument Gets Ugly: The Jerusalem Targums
- No Connection to The Offering: Genesis Rabbah
- A Complex Reading of Cain
Immediately after Cain and Abel’s birth announcement,the Torah tells us the two brothers brought offerings to YHWH from their respective areas of specialization: animal husbandry and agriculture: A reader might imagine that Cain should be rewarded since bringing an offering to YHWH is his idea, while Abel just follows suit. Nevertheless, YHWH’s rea...
The earliest and perhaps most natural answer we find in the second centuryB.C.E. book of Jubilees (4:2): At the beginning of the third jubilee, Cain killed Abel because the sacrifice of Abel was accepted, but the offering of Cain was not accepted. The Bible explores the theme of jealousy between brothers in the Joseph story, in which Jacob’s favori...
An extreme example of Cain-as-evil-incarnate appears in the retelling of the story in the Pseudepigraphic work, The Life of Adam and Eve, a Jewish apocalyptic work from the early to mid-first millenniumC.E. We first learn of Cain’s evil disposition upon his birth (21:3a–c): She gave birth to an infant and his color was that of the stars. He fell in...
The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan, a sixth century Christian work (likely reworking a Jewish original), retells the story of Cain and Abel at great length. In this version, Adam rather than his sons give YHWH the first offering, and Cain does not even participate, whereas Abel encourages them. Abel’s piety brings on Satan’s hatred, who then t...
Rabbinic exegesis also attempts to fill out the story by adding details. One approach, found in all three of the Jerusalem Targums (mid to late 1st millenniumC.E.)presents the fight as a theological argument turned heated: Angered by this response, Cain doubles down and denies God’s involvement in the world entirely, using a phrase (bolded) that ho...
Genesis is silent about what happened in the field, We are never told whether Abel was entirely the victim of an aggressive brother or whether he himself may have done something to provoke the crisis. Moreover, nothing explicit in the Torah connects the killing of Abel with the previous story about sacrifices. Something else may have taken place to...
Cain’s “crime” is so well embedded in our consciousness that it is difficult to read this text with an open mind. What really happens in the field (v. 8)? Almost universally, Cain is maligned for committing first degree murder—but how would he have known what murder is? The text is unclear about what leads Cain to kill his brother. Is he a villain,...
In short, Cain murders his younger brother Abel and is exiled for his crime. But is the story ‘just’ a moral tale, or might it be an attempt to explain something deeper about the development of human civilisation? Let’s take a closer look at the story of Cain and Abel.
While they were in the field, Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him. Young's Literal Translation. And Cain saith unto Abel his brother, 'Let us go into the field;' and it cometh to pass in their being in the field, that Cain riseth up against Abel his brother, and slayeth him.
25 And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and named him Seth, “For God has appointed another seed for me instead of Abel, whom Cain killed.” 26 And as for Seth, to him also a son was born; and he named him Enosh.
4 Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, “I have acquired a man from the Lord.” 2 Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel. Now ( B ) Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.
