The Bible Commentaries and Others: Cain

Cain

CAIN (PERSON) [Heb qayin (קַיִן)]. Son of Adam and Eve and father of Enoch (Gen 4:1, 17). Cain appears in Genesis 4 as the murderer of his brother Abel and as the progenitor of a line credited with the initiation of various aspects of culture. The name recurs in the oracle of Balaam at Num 24:22 in a difficult text which associates Cain (qyn) with the Kenites (qyny). Later references to Cain focus upon him as the murderer of Abel (4 Macc 18:11; 1 John 3:12) or as the one whose sacrifice was not as good as his brother’s (Heb 11:4). Jude 11 pronounces judgment upon those who follow the way of Cain. In conjunction with Balaam and Korah, the way of Cain appears to represent an attitude of rebellion against God and the chosen ones of God. In line with other examples of Cain in postbiblical accounts, it may suggest the teaching of others to sin (Bauckham Jude, 2 Peter WBC, 79–81; Watson 1988: 59).

The derivation for the name of Cain in Gen 4:1 is the statement by Eve, “I have acquired (qānı̂tı̂) a man with/from (˒et) Yahweh.” A difficulty lies in how to understand the ˒et, which regularly serves as a sign of the direct object. On the basis of similar usage of the preposition itti in Akk personal names, Borger (1959) argues for a meaning of “from.” Claims for divine paternity for Cain (Gordon 1988: 154–55) are not explicit in the present text. Nor do comparative studies prove a divine maternity (Kikawada 1971: 35–37). The association of the name Cain with the root qnh, “to create” and “to acquire,” leaves open two interpretations for the phrase; either Eve is acknowledging God at work through her in creation (or proudly claiming her own creative act [Cassuto 1961: 201; Westermann Genesis 1–11 BKAT, 395]) or she is recognizing God as the ultimate source of Cain (Wenham Genesis WBC, 102). The verbal root qnh associates 4:1 with the genealogy of Cain in 4:17–24. In v 20 Jabal is described as the father of miqneh (RSV “[those who have] cattle”), which has a root similar to that of Cain. Cain reappears in the last-named figure of his line, Tubal-Cain. Thematically there is also a connection. Cain and his line create (cities, music, tools, and weapons) and acquire (property, wives, and the fruits of vengeance).

The name of Cain has its etymology in a root, qyn, which does not appear other than in proper names and gentilics in biblical Hebrew. A similarly spelled root occurs in South Arabian personal, clan, and tribal names (Beeston et al. 1982: 112; DOSA, 454) as early as the 5th century b.c.e. (Eph˓al 1982: 194, 211, 212, 226, 227). A qyn root occurs in later Aramaic and Arabic with the meaning of “smith.” Furthermore, a similar root appears in the gentilic with which the Balaam oracle associates the name Cain, i.e., the Kenites (Num 24:21–22). These people appear in the biblical text as smiths associated with the desert area of Israel’s wanderings. See KENITES. A second etymology for the name may be found in the Hebrew qînâ, “song.” This has the advantage of appearing in biblical Hebrew but lacks examples of a qatil noun formation such as the name Cain possesses. Both interpretations relate 4:1 to the genealogy of 4:17–24. If the former is followed, compare Tubal-Cain, the last-mentioned figure in the line of Cain. He not only possesses Cain’s name but also is described as a smith. For the “song” derivation, compare the figure of Naamah in Cain’s genealogy. In Ugaritic her name may mean “song.” Recent examinations of the line of Cain have led to other connections with the region of the Kenites (Sawyer 1986).

The narrative of Cain and Abel is sandwiched between the naming of Cain and the genealogy of this figure. It also has literary connections with the preceding narratives of chaps 2 and 3 (Hauser 1980). For example, v 16 speaks of the Garden of Eden, mentioned in chap 3. Though brief and clear in its overall plot, the narrative of Cain and Abel bristles with problems. Why was Abel’s offering preferred? How did God make known the preference? What is the meaning of the counsel God gave to Cain? What did Cain and Abel say to one another? What is the mark given to Cain? What is the reason behind the story?

