Cain

Interpretations

Jewish and Christian interpretations

A question arising early in the story is why God rejected Cain's sacrifice. The text states, "In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. And Abel also brought an offering: fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor." Noteworthy is the difference in the type of sacrifice: fruits of the soil are renewable and bloodless, while fat portions are set apart for the Lord and taken from the firstborn, pointing to an act of faith, since it is not guaranteed there will be more. The Midrash suggests that although Abel brought the best meat from his flock, Cain did not set aside the best of his harvest for God.

Similar to the internalized spiritual death, God warns Adam and Eve off from eating the forbidden fruit—they do not physically die immediately, but over time, their bodies age and die—the Lord warns Cain that his inappropriate anger is waiting to consume him: "If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door. It desires to have you, but you must rule over it.

Curse and mark

According to Genesis 4:1–16, Cain treacherously murdered his brother, Abel, and then lied about the murder to God. As a result, Cain was cursed and marked for life. With the earth left cursed to drink Abel's blood, Cain could no longer farm the land. He becomes a "fugitive and wanderer" and receives a mark from God – commonly referred to as the mark of Cain – so that no one can enact vengeance on him.

Exegesis of the Septuagint's narrative, "groaning and shaking upon the earth", has Cain suffering from body tremors. Interpretations extend Cain's curse to his descendants, where they all died in the Great Deluge as retribution for the loss of Abel's potential offspring.

Islamic interpretation

Cain's name in Islamic tradition is Qabil (Arabic: قابيل). His story is mentioned in the Quran, though without a name, where he and his brother Abel offer sacrifices; Abel's sacrifice was accepted while Cain's was not. Cain gets angry and threatens to murder his brother, but Abel tries to console him, saying that God only accepts sacrifices from the God-fearing and that he would not try to harm Cain, and that killing Abel would damn Cain. In the end, Cain kills Abel. God sends a crow searching in the ground to show Cain how to hide the disgrace of his brother. In his shame, Cain began to curse himself and became full of guilt. Cain's shame is stated not to be for killing Abel, but for failing to cover up the body.

Latter-day Saint interpretation

The Book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price describes the seed of Cain as "black" (Moses 7:22), without explicitly stating whether this description is symbolic or literal. While some early church leaders interpreted this to imply that all people of African descent were descendants of Cain (for example, Brigham Young taught that The Mark of Cain could be seen "on the countenance of every African" and used this interpretation as part of the rationale to bar Black men from priesthood ordination in the 19th and 20th centuries), the modern leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has formally disavowed such teachings. An official Church statement on race declares that the Church "disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse" and affirms that "all are alike unto God" (2 Nephi 26:33).

Etymology

One popular theory regarding the name of Cain connects it to the verb "kana" (קנה qnh), meaning "to get" and used by Eve in Genesis 4:1 when she says after bearing Cain, "I have gotten a man from the Lord." In this viewpoint, articulated by Nachmanides in the thirteenth century, Cain's name presages his role of mastery, power, and sin. In one of the Legends of the Jews, Cain is the fruit of a union between Eve and Satan, who is also the angel Samael and the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and Eve exclaims at Cain's birth, "I have gotten a man through an angel of the Lord." According to the Life of Adam and Eve (c. 1st century CE), Cain fetched his mother a reed (qaneh) which is how he received his name Qayin (Cain). The symbolism of him fetching a reed may be a nod to his occupation as a farmer, as well as a commentary to his destructive nature. He is also described as "lustrous", which may reflect the Gnostic association of Cain with the sun.

Characteristics

Cain is described as a city-builder, and the forefather of tent-dwelling pastoralists, all lyre and pipe players, and bronze and iron smiths.

In an alternate translation of Genesis 4:17, endorsed by a minority of modern commentators, Cain's son Enoch builds a city and names it after his son, Irad. Such a city could correspond with Eridu, one of the most ancient cities known. Philo observes that it does not makes sense for Cain, the third human on Earth, to have founded an actual city. Instead, he argues, the city symbolizes an unrighteous philosophy.

