Cain
From BibleWiki
Meaning: a possession; a spear
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 (1Jn 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.
The first-born of Adam and Eve. His name is derived, according to Genesis 4:1, from the root kanah, to possess, being given to him in consequence of the words of his mother at his birth: "I have possessed a man by the favour of the Lord". No very serious objection can be urged against this derivation. The Book of Genesis, interested in this section in the origin of the different occupations of men, tells us that Cain became a husbandman while his brother Abel tended flocks. They both offered to the Lord a sacrifice, acknowledging, in a manner analogous to that later prescribed in the law, the sovereign power of the Creator. Cain offered of the fruits of the earth; Abel of the "firstlings of his flock and of their fat". By some means not indicated in the sacred text, perhaps, as has been thought, by some such sign as the fire which consumed the offering of Gideon (Judges, vi, 21) or that of Elias (III, Kings, xviii, 38), God manifested to the brothers that Abel and his sacrifice were acceptable to Him; that, on the contrary, he rejected Cain and his offering. We are not told the reason of this preference. Among the conjectures on the subject one that has found most favour among commentators is that which is incorporated in the Septuagent version of the words of God to Cain in verse vii: "If thou didst offer well but divide badly, hast thou not committed sin?" This implies that Cain committed the fault of presenting to God imperfect gifts, reserving to himself the better part of the produce of the land. However, St. Augustine, who was under the influence of the Septuagint, understood the division in another way. Cain, he tells us, gave God a part of his goods, but he did not give Him his heart (De Civitate Dei, XV, vii). This is in keeping with the cause more generally assigned for God's preference. The sequel of the story shows us the evil disposition of Cain's heart. St. John says that Cain slew Abel because his works were evil, while those of his brother were just (I John, iii, 12), and we read in Hebrews that "by faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain" (Heb., xi, 4).
Cain is angered by the Divine rejection. In verses 6 and 7 of chapter iv of Genesis we have God's rebuke and warning: "Why art thou wroth, and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou dost well, is not thy countenance raised up? If thou dost not well, sin crouches at the door. Its desire is towards thee, but thou rule over it." Sin here is represented under the figure of a wild beast crouching at the door of the heart ready to pounce upon its victim. Cain is able to resist temptation. But he does not, and the Bible story goes on to relate the terrible crime born of his anger and jealousy. He slays Abel. Questioned by the Lord as to the whereabouts of his brother, he answers defiantly that he knows not. To avenge the blood of Abel, God pronounces a curse against the first homicide. The Hebrew text of the curse may be translated either: "Cursed be thou by the earth which has opened its mouth and drunk the blood of thy brother" etc., or "Cursed be thou from the earth" etc. The former translation refers the sentence to the words which follow: "When thou shalt till it, it shall not give thee its strength" i.e. its produce; the latter, to the banishment related afterwards. This banishment from the country where his parents lived and where, as we learn from such passages from the present one, God continued to manifest his presence in some special way, is spoken of as "going out from the face of Jehovah" (verse 16). The country of Cain's banishment, where he was to lead a wandering, vagrant life, is called, in the Hebrew, the land of Nod, and is said to be east of Eden. As we do not know where Eden was, the location of Nod cannot be determined. The punishment seemed to Cain greater than he could bear; in answer to his words expressing fear that he might be killed, God gave him a promise of special protection for his life, and put upon him a sign. No indication as regards the nature of this sign is given us. The only event of the subsequent life of Cain spoken of in the Bible is the founding of a city, called Henoch after a son of that name. A good many authors find that this tradition, which makes of Cain the first city builder, is not compatible with the story just related, which they say is best understood as a popular account of the origin of the wandering desert tribes. If we do not put into the history of the author of Genesis elements of which he seems to have been altogether unconscious, there is no reason to suppose he was wrong in regarding the words of the curse as consistent with the "building" of a city by Cain. Conservative commentators are probably right in their judgment that this "city" of Cain was not of notable extent or importance.
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—1. Biblical Data:
First-born of Adam and Eve, named "Cain" ("Ḳayin") because "gotten" (root, "ḳanah") "with the help of Yhwh." He became a tiller of the ground, and made an offering of its fruits which Yhwh did not accept, though He had accepted that of Abel. Cain was angered, whereupon Yhwh assured him that divine acceptance depended upon conduct. Cain slew Abel, and was cursed by Yhwh so that the soil should yield no return to his labor, and he should be driven out to wander over the earth. At Cain's appeal Yhwh "made to him a sign, lest any one finding him should smite him." Cain went forth to the land of Nod Wandering), east of Eden; his wife bore him a son Enoch, after whom he named a city which he had built. From him were descended Lamech, who is recorded as having married two wives; Jabal, who instituted nomad life; Jubal, who invented music; and Tubal-Cain, the inventor of metal weapons—i.e., the authors of material and social progress.