As to the preference of Abel’s offering before Cain’s, see ABEL. The text is silent as to how God made known this preference for Abel’s offering. The same is true concerning the conversation of the two brothers, though this has not prevented the ancient versions from filling in this and other “gaps” (EncMiqr 7: 119–24). The meaning of the counsel which God gave to Cain hinges on the text of v 7. Westermann’s negative assessment of a corrupt text follows other modern commentators, but it is not the only solution (Genesis 1–11 BKAT, 406–10). The word ś˒t has been interpreted as “forgiveness,” “happiness,” and “erect in posture” (Wenham, Genesis WBC, 105). The first two seem more likely, given the context. They would then contrast with Cain’s fallen countenance in v 6 (Castellino 1960: 443). The word rōbēṣ seems to suggest the posture of sin “crouching at the door.” However, the Akkadian demon rābiṣu may also be intended; and a noun would solve the gender incongruence with the preceding feminine ḥṭ˒t,“sin.” Alternatively, Driver (1946: 158) suggests reading ḥṭ˒t trbṣ, “sin will crouch,” with two taws expressed by a single one in an originally continuous Hebrew text without word divisions. Driver goes on to repoint the final phrase as a passive: “And so you shall be ruled by it,” (wĕ˒attâ timmešel-bāh), rather than accepting it as it is and understanding an adversative waw, “but yet you may/should rule over it.” Perhaps, as Huffmon (1985) has suggested, the problem lies in the failure of Cain to investigate the reason for God’s rejection of his sacrifice. The sign (˒ôt) given to Cain after the murder is not specified, but the narrator intends some means to make public the punishment due to anyone who kills the murderer.

The purpose of the story in its present context remains a matter of dispute. The traditional interpretations have found here a moral tale with lessons to be learned about the consequences of jealousy and anger. Historical approaches have identified a sociological struggle between nomadic shepherds (Abel) and settled farmers (Cain), or they have found an etiology for smiths who travel with nomads, such as the Kenites. Within the present context, the narrative serves to explain the rejection of Cain the firstborn from continuing the line of promise. His own line ends with v 24. It thus prepares the background for the birth of Seth and the continuation of his line. Finally, it introduces the crime of murder, a subject taken up by Lamech and others, but not explicitly forbidden until Gen 9:6.

Bibliography

Beeston, A. F. L., et al. 1982. Sabaic Dictionary (English-French-Arabic). Beirut and Louvain-la-Neuve.

Borger, R. 1959. Gen. iv 1. VT 9: 85–86.

Cassuto, U. 1961. A Commentary on the Book of Genesis. Part 1. Trans. I. Abrahams. Jerusalem.

Castellino, G. R. 1960. Genesis IV 7. VT 10: 442–45.

Driver, G. R. 1946. Theological and Philological Problems in the Old Testament. JTS 47: 156–66.

Eph˓al, I. 1982. The Ancient Arabs. Jerusalem and Leiden.

Gordon, C. H. 1988. Notes on Proper Names in the Ebla Tablets. Pp. 153–58 in Eblaite Personal Names and Semitic Name-Giving, ed. A. Archi. Rome.

Hauser, A. J. 1980. Linguistic and Thematic Links between Genesis 4:1–16 and Genesis 2–3. JETS 23: 297–305.

Huffmon, H. B. 1985. Cain, the Arrogant Sufferer. Pp. 109–13 in Biblical and Related Studies Presented to Samuel Iwry, ed. A. Kort and S. Morschauser. Winona Lake, IN.

Kikawada, I. M. 1971. Two Notes on Eve. JBL 91: 33–37.

Sawyer, J. F. A. 1986. Cain and Hephaestus. Possible Relics of Metalworking Traditions in Genesis 4. Abr-Nahrain 24: 155–66.

Watson, D. F. 1988. Invention, Arrangement, and Style: Rhetorical Criticism of Jude and 2 Peter. SBLDS 104. Atlanta.

Richard S. Hess

Freedman, D. N. (1996, c1992). The Anchor Bible Dictionary (1:806). New York: Doubleday.

