Everyone knows that in the Bible, Cain killed Abel, but if you wonder why, or how, or what
Cain's punishment was, or how he had enough kids to populate a city, the book of Genesis
leaves you hanging. But don't worry, there are answers to be found. Here's what nobody
told you about Cain and Abel.
Cain, the first murderer in history, is often held up as an example of the worst humanity
has to offer. In fact, in the apocryphal Book of Bartholomew, when the ghost of Jesus descends
into Hell to rescue all of the dead and take them up to Heaven on the day after his resurrection,
the only three people who are so bad that they get left behind are Judas, Herod, and
Cain. According to Jewish legend, being bad might just have been in Cain's DNA. The story
claims Cain isn't Adam's son at all, but Satan's. Louis Ginzberg's The Legends of the Jews relates
that the angel Samael, who is the great Satan, appeared to Eve after she and Adam had been
expelled from the Garden of Eden. He came in the form of the serpent, and ... well,
you can imagine the kind of things the world's second human and a fallen angel in snake form
might get up to. Nine months later, she gave birth in a delivery
so painful that when Adam heard her screams, he thought Satan was after her again. Twelve
angels, including the archangel Michael, had to be called in to hold Eve down. She gave
birth to a glowing baby who immediately stood up, ran away, and came back with a stalk of
straw for his mom.
The main story of Cain and Abel is that the two boys each made their own individual sacrifices
to God. God decided that he liked Abel's sacrifice more, so Cain killed his brother. But one
of the biggest unresolved questions around this incident is why Cain's offering was rejected
while Abel's was accepted. The most obvious difference between the two
sacrifices is that Cain, a farmer, offered up the fruits of the field, while Abel, a
herdsman, offered up the firstborn of his flock. As a result, a reasonable conclusion
to make is that God liked Abel's blood sacrifice and didn't like Cain's grain offering. But
it might not be so simple. See there was no hierarchy of offerings in Temple Judaism,
so the intent of the offeror was supposed to be more important than the value of the
offering. Rabbinical literature suggests Cain's error
was in offering worthless portions of his crops, and keeping the best parts for himself
in greed, while Abel offered his first and best. Likewise, God did not disregard Cain's
offering itself, but rather "Cain and his offering," indicating that the problem was
with the attitude with which Cain brought his fruits to God. The priestly guidelines
in the Bible for making an offering would support the idea that an attitude of faith
and supplication is an essential ingredient.
Someone trying to escape their destiny and consequently fulfilling that very destiny
is a common motif in ancient literature. A classic example is Sophocles' Oedipus Rex.
The story focuses on the struggle to escape a prophecy that the infant Oedipus will grow
up and kill his father and marry his mother. This struggle actually leads to him, well,
killing his father and marrying his mother. The tragedy of Cain murdering his brother
Abel is no exception, at least if you're willing to believe texts from outside of the main
biblical canon. According to an apocryphal Jewish text from
about the first century CE known as The Life of Adam and Eve, after the birth of Abel,
Eve awoke one night after a disturbing dream. In the dream she had seen Cain with blood
on his hands, blood that turned out to be his brother Abel's. What's worse is that Cain
was drinking Abel's blood, like a vampire in an Anne Rice novel.
"I've drained you of blood. If I leave you here. You die…"
Eve was so horrified by this dream that she told Adam about it. Trusting Eve's dream was
indeed a premonition, Adam made the helpful suggestion the best way to keep one brother
from chugging the other brother's life juice was to keep them apart. What could go wrong
if one son was raised to be a farmer and the other raised to be a shepherd?
Whoops.
As any true crime fan knows, in order to prove someone's guilt in a crime as serious as murder,
you have to be able to establish means, motive, and opportunity. That is to say, the how and
why such a crime might be committed. In the case of Cain and Abel, the motive might seem
obvious: Cain was jealous that God accepted Abel's offering and rejected his own. Which
in turn led him to kill his brother out of anger.
However, the biblical account in Genesis doesn't ever state that explicitly, and so there have
been a number of other interpretations over the years.
Rabbinical literature supplies a number of possible motivations behind Cain's violent
act outside of the common explanations. According to these sources, Cain and Abel divided their
inheritance from Adam such that Cain got the land and Abel got everything else, sparking
jealousy. It’s also possible that they were both attracted to their mother, Eve, and fought
over her attention. More commonly, it’s believed that Cain was
upset because Abel was going to marry the cuter of their sisters. Alternatively, they
also argued over whose domain would house the eventual Temple. The Talmud even suggests
Abel showed no sympathy for Cain's dejection at being snubbed by God and sparked his anger
that way. So, you know, take your pick.
If the motive behind Cain's murder of Abel is agreed to be jealousy—whether over a
woman, land, or God's favor—the question that arises next pertains to the means of
death. The book of Genesis gives no details, stating merely that Cain "rose up against
his brother Abel and killed him." Fortunately, as ever, apocryphal literature
steps up to fill the gaps, and common explanations for Cain's method of murder include suffocating
Abel and then sawing his head off with a donkey's jawbone, slashing him with a farm implement,
chewing Abel's head off with his own teeth, or simply punching him in the head until he
died. The jawbone is most common, but The Book of
Jubilees, which is canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, goes for a simpler explanation:
Cain whacked Abel over the head with a rock. Simple, clean, believable, and less grotesque
than sawing off a head with donkey teeth. What's more, Jubilees takes this opportunity
to expend some poetic justice on Cain. Cain's death comes when his house crumbles and crushes
him with the stones of its walls, just as he crushed his brother. It is, like they say:
He who lives by the stone will die by the stone.