In the New Testament, Cain is cited as an example of unrighteousness in 1 John 3:12 and Jude 1:11. The Targumim, rabbinic sources, and later speculations supplemented background details for the daughters of Adam and Eve. Such exegesis of Genesis 4 introduced Cain's wife as being his sister, a concept that has been accepted for at least 1,800 years. This can be seen with Jubilees 4 which narrates that Cain settled down and married his sister Awan, who bore their first son, the first Enoch, approximately 196 years after the creation of Adam. Cain then establishes the first city, naming it after his son, builds a house, and lives there until it collapses on him, killing him on the same year of Adam's death.

Other stories

In Jewish tradition, Philo, Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer, and the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan asserted that Adam was not the father of Cain. Instead, Eve was subject to adultery, having been seduced by Sammael, the serpent (nahash, Hebrew: נחש) in the Garden of Eden, the devil himself. Christian exegesis of the "evil one" in 1 John 3:10–12 has also led some commentators, such as Tertullian, to agree that Cain was the son of the devil or a fallen angel. Thus, according to some interpreters, Cain was half-human and half-angel, one of the Nephilim (see Genesis 6). Gnostic exposition in the Apocryphon of John has Eve seduced by Yaldabaoth. However, in the Hypostasis of the Archons, Eve is raped by a pair of Archons.

Pseudo-Philo, a Jewish work of the first century CE, relates that Cain murdered his brother at the age of 15. After escaping to the Land of Nod, Cain had four sons: Enoch, Olad, Lizpha, and Fosal, as well as two daughters, Citha and Maac. The latter five are not mentioned in the Bible. Cain died at the age of 730, leaving his corrupt descendants to spread evil on Earth. According to the Book of Jubilees, Cain murdered his brother with a stone. Afterward, Cain was killed by the same instrument he used against his brother: his house fell in upon him, and its stones killed him. A heavenly law was cited after the narrative of Cain's death saying:

With the instrument with which a man kills his neighbour with the same shall he be killed; after the manner that he wounded him, in like manner shall they deal with him.

A Talmudic tradition says that after Cain had murdered his brother, God made a horn grow on his head. Later, Cain was killed at the hands of his great-grandson, Lamech, who mistook him for a wild beast. A Christian version of this tradition from the time of the Crusades holds that the slaying of Cain by Lamech took place on a mound called "Cain Mons" (i.e., Mount Cain), which is a corruption of "Caymont", a Crusader fort in Tel Yokneam in modern-day Israel.

The story of Cain and Abel is also referred to in chapter 19 of 1 Meqabyan, a book considered canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. In this text, Cain killed Abel because he desired Abel's wife.

According to the Mandaean scriptures, including the Qulasta, the Mandaean Book of John, and the Ginza Rabba, Abel is cognate with the angelic soteriological figure Hibil Ziwa who taught John the Baptist.

In the book Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches by Charles Godfrey Leland, Cain is a lunar figure.

Family

Family tree

The following family tree of the line of Cain is compiled from a variety of biblical and extra-biblical texts.

Sisters/wives

Various early commentators have said that Cain and Abel have sisters, usually twin sisters. According to Rabbi Joshua ben Karha as quoted in Genesis Rabbah, "Only two entered the bed, and seven left it: Cain and his twin sister, Abel and his two twin sisters."

Motives

The Book of Genesis does not give a specific reason for the murder of Abel. Modern commentators typically assume that the motives were jealousy and anger due to God rejecting Cain's offering, while accepting Abel's. The First Epistle of John says the following:

Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother's were righteous."

— 1 John 3:12

Ancient exegetes, such as the Midrash and the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan, tell that the motive involved a desire for the most beautiful woman. According to Midrashic tradition, Cain and Abel each had twin sisters; each was to marry the other's. The Midrash states that Abel's promised wife, Aclima, was more beautiful than Awan, Cain's promised wife. And so, after Cain would not consent to this arrangement, Adam suggested seeking God's blessing by means of a sacrifice. Whoever God blessed would marry Aclima. When God openly rejected Cain's sacrifice, Cain slew his brother in a fit of jealousy and anger. Rabbinical exegetes have discussed whether Cain's incestuous relationship with his sister was in violation of halakha.