CAIN Cain, whose name in Hebrew means “smith,” was the eldest son of Adam and Eve. His story, related in Gen. 4:1–17, immediately follows the Fall, God’s curses on the serpent, humankind, and the earth, and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden (Gen. 3). The Cain narrative divides into two parts, murder and exile. The first part is a tale of sibling rivalry and fratricide, as Cain, “tiller of the ground,” slays his younger brother Abel, a shepherd, after the Lord accepts Abel’s sacrificial offering but spurns Cain’s. Following this murder Cain disavows his brother (“Am I my brother’s keeper?” v. 9). The narrative is thematically related to the Fall and God’s curses on Adam, Eve, and the earth, since God explains to Cain that he shall be “cursed from the earth” (v. 11), and that when he tills the ground, “it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength.” In the second part of the Cain story, God orders that Cain become “a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth” (v. 12). When Cain fears that he will be slain in his wanderings, God proclaims that he shall be avenged “sevenfold” if anyone should kill him and places on him a “mark” (v. 15). Finally, Cain wanders to the land of Nod, “on the east of Eden” (v. 16), builds the world’s first city, and names it Enoch after his son. The remainder of Gen. 4 chronicles Cain’s descendants, including Lamech and his sons and daughter, who make various discoveries. The Cain narrative, then, represents a moralized tale of the continuing descent from Eden, the original garden, to the city and its luxuries. Passages in the NT connect Cain with Satan (1 John 3:12) and present him as an evil example (Jude 11).

Jewish commentary and legends elaborate the laconic biblical text. Philo and Josephus fostered, respectively, the allegorical and liter-historical traditions of Cain for the Judeo-Christian Middle Ages and beyond. Philo, in writing on the Cain, maintains that he symbolically represents an evil tendency in humankind to turn away from God and toward the self, a tendency embodied even in Cain’s name (acquisition, according to folk etymology; see *********** ). His mind was unstable, and to achieve continuity in his life he made a city of his thoughts by erecting false dogma (***********). Others after Philo stress Cain’s evil nature—that the devil spawned him (***********) or that he was associated with the impure side, an unclean spirit, or the angel of death (***********). Josephus highlights Cain’s rapacity and his passion for order and security. He interprets the building of Enoch as an expression of Cain’s desire to tyrannize his neighbors. Cain introduced measures and weights, and boundaries to fields; he resorted to violence and robbery; and he brought cuning and deceit into the world (Josephus Ant. 1.2.2).

Later Jewish commentary suggests a sharp division between Cain and Abel (Adam kept the brothers apart by establishing separate dwellings for them), an erotic side to Cain’s nature not found in Scripture (he was said to fall passionately in love with his twin sister), and an apocryphal legend concerning his death (Lamech killed him accidentally; see, e.g., the late medieval Cornish drama “The Creation of the World”). Some commentaries point out that when Cain murdered Abel he slew as well his brother’s potential children, a people, and hence God said, according to the Talmud, “the voice of thy brother’s blood [“bloods” in Hebrew] crieth unto me from the ground” (4:10; see ‚Abot R. Nat. 31.2). Yet Cain blamed God for instilling in him the evil impulses; he lied concerning the murder; he only feigned contrition; and he complained that his punishments were unendurable (Gen. Rab. 22.10-11; Ginzberg, LJ 1.110-11). God agreed to alleviate the punishment somewhat, allowing Cain to rest from his wanderings and protecting him by a “mark,” a letter or a name on his forehead or arm (Tg. Ps.-J. 133; Pirqe R. El. 21).

Early gnostic sects and Christian commentators emphasized Cain’s significance in world history. St. Irenaeus tells of the Cainites, 2nd-cent. gnostic heretics, who worshiped Cain, Esau, and other opponents of the Lord, whom they regarded as the evil principle (Adv. haer. 1.31). Following St. Ambrose, St. Augustine adopted Philo’s allegorization of Cain, establishing as the historiographical thesis of De civitate Dei the struggle between Cain the evil one and Abel the just, sinners versus saints, the city of man versus the city of God (see esp. 15.5). Augustine’s concept of Cain as czar of the secular city became standard in later chronicle histories such as Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon (2.5) and Raleigh’s History of the World (1.5.2).