—In Rabbinical Literature:
Cain, the murderer of his brother Abel, presented to the views of the Rabbis two different types. One was that of a sinner who yielded to his passions who was greedy, "offering to God only worthless portions; the remnants of his meal or flaxseed"; whom either God's favorable acceptance of Abel's sacrifice or Abel's handsomer wife and twin sister filled with jealousy; who, because he claimed the pasture-land or the wife of Abel as his birthright, quarreled with his brother. He was nevertheless sincere in his repentance when he said, "Too great is my sin [A. V., "punishment"] to bear" (Gen. iv. 13). and so the mark the Lord set upon him was a token of forgiveness. Like a man who had slain another without premeditation, he was sent into exile to atone for his sin (Sanh. 37b); and his crime was finally atoned for when he met death through the falling upon him of his house (Book of Jubilees, iv. 31), or at the hands of his great-grandson Lamech, who took him for a wild beast in the distance and shot him (Tan., Bereshit, ed. Vienna, p. 6b, and Yalḳ. i. 38).
Cain was also viewed as a type of utter perverseness, an offspring of Satan (Pirḳe R. El. xxi.), "a son of wrath" (Apoc. Mosis, 3), a lawless rebel who said, "There is neither a divine judgment nor a judge" (Midr. Leḳaḥ Ṭob and Targ. Yer. to Gen. iv. 8), whose words of repentance were insincere (Sanh. 101b; Tan.), whose fleeing from God was a denial of His omnipresence (Gen. R. xxii.), and whose punishment was of an extraordinary character: for every hundred years of the seven hundred years he was to live was to inflict another punishment upon him; and all his generations must be exterminated (Test. Patr., Benjamin, 7, according to Gen. iv. 24; Enoch, xxii, 7). For him and his race shall ever be "the desire of the spirit of sin" (Gen. R. xx., after Gen. iv. 7). He is the first of those who have no share in the world to come (Ab. R. N. xli., ed. Schechter, p. 133).
Generations of Cain.
The seven generations of Cain, as the brood of Satan, are accordingly represented as types of rebels(Gen. R. xxiii.). While the pious men all descended from Seth, there sprang from Cain all the wicked ones who rebelled against God and whose perverseness and corruption brought on the flood: they committed all abominations and incestuous crimes in public without shame. The daughters of Cain were those "fair daughters of men" who by their lasciviousness caused the fall of the "sons of God" (Gen. vi. 1-4; Pirḳe R. El. xxii.; compare Sibyllines, i. 75). The Ethiopian Book of Adam and Eve and the Syriac Cave of Treasures—both Christianized Melchisedician works based upon a genuine Jewish original—relate the story of the fall of the descendants of Seth as "the sons of God" who had lived in purity as saints on the mountain near Eden, following the precept and example of Seth and Enoch, their leaders, but were attracted by the gay and sensuous mode of life in which the children of Cain indulged; the latter spending their days at the foot of the mountain, in wild orgies, accompanied by the music of instruments invented by Jubal, and by women, in gorgeous attire, seducing the men to commit the most abominable practises. In the days of Jared ("descent") the Sethites ("the sons of God") went down the hill to join the Cainites, heedless of the warnings of Jared; and none of those who walked in the path of sin could come back. This was repeated in the days of Enoch, Methuselah, and Noah: all the admonitions of these saintly leaders did not prevent the fall of the sons of Seth, for whom the daughters of Cain lusted (see The Book of Adam and Eve, transl. by S. C. Malan, 1882, pp. 115-147; Dillmann, "Das Christliche Adambuch," 1853, pp. 82-101; Bezold, "Die Schatzhöhle," i. 10-23). Josephus ("Ant." i. 2, § 2; i. 3, § 1) also speaks of the excessive wickedness of the posterity of Cain, which grew in vehemence with every generation; while the posterity of Seth remained virtuous during seven generations, after which the fall of the angels ensued and they were enticed by their gigantic offspring. To Philo, likewise, Cain is the type of avarice, of "folly and impiety" ("De Cherubim," xx.), and of self-love ("De Sacrificiis Abelis et Caini"; "Quod Deterius Potiori Insidiari Soleat," 10). "He built a city" (Gen. iv. 17) means that "he built a doctrinal system of law-lessness, insolence, and immoderate indulgence in pleasure" ("De Posteritate," 15); and the Epicurean philosophers are of the school of Cain, "claiming to have Cain as teacher and guide, who recommended the worship of the sensual powers in preference to the powers above, and who practised his doctrine by destroying Abel, the expounder of the opposite doctrine" (ib. 11).