Legacy and symbolism

A millennia-old explanation for Cain being capable of murder is that he may have been the offspring of a fallen angel or Satan himself, rather than being the son of Adam.

A medieval legend has Cain arriving at the Moon, where he eternally settled with a bundle of twigs. This was originated by the popular fantasy of interpreting the shadows on the Moon as a face. An example of this belief can be found in Dante Alighieri's Inferno (XX, 126) where the expression "Cain and the twigs" is used as a kenning for "moon".

In Latter-day Saint theology, Cain is considered to be the quintessential Son of Perdition, the father of secret combinations (i.e. secret societies and organized crime), as well as the first to hold the title Master Mahan meaning master of [the] great secret, that [he] may murder and get gain.

In Mormon folklore a second-hand account relates that an early Mormon leader, David W. Patten, encountered a very tall, hairy, dark-skinned man in Tennessee who said that he was Cain. The account states that Cain had earnestly sought death but was denied it, and that his mission was to destroy the souls of men. The recollection of Patten's story is quoted in Spencer W. Kimball's The Miracle of Forgiveness, a popular book within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This widespread Mormon belief is further emphasized by an account from Salt Lake City in 1963 which stated that "One superstition is based on the old Mormon belief that Cain is a black man who wanders the earth begging people to kill him and take his curse upon themselves (M, 24, SLC, 1963)."

Freud's theory of fratricide is explained by the Oedipus or Electra complex through Carl Jung's supplementation.

There were other, minor traditions concerning Cain and Abel, of both older and newer date. The apocryphal Life of Adam and Eve tells of Eve having a dream in which Cain drank his brother's blood. In an attempt to prevent the prophecy from happening, the two young men are separated and given different jobs.

The author Daniel Quinn, first in his book Ishmael and later in The Story of B, proposes that the story of Cain and Abel is an account of early Semitic herdsmen observing the beginnings of what he calls totalitarian agriculture, with Cain representing the first 'modern' agriculturists and Abel the pastoralists.

Cultural portrayals and references

• In the Old English classic poem Beowulf (c. 1000 CE), the monstrous Grendel and his mother are said to be descended from Cain.
• The expression "Cain-coloured beard" (Cain and Judas were traditionally considered to have red or yellow hair) is used in Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor (1602).
• Lord Byron rewrote and dramatized the story in the play Cain (1821), viewing Cain as symbolic of a sanguine temperament, provoked by Abel's hypocrisy and sanctimony.
• Victor Hugo's poem "La Conscience" (1853, part of the La Légende des siècles collection) tells of Cain and his family fleeing from God's wrath.
• Fernand Cormon’s painting Cain, inspired by Victor Hugo’s poem, was the sensation of the 1880 Paris salon.
• John Steinbeck's 1952 novel East of Eden (also a 1955 film) refers in its title to Cain's exile and contains discussions of the Cain and Abel story which then play out in the plot.
• The role-playing game Vampire: the Masquerade (1991) refers to vampires as "Cainites" after Cain, who is referred to as the first vampire.
• Country music group 4 Runner's song "Cain's Blood" (1995) uses Cain and Abel as a metaphor for the struggle between good and evil in the song's narrator.
• The song "Chapter Four" (2003) by American heavy-metal band Avenged Sevenfold tells the story of Cain and Abel from Cain's perspective. The song's name is also a reference to the Genesis chapter number that Cain and Abel are described in.
• A "Mark of Cain" is featured in the TV series Supernatural (2005), and Cain appears as a character.
• Cain appears as the ultimate antagonist of the comic book series The Strange Talent of Luther Strode (2011).
• Cain appears as a playable character in The Binding of Isaac (2011), a roguelike action-adventure game, as well as its 2014 remake The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth.
• In Darren Aronofsky's allegorical film Mother! (2017), the characters "Oldest Son" and "Younger Brother" represent Cain and Abel, respectively.