Literary writings from the earliest periods of English and continental literatures identify a “spirit of Cain” which has persisted from primeval biblical times to the present. The Beowulf narrator, perhaps via St. Isidore of Seville (Etymologiae, 11.3.12), traces Grendel, and the origins of monsters, to Cain’s cyn, or lineage (102-14). The story of Cain’s fratricide appears at key moments in the epic; just before Beowulf’s fight with Grendel’s mother the narrator characterizes Cain as the “sword-slayer” (ecg-bana) of Abel (1262). Dante names the outermost region of Cocytus, lowest part of hell, after the original fratricide: those in Caina are punished for treachery to kindred (Inferno, 32). Cain also assumes a prominent role in medieval antifraternal writings. One political lyric of 1382 attacks the friars for various abuses suggesting “¹at ¹at caytyfe cursed cayme / first ¹is ordre fonde” (Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries [1959], no. 65, lines 107-08). In Piers Plowman Langland explains the mystical Antichrist as the spiritus Cain unleashed upon the world, a collocation of spiritual evils, when “Caym shal awake” (B.10.326) to spur on “Beliales children” (B.20.79). Mandeville identifies the “field” where Cain slew Abel (Gen. 4:8) as the Damascus field, where God formed Adam before “translating” him to Paradise (Travels, chaps. 14, 9). He also mentions the legend, reported in The Book of Adam and Eve and transmitted by Peter Comestor (Historia Scholastica: Liber Genesis, 29), that blind Lamech, seventh from Adam in Cain’s line, accidentally shot Cain through the eyes while Cain stumbled restlessly through “breres and busshes as a wylde best” (chap. 13). From this same legend arose the tradition, to which both Dante (Inferno, 20.126) and Chaucer (Troilus and Criseyde, 1.1024) allude, that Cain became the man in the moon with a thornbush, an emblem of his adversarial relationship with the earth. The Cain story echoes through the Arthurian cycle, in the stories of Balin and Balan, of Modred, and of Launcelot, who kills his best friend Gareth and his sworn brother Gawain.

English writers from the Renaissance through the 18th cent. invoked Cain’s name especially as a curse. Marlowe’s Barabas in The Jew of Malta, e.g., characterizes Lodowicke as “This offspring of Cain, this Jebusite” (2.3.301), while the newly crowned Henry IV, in Shakespeare’s Richard 2, banishes Exton, slayer of Richard, with the words: “with Cain go wander through the shades of night” (5.6.43). Moreover, Claudius confesses that his “offense is rank”: “It hath the primal eldest curse upon it, / A brother’s murder” (Hamlet, 3.3.36-38). If medieval writers were fascinated by Cain as a historical figure of biblical primitivism, these later writers saw him rather as a byword, as the figural progenitor of a “cursed” race (Donne’s Progresse of the Soule, 516). Milton speaks of Cain as the “sweaty Reaper” (Paradise Lost, 11.434) and reiterates the common view that his sacrifice was rejected because it was half-hearted; he likens Cain to Judas, who also despaired of God’s grace (De Doctrina Christiana, 2.3). For Dryden, Cain is the archetype of violence and murder, a spirit “latent” in Adam’s seed which would lead ultimately to the religious divisions of Dryden’s times (The Hind and the Panther, 1.279).

In the later 18th and early 19th cent., writers began to reassess Cain’s significance. If Christ brought about the possibility of salvation for all sinners, does this include the hardest cases such as Cain, or Judas the despised suicide? Are these traitors to humankind and deity damned from the beginning? Influenced by Arminianism, particularly after translations of Salomon Gessner’s sentimental Der Tod Abels (1758), English and American writers inquired as to Cain’s state of mind and discovered a brother who came to hate his more successful sibling, a soul to be pitied, even a scapegoat or a human being in distress.

In Coleridge’s The Wanderings of Cain (1798) Abel’s ghost returns to torment Cain while he and his young son wander by moonlight in the wilderness. Enos pathetically asks his father why the squirrels refuse to play with him. A man of poetic imagination, Cain replies: “The Mighty One that persecuteth me is on this side and on that; / he pursueth my soul like the wind, like the sand-blast he passeth through me; / he is around me even as the air!” (31-33).