While Abel's story understandably ends with his own death, and he is never mentioned again
in the Hebrew scriptures after Genesis, Chapter 4, we do get some information on what happens
to Cain after killing his brother. In Chapter 4, Verse 11, God curses Cain to a life of
fruitless toil and wandering. Cain worries anyone encounters him will try to kill him,
perhaps a weird thing to worry about if the only other two people on Earth are his mom
and dad. Either way, God marks Cain so anyone who harms him will suffer sevenfold vengeance.
The meaning of the Mark of Cain is ambiguous, and Cain's mark and his curse have often been
conflated. Interpretations include that Cain was given leprosy, or his forehead sprouted
a horn, or the sacred name of God was inscribed on his arm or forehead as a protective sigil.
Others suggest maybe God just gave him a dog as protection, which might also have been
seen as a curse, as there are no positive references to dogs in the Hebrew Bible. The
worst explanation is the Mark of Cain was dark skin, an idea used as a justification
for slavery and racism well into the 20th century.
The book of Genesis tells us that after God cursed Cain, Cain left the presence of the
Lord and ended up in a place east of the Garden of Eden called Nod, which means "wandering."
Once there, he builds a city, presumably the world's first, and that is the last we hear
of Cain in biblical canon. However, the Jewish historian Josephus, in his work Antiquities,
expands somewhat on the further adventures of the world's first murderer. Rather than
repent of his great crime and turn to a life of peace after having been spared God's wrath,
Cain doubles down on his wickedness and becomes something of an innovator in the world of
evil. Josephus states Cain dedicated himself to
the pursuit of pleasure and wealth at any cost, including perpetrating theft and violence
upon his neighbors. He built up a great amount of wealth through theft and strong-arming,
and encouraged his friends to do the same. This allows him to build an army of terrible
dudes, led by Cain himself. Cain is also credited with creating weights
and measures, which might seem like a positive thing, but Cain used the idea to make sure
no one was accidentally being generous by innocently giving too much. He likewise invented
the idea of property lines and drawing up fortifications to protect one's belongings
with violence.
A common question that arises after someone hears the biblical account of Creation is
how you populate a whole world with only four people when three of them are men, all of
them are related, and one of them is dead? Well, even if we only look at canonical sources,
we know Adam and Eve had another child after the death of Abel, whom they named Seth.
Seth is the son through whom the family line of Adam continues on to Noah, David, and then
ultimately the Messiah, which was Jesus if you're Christian, and not Jesus if you're
not Christian. As Seth was the natural counterpoint to his brother Cain, he becomes a symbol of
good in the way that Cain came to represent evil. Seth would ultimately become the figurehead
of a line of Christian sects known as the Sethian Gnostics, who viewed Adam's third
son as the "mediator of divine wisdom to mankind." But if your question continues, "Okay, but
you need two to tango, where were the ladies?" Rabbis have the answer. It’s taught that
Cain was born with a twin sister and Abel was born a triplet with two sisters whom the
Bible simply neglects to mention. Each brother was intended to marry his twin. This might
strike you as pretty gross, but God granted them special dispensation.
"Right little brother, and for that we'll need a little exor handiwork."
"Wondertwins power activate!"
Genesis tells us Cain had a wife, and the two of them had a son named Enoch, after whom
Cain named his great city. This raises something of an obvious question: Who was Cain's wife?
Literally all the Bible says is she and Cain did the deed and had a baby.
Some believe God had created more people who were not born of Adam and Eve and Cain encountered
these people in Nod, but others think that Cain's wife had to be one of the other sons
and daughters of Adam and Eve mentioned in Genesis Chapter 5. Some sources, including
the Book of Jubilees, say Cain's wife was his sister Awan, while Abel's wife was their
sister Azura, who would marry Seth after Abel's murder.
The descendants of Cain were known for their wickedness just like their father. Josephus
says that even within Adam's lifetime, the lineage of Cain had become a corrupt mess,
with each new generation more evil than the last. But they are also credited with some
significant innovations as well. Cain's descendant Lamech, invented polygamy, while Jubal invented
music, including the lyre and the pipe. Tubal-Cain invented metalworking and was skilled in warfare.
While Abel never appears in the Hebrew scriptures again after his death in Genesis, he is mentioned
a couple of times in the New Testament. In the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 23, Jesus compares
himself to Abel, whom he names as the first martyr, whose righteous blood would be upon
the head of all the hypocrites persecuting the son of God. The Epistle to the Hebrews,
meanwhile, contrasts the blood of Jesus and the blood of Abel, with Jesus' death bringing
mercy, while Abel's blood cried out for vengeance from the earth on which it was spilled. The
role of the first martyr who cries out for justice and retribution is later applied to
Abel in the Jewish text The Book of Enoch. That's a different Enoch, by the way, not
Cain’s son. In Chapter 22 of Enoch — which like Jubilees,
is canonical for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church — the title character is taken on a tour
of the afterlife. After having been introduced to the archangels and shown the ultimate fate
of the fallen angels, who were affixed to the heavens as stars, Enoch is shown the Underworld.
He sees that it’s divided into four smooth pits representing four kinds of people: The
righteous who prospered, the righteous who suffered, the wicked who prospered, and the
wicked who suffered. Abel is named as the chief spirit among the martyrs, crying out
for vengeance against the seed of Cain. Check out one of our newest videos right here!
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