A doctrine of the Cainites appears, then, to have been in existence as early as Philo's time; but nothing is known of the same. In the second century of the common era a Gnostic sect by the name of "Cainites" is frequently mentioned as forming a branch of the antinomistic heresies which, adopting some of the views of Paulinian Christianity, advocated and practised indulgence in carnal pleasure. While some of the Jewish Gnostics divided men into three classes—represented (1) by Cain, the physical or earthly man; (2) by Abel, the psychical man (the middle class); and (3) by Seth, the spiritual or saintly man (see Irenæus, "Adversus Hæreses," i. 7, 5; compare Philo, "De Gigantibus," 13)—the antinomistic pagan Gnostics declared Cain and other rebels or sinners to be their prototypes of evil and licentiousness. Cain, Esau, Korah, the Sodomites, and even Judas Iscariot, were made by these Gnostics expounders of the "wisdom" of the serpent in rebellion against God (Gen. iii. 5), the primeval serpent, "Naḥash ha-Ḳadmoni" (Gen R. xxii. 12). How many of these pernicious doctrines were already formed in pre-Christian times and how many were developed during the first and second Christian centuries is difficult to ascertain (see Jude 11, "the way of Cain"; Irenæus, l.c. i. 31, 1; 26, 31; 27, 3; Hippolytus, "Adversus Omnes Hæreses," v. 11, 15, 21; Clemens of Alexandria, "The Cainists," Stromata vii. 17; Eusebius, "Hist. Eccl." iii. 29; Epiphanius, "Hæres." xxv., xxvi., xxxviii. 2). Blau with good reason refers to such Cainite doctrines the Haggadah of blasphemy, referred to in Sanh. 99b, as taught by Manasseh ben Hezekiah, the typical perverter of the Law in the direction of licentiousness.
Bibliography:
- A. Hönig, Die Ophiten, Berlin, 1889;
- M. Friedländer, Der Vorchristliche Jüdische Gnosticismus, 1898, pp. 19 et seq.;
- idem, Der Antichrist, 1901, pp. 101 et seq.;
- Hilgenfeld, Die Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthums, 1884, pp. 324 et seq.;
- Ginzberg, Die Haggada bei den Kirchenvätern, pp. 59-70.
—Critical View:
Sources and Original Form.
The narratives in Gen. iv. are assigned to two different strata of the Jahvistic document; e.g., Ball, "S. B. O. T.," the story of the murder of Abel (1-16a, 25, 26 2 to J), the later stratum; and the story of Cain, the city-builder, and of his descendants (16b-24 1 to J), the earlier stratum. The independence of the two sections is shown, among other things, by the fact that the man who, in verse 12, is to be "a fugitive and a wanderer," in verse 17 builds a city. Verses 16b-24, to which probably 1a should be added, are from the same document as the story of the creation in Eden; and 1b-16, 25, 26, from that containing J1's account of the flood. The apparent cross-reference, "wanderer," "nad" (12), with "wandering," "Nod" (16b), is due to a redactor; and verse 24 refers to a version of the story of Cain which is different from that given in 1b-16 (compare below).
The later section, 1b-16, is commonly explained thus (compare Holzinger's "Genesis"): Cain is the eponym of the Kenites (see 2), and the verses are a form of an independent tradition which explained the nomadic life of the Kenites as due to a curse laid upon them for some ancient murder. To the settled Israelites the nomadic life, seemed mean and wretched. Verses 25, 26 connect this story with the complete J.
The earlier section, 17-24, is J1's genealogy of the descent of the human race from Adam, and his account of the development of civilization. The Song of Lamech (23, 24) is an ancient fragment inserted by J1, referring to a form of the story of Cain which placed his conduct in a favorable light.
Text of Gen. iv. 1: A. V., "[a man] from the Lord," so Targ. O., implies a reading ' (image) ; the actual text might possibly be rendered as R. V., "with the help of the Lord"; so Septuagint, Vulgate, or even"from Yhwh." Marti, apud Holzinger, proposes 'ot for 'et, "a man bearing the Yhwh-sign" (compare verse 15, and below).
Origin of Name.
The etymology of iv. 1 is a linguistic impossibility. The name was originally that of the Kenite tribe (see 2). The word (image) ("ḳayin") is read in the Masoretic text of II Sam. xxi. 16, and translated "lance"; the corresponding words in Arabic and Syriac mean "smith." The tribe may have derived its name from the fame of its smiths. The "Cainan" of Gen. v. 14 ("Ḳenan") is another form of this name (compare "Kenan"; R. V. "Kenan"). No explanation of Yhwh's disapproval is given in the Masoretic text. The LXX. of verse 7 implies some ceremonial irregularity. Suggestions that the sin consisted in the bloodlessness of the offering, or in its worthlessness, or that it was given in a wrong spirit, are alike conjectures. The story is probably imperfect at this point.
The "Sign" of Cain.
The "sign" of Cain is sometimes understood as a sign given to Cain to reassure him, but probably some mark on his person is intended, which should indicate that he was under divine protection. It perhaps refers to a tribal mark of the Kenites connected with their worship of Yhwh (Stade,"Z.A.T.W."; Guthe, "Herzog," 1901, s.v.).
The Apocrypha (Wis 10:3f) refers to Cain as the cause of the Flood. In the New Testament Cain is mentioned as an evil example (Heb 11:4; 1Jn 3:12; Jude 1:11).
See also: Cain (town)
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