Byron, in his drama Cain: A Mystery (1821), exploits the moral and psychological complexities of Cain’s dilemma. A man who “thirst[s] for good” (2.2.238) but who is preoccupied with death, Cain recognizes the world’s beauty and sadness, but from the play’s opening he feels cut off from his family, even from his sister-wife Adah. When Lucifer observes that the world before the Fall was lovely, Cain realizes that his quarrel is not with the still beautiful earth but with his own restless unhappiness:

It is not with the earth, though I must till it,

I feel at war, but that I may not profit

By what it bears of beautiful, untoiling,

Nor gratify my thousand swelling thoughts

With knowledge, nor allay my thousand fears

Of death and life. (2.2.124-30)

Cain bitterly criticizes his parents for depriving him of his inheritance, Eden, and for preferring Abel to him, a resentment Lucifer manipulates. Lucifer imparts to Cain Faustian knowledge, including a vision of Hades and the “mighty Pre-Adamites”; and Cain, like some primeval Wordsworth, equates his son’s infancy with lost innocence (3.1.18-34). After the murder Eve delivers a terrible curse on her firstborn, banishing him from the Adamic fellowship.

William Blake answered Coleridge and Byron in The Ghost of Abel (1822), in which Abel returns to denounce the Lord and stir up revenge: “My desire is unto Cain,” says the Ghost, “And He doth rule over Me” (31-32). In this poetic drama Blake challenges the implicit Byronic equation of criminality and the visionary imagination. Cain has typically been romanticized in the modern period; he becomes the visionary wanderer, estranged from ordinary society, both cursed and privileged with a terrible burden of guilt. Here is the informing principle of not only the Wandering Jew, the Ancient Mariner, and Shelley’s Adonais, but also Melville’s Ishmael, Twain’s Huck Finn, Conrad’s Lord Jim, Steinbeck’s Cal (East of Eden), Kerouac’s Dean Moriarty (On the Road), and John Gardner’s Grendel. In J. W. Thompson’s Cain (1926), the original fratricide is a heroic figure who has “something of the character of Prometheus, something of that of Milton’s Satan” (p. 6).

See also abel; mark of cain.

Bibliography. Aptowitzer, V. Kain und Abel in der Aggada der Apokryphen, der hellenistischen, christlichen und mohammedanischen Literatur (1922); Bandy, S. C. “Caines Cynn: A Study of Beowulf and the Legend of Cain.” DA 28 (1967), 1780A; Bayle, P. The Dictionary Historical and Critical. 2nd ed. 5 vols. (1734-38), s.v. “Cain, Cainites”; Davis, M. “Cain since Lord Byron: A Study of the Sympathetic Treatment of the Character of Cain in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.” DAI 36 (1975), 3647A; Emerson, O. F. “Legends of Cain, Especially in Old and Middle English.” PMLA 21 (1906), 831-929; Harney, M. C. “The Characterization of Cain and Abel in the English Mystery Plays.” M.A. thesis, Catholic University, 1940; Reisner, T. A. “Cain: Two Romantic Interpretations.” Culture 31 (1970), 124-43; Tennenbaum, L. “Lord Byron in the Wilderness: Biblical Tradition in Byron’s Cain and Blake’s The Ghost of Abel.” MP 72 (1975), 350-64; Williams, D. Cain and Beowulf: A Study in Secular Allegory (1982).

James M. Dean

Jeffrey, D. L. (1992). A Dictionary of biblical tradition in English literature. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans.

Cain — a possession; a spear. (1.) The first-born son of Adam and Eve (Gen. 4). He became a tiller of the ground, as his brother Abel followed the pursuits of pastoral life. He was “a sullen, self-willed, haughty, vindictive man; wanting the religious element in his character, and defiant even in his attitude towards God.” It came to pass “in process of time” (marg. “at the end of days”), i.e., probably on the Sabbath, that the two brothers presented their offerings to the Lord. Abel’s offering was of the “firstlings of his flock and of the fat,” while Cain’s was “of the fruit of the ground.” Abel’s sacrifice was “more excellent” (Heb. 11:4) than Cain’s, and was accepted by God. On this account Cain was “very wroth,” and cherished feelings of murderous hatred against his brother, and was at length guilty of the desperate outrage of putting him to death (1 John 3:12). For this crime he was expelled from Eden, and henceforth led the life of an exile, bearing upon him some mark which God had set upon him in answer to his own cry for mercy, so that thereby he might be protected from the wrath of his fellow-men; or it may be that God only gave him some sign to assure him that he would not be slain (Gen. 4:15). Doomed to be a wanderer and a fugitive in the earth, he went forth into the “land of Nod”, i.e., the land of “exile”, which is said to have been in the “east of Eden,” and there he built a city, the first we read of, and called it after his son’s name, Enoch. His descendants are enumerated to the sixth generation. They gradually degenerated in their moral and spiritual condition till they became wholly corrupt before God. This corruption prevailed, and at length the Deluge was sent by God to prevent the final triumph of evil. (See ABEL.)

