Cain and Abel

Am I my brother’s keeper?

In the present post, we tell the story of Adam and Eve’s offspring (Gen 4-5). «The man knew Eve his wife. She conceived, and gave birth to Cain, and said, “I have gotten a man with the LORD.” Again she gave birth, to Cain’s brother Abel. Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground». Even in this first verse we can find out that the lust for possession which caused the driving out of the humans from Eden is regrettably still in action; in particular, it is present in the relationship between Eve and her firstborn. She considers very little her husband (it is Cain the man she got from the Lord) and her other son Abel, mentioned in the text in a marginal way. the names of the two sons underlines their different destiny: a great one for «Cain» (the text puts his name in connection with the Hebrew verb “qānāh” (it means “to acquire”, “to own”, but even “to create” and “to found”); an insignificant one for «Abel» (“hebel” means in Hebrew “an evanescent puff/vapor”). The curse the woman brought on herself in Gen 3,16 («I will greatly multiply your pain and your childbirth. In pain you will bring forth children») here gets clearer: lust makes the relationship between mother and children exaggeratedly tight and possessive, “multiplying” in number and intensity the necessary separations for the child’s life (“childbirths”: the literal meaning does not exclude the symbolic one).
«As time passed, it happened that Cain brought an offering to the LORD from the fruit of the ground. Abel also brought some of the firstborn of his flock and of its fat. The LORD respected Abel and his offering, but he did not respect Cain and his offering. Cain was very angry, and the expression on his face fell. The LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why has the expression of your face fallen? If you do well, will it not be lifted up? If you do not do well, sin crouches at the door. Its desire is for you, but you are to rule over it.”».



The Lord intervenes: He respects Abel’s offering and not Cain’s one. The narrator does not offer us explicit explanations for the Lord’s reasons, except for a discreet cue to the fact that Abel offered the best parts of what he owned («firstborn» and «fat»). To understand the text, we need to move our attention from the offerors with their gifts to the Lord: He did a significant action to make Cain realize that his neglected brother, the “evanescent vapor”, has importance and dignity in His sight. It is an invitation to get out from the possessive and exclusive relationship in which his mother locked him with her preference, a relationship that isolated and depleted Cain. We know from the previous posts, in fact, that respecting the differences in which God created everything lead to a happy and full life, because only this way to love and make true relationships; we even know that the man who remains alone is in mortal danger. The Lord exhorts Cain to “dominate” the animal in him, to open the possibility for a new relation with the brother that would benefit both of them. It is interesting to underline that the word translated with «sin» (its Hebrew root expresses the idea of “missing the target”: therefore, «sin» is taking a wrong direction of life) is feminine in the original text, while the verb it is associated with is masculine: maybe a hint to the beast that symbolically represents lust, the serpent. Will Cain accept the Lord’s educational intervention?
«Cain said to Abel, his brother... It happened when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him. The LORD said to Cain, “Where is Abel, your brother?” He said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” The LORD said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries to me from the ground. Now you are cursed because of the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. From now on, when you till the ground, it won’t yield its strength to you. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth.” Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is greater than I can bear.  Behold, you have driven me out this day from the surface of the ground. I will be hidden from your face, and I will be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth. It will happen that whoever finds me will kill me.” The LORD said to him, “Therefore whoever slays Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold.” the LORD appointed a sign for Cain, lest any finding him should strike him. Cain went out from the LORD’s presence, and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden». Cain’s speech to Abel is not reported in the original text: maybe they were only empty words without importance and not the renewed dialogue the Lord expected. Cain cedes to the animal in him and kills the brother; this fact condemns him to a life of “wandering”. In fact, who does not recognize the neighbor and his/her dignity loses himself/herself as well. The Lord appoints «a sign» on Cain to protect him; even the murderer’s life is of worth in His sight. However, distance from the project of good and life God originally thought for His creatures («Eden») increases: eastward of the garden Adam and Eve were driven out after their sin (see Gen 3,24); in the same direction proceeds Cain, further “going out” from the Lord.
«Adam knew his wife again. She gave birth to a son, and named him Seth, “for God has appointed me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.” There was also born a son to Seth, and he named him Enosh. Then men began to call on the LORD’s name». In Cain’s genealogy there are builders, breeders, musicians, metalworkers (see Gen 4,17-24: arts and crafts are not a divine gift like in the myths of other cultures, but human inventions); in Seth’s one we find instead the beginning of the cult to the Lord, a way to crush the head to the serpent: the text uses the words we already read in the promise about the woman’s «offspring» who will win against lust and its consequences (see Gen 3,15).
Among Seth’s descendants we find Enoch (the first case of assumption to the Heavens the Scripture tells us: see Gen 5,24) and Noah, whose story we will start to examine in the next post.