(2.) A town of the Kenites, a branch of the Midianites (Josh. 15:57), on the east edge of the mountain above Engedi; probably the “nest in a rock” mentioned by Balaam (Num. 24:21). It is identified with the modern Yekin, 3 miles south-east of Hebron.

Easton, M. (1996, c1897). Easton's Bible dictionary. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

CAIN (Person) First son of Adam and Eve, who became a tiller of the soil while his brother, Abel, was a keeper of sheep. Cain’s murder of Abel became proverbial of similarly violent and destructive sins (Jude 1:11). Each of the two brothers had brought a sacrifice to the Lord (Gn 4:3–4). According to Hebrews 11:4, Abel had acted in faith by bringing a more acceptable sacrifice than that of Cain. The latter’s anger had flared against the divine rejection. In retaliation, he killed his brother, whose offering had been accepted (Gn 4:5–8). In seeking a reason for Cain’s inappropriate violent reaction, biblical commentary simply says that he belonged to the evil one (1 Jn 3:12). The Lord confronted Cain with his guilt, judged him, and pronounced a curse upon him, driving him out to the land of Nod, east of Eden (Gn 4:9–16). When he complained that his punishment was greater than he could bear and that someone would find him and kill him, the Lord placed a mark on Cain and promised to take sevenfold vengeance on anyone who dared to kill him.

In the land of Nod, Cain built a city and named it after his son Enoch (Gn 4:17). Through Enoch, Cain became the progenitor of a large family that during its early generations became tent-dwelling herdsmen, musicians, and fashioners of metal objects and implements (vv 18–22).

Elwell, W. A., & Comfort, P. W. (2001). Tyndale Bible dictionary. Tyndale reference library (249). Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers.

CAIN (kān; a “smith, spear”). The firstborn of the human race, and likewise the first murderer and fratricide. His history is narrated in Gen. 4.

Sacrifice. Cain was the eldest son of Adam and Eve, and by occupation a tiller of the ground. He and his brother offered a sacrifice to God, Cain of the fruit of the ground and Abel of the firstlings of his flock. Cain’s temper and offering (being bloodless) were not acceptable, while Abel’s received the divine approval.

Murder. At this Cain was angered, and, though remonstrated with by the Almighty, he fostered his revenge until it resulted in the murder of his brother. When God inquired of him as to the whereabouts of Abel he declared, “I do not know,” and sullenly inquired, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (v. 9). The Lord then told him that his crime was known, and pronounced a curse upon him and the ground that he should cultivate. Cain was to endure, also, the torments of conscience, in that the voice of his brother’s blood would cry unto God from the ground. Fearful lest others should slay him for his crime, he pleaded with God, who assured him that vengeance sevenfold would be taken on anyone who should kill him. He also gave him “a sign,” probably an assurance that his life should be spared. Cain became a fugitive, and journeyed into the land of Nod, where he built a city that he named after his son Enoch. His descendants are named to the sixth generation and appear to have reached an advanced stage of civilization, being noted for proficiency in music and the arts.

The NT references to Cain are Heb. 11:4, where it is recorded, “By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain”; 1 John 3:12; Jude 11.

bibliography: S. N. Kramer, History Begins at Sumer (1981), pp. 14–17.

Unger, M. F., Harrison, R. K., Vos, H. F., Barber, C. J., & Unger, M. F. (1988). The new Unger's Bible dictionary. Revision of: Unger's Bible dictionary. 3rd ed. c1966. (Rev. and updated ed.). Chicago: Moody Press.

CAIN (Heb. qayin). 1. The eldest son of Adam and Eve (Gn. 4:1), at whose birth Eve said, ‘I have gotten (qānı̂ṯı̂) a man’ (av). Since this account is unlikely to have been originally couched in Heb., no judgment can be made on the validity of the pun, and nothing can be concluded from apparent etymologies of the name. He was an agriculturalist (Gn. 4:2), unlike *Abel, who was a shepherd, and being ‘of the evil one’ (ek tou ponērou, 1 Jn. 3:12) and out of harmony with God (Heb. 11:4), his offering (minḥâ) was rejected (Gn. 4:3–7) and he subsequently killed his brother (Gn. 4:8). God punished him by sending him to become a wanderer, perhaps a nomad, in the land of *Nod (Gn. 4:9–16), and to protect him from being slain himself God set a ‘mark’ (’ôṯ, ‘sign, token’, cf. Gn. 9:12–13) ‘for’ (le) him. The nature of the ‘mark’ is unknown. Cain was the father of *Enoch. Parallels to the conflict between Cain and Abel have been drawn from Sumerian literature, where disputations concerning the relative merits of agriculture and herding are found, but in none of those known does the farmer kill the herdsman, and such a conflict probably only reflects the historical situation in Mesopotamia from late prehistoric times onwards. (*Nomads.)

Bibliography. S. N. Kramer, ‘Sumerian Literature and the Bible’, in Analecta Biblica 12, 1959, p. 192; History Begins at Sumer, 1958, pp. 164–166, 185–192; C. J. Gadd, Teachers and Students in the Oldest Schools, 1956, pp. 39ff.; S. H. Hooke, ‘Cain and Abel’, in The Siege Perilous, 1956, pp. 66ff.

2. The name of a town, written with the article (haqqayin), in the S of the territory allotted to Judah (Jos. 15:57), and probably to be identified with modern Khirbet Yaqin to the SE of Hebron. See A. Alt, 2 22, 1926, pp. 76–77. t.c.m.

Wood, D. R. W., Wood, D. R. W., & Marshall, I. H. (1996, c1982, c1962). New Bible Dictionary. Includes index. (electronic ed. of 3rd ed.) (155). Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press.

Cain (kayn; Heb., ‘metalworker,’ although Gen. 4:1 connects it with a verb meaning ‘to acquire’ or ‘create’). 1 Adam and Eve’s first son, a farmer whose offering God rejected in favor of the firstlings brought by his brother Abel. Angered, Cain killed Abel and subsequently denied knowledge of his whereabouts. As a punishment, God withheld the ground’s fertility from Cain, who was condemned to a life of wandering. God placed a mark on Cain to warn would-be attackers that he remained under God’s protection (Gen. 4). Cain later built the first city. He was the father of Enoch and ancestor of Tubal-cain, the first metalworker. Cain is regarded as the eponymous ancestor of the Kenites, who are often considered to have originated as a tribe of wandering metalworkers. 2 A city in Judah (Josh. 15:57). See also Abel; Smith. F.E.G.

Achtemeier, P. J., Harper & Row, P., & Society of Biblical Literature. (1985). Harper's Bible dictionary. Includes index. (1st ed.) (149). San Francisco: Harper & Row.

Cain (Heb. qayin) AND ABEL (heḇel)

Cain was the eldest son of Adam and Eve (Gen. 4:1), a “tiller of the ground”; Abel, their second son, was a “keeper of sheep” (v. 2).

Most readings of the stories of Cain and Abel (Gen. 4:3–5:32) convict Cain of sacrilege and murder (4 Macc. 18:11; 1 John 3:12) and consider them an explanation for an irreconcilable conflict between farmers and herders. Hebrews sees Cain as the one whose sacrifice was not as good as his brother’s (Heb. 11:4). Jude pronounces judgment upon those who act like Cain and lead others into sin (Jude 11). For Josephus and many rabbis, Abel represents the virtuous, Cain the greedy and grasping. Abel is an innocent victim, Cain a murderer. For Augustine, the stories demonstrate the spread of sin. Disobedience spreads to sacrilege (Gen. 4:3–7), murder (v. 8), perjury (vv. 9–10), and vengeance (vv. 23–24).

Before Alexander the Great brought Hellenism into the world of the Bible in 333 b.c.e., neither theologies of original sin nor etiologies about class conflict appear in ancient Near Eastern traditions. Like the Enuma Elish stories from Mesopotamia and the stories of Anubis and Bata from Egypt, the stories of Cain and Abel and those of Adam and Eve (Gen. 2:4b–4:2) were creation stories about how humans learned to bear children, farm, build cities, make tents, herd livestock, play music, work metal, administer justice, and trade.

When the stories open, Cain and Abel are ratifying covenants for seed to plant and animals to breed. “An offering of the fruit of the ground” and “… the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions” are standard biblical expressions for the sacrifices of farmers and herders. “Their fat portions” (v. 4) does not privilege the sacrifice of Abel over that of Cain. All sacrifices must be the best or “fat” portions.

Translations reading “… and the Lord had regard for Abel … but for Cain … he had no regard” (Gen. 4:4)” invite a painful theology portraying Yahweh as capricious. A better reading would be “… and the land had regard for Abel … but for Cain … the land had no regard.” “Land” and “Yahweh” here are synonymous, just as in Cain’s appeal later: “… today you have driven me away from the land, and I shall be hidden from your face” (v. 14). Even though both offer acceptable sacrifices, the land produces enough for Abel’s flocks, but not enough for Cain’s crops.

The sin lurking at the door (Gen. 4:7) is not the temptation to murder Abel. When harvests come in, humans easily accept fertility as a blessing; but when harvests fail, they are tempted to see their fertility as a curse. The stories remind humans that despite the temptation to forgo creativity and remain sterile, they should not let the labor which creativity requires discourage them from farming.

When Cain’s grain sacrifice does not bring a good year, he sacrifices Abel. In the Enuma Elish stories, Nintu-mami uses the blood of Wei-la to moisten the clay she will use to create the first humans. Here Cain moistens soil with the blood of Abel to bring it to life. The sacrifice of Abel also alters the status of the household of Cain. By sacrificing the herder whose livestock are its insurance against starvation when crops fail, Cain places his household in complete dependence upon Yahweh for its survival.

Yahweh intervenes, not to punish Cain like a judge but rather, like a midwife, to prepare him to face the labor which human creativity demands. Yahweh teaches Cain that he will survive in the land of Nod (Heb. nôḏ) by foraging (nw˓) and scavenging (nwd) to supplement farming. Cain will farm, but not without difficulty. Labor, Yahweh teaches, is life, not a life sentence.

Cain protests. Hunters kill human scavengers like animal predators. Yahweh concedes. Cain must continue to scavenge, but the apotropaic mark or tattoo on Cain warns hunters that he is under divine protection.

Cain’s wife delivers a child named Enoch, whose child Irad founds Eridu, the first city built before the Flood according to the Sumerian King List. The fertility in childbearing and city-building are paralleled by giving both the same name. The delivery of a child and the building of a city describe the spread of life. Like the seven great teachers (Akk. apkallu) in Mesopotamian traditions, the household of Cain endows humanity with all the skills of civilization. Cain is the first teacher, followed by Enoch, Irad, Mahujael, Methushael, Lamech, and Jabal, Jubal, and Tubal-cain.

Read as an ancient Near Eastern creation story, the stories of Cain and Abel teach that the laying down of human life is part of the discovery of how to create life. Mortality enters the world either through the self-sacrifice of Adam and Eve or through the sacrifice of Abel by Cain. As painful as mortality can be, it is also the key to human creativity. Without death, there is no life. These biblical traditions encourage human beings to embrace the fertility of farming and childbearing which makes them the image of Yahweh. To give life to the land or to another human, Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel each must lay down their lives in different ways.

Bibliography. J. D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son (New Haven, 1993); S. Niditch, Underdogs and Tricksters (San Francisco, 1987); J. G. Williams, The Bible, Violence and the Sacred (Valley Forge, 1995).

Don C. Benjamin

Freedman, D. N., Myers, A. C., & Beck, A. B. (2000). Eerdmans dictionary of the Bible (208). Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans.