Chapter II. Antediluvian and Post-Flood Humanity

Cain is the first man born, his mother was Eve

According to the Bible story, the very first man, Adam, was not born: God created him. Eve also had an unusual origin: she was created from the rib of Adam. It would be superfluous to talk here about the Fall.

We are not interested in the history of mankind, but in the history of Cain exclusively. But there is something interesting to note:

Life 4:1

“Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and said, “I have acquired a man from the Lord.”

According to the text, this episode is described after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, but we have no reason to claim that Cain was conceived outside of it. Chapter 2 of the book of Genesis gives reason to think that Cain began his life as an embryo in the Garden of Eden.

Let's pay attention to this verse:

Life 2:24

“Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife; and the [two] shall become one flesh.”

The photo shows a painting by Fernand Cormon “Cain”, which depicts the flight of Cain and his descendants.
Cain’s father Adam and Cain’s mother Eve, according to God’s plan, should become one flesh. One can speculate a lot on this phrase, but it cannot be ruled out that here is a direct statement of the fact of intimate relationships in the Garden of Eden.

What does this give us? At a minimum, what Cain:

• albeit indirect, but still a participant in the events of the Fall;
• one of the three people who visited the Garden of Eden (his brother Abel was no longer awarded this privilege);
• the only person conceived there.

Then it is logical to consider Eve as pregnant at the time of the events of the Fall.

Another indirect confirmation of this is in the Bible in the words of God:

Life 3:16

“He said to the woman, “By multiplying I will multiply your sorrow in your pregnancy; in illness you will give birth to children; and your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

Did God accidentally talk about pregnancy, or was it a substantive conversation about it, as a fait accompli? It is more like the second, since the Almighty addresses Eve as a being who is well aware of her ability to become pregnant and give birth.

This does not seem like news to the ancestor of humanity.

Image of Cain in the Bible

Cain's faith had deteriorated even before the sacrifice. God for him was no longer a loving Father, but an idol. With his crime, Cain drew a line under the long-overdue apostasy. It was not the contents of the sacrifice, but the spiritual state in which Cain offered it that became the reason for God’s refusal. He did not accept Cain’s sacrifice out of love for him, for the sake of admonition and awakening his conscience. But Cain, because of his pride, took this as an insult.

In the “First Council Epistle” of the holy Apostle John the Theologian it is written that Cain went to murder because

“His deeds were evil, but his brother’s deeds were righteous” (1 John 3:12).

Consequently, Cain disliked Abel long before the fatal sacrifice. Observing the righteous life of his brother, Cain not only did not follow his example, but also cultivated envy and jealousy in his soul. These passions reached their peak after a sacrifice displeasing to God and gave rise to anger and then murder.

Unrepentant even after patiently crying out to God, Cain aggravated his sin even more. Having turned into a gloomy wanderer, he became a terrible example for posterity, warning against committing murders. Cain's murder of Abel symbolizes man's conscious choice to follow the path of evil. The name Cain became a household word for an envious and hard-hearted person, capable of harming even the closest people. Such a person is called “cursed.”

There is a lot of speculation about Father Cain

There are many silences in the Bible about Cain, and they are fertile ground for the construction of myths and interpretations:

Leopold Szondi's book “Cain. Images of Evil" on litmir.me

Eve conceived Cain by Samael . We meet this version in the Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan. Although Samael himself is not in the Bible, Jewish tradition often refers to the image of this evil spirit. Attributing Cain's "paternity" to him is a simple way to "explain" his subsequent behavior.

Psychologist Leopold Szondi in the book “Cain. Images of Evil,” citing other sources, writes that Cain’s father could have been the tempting serpent. In the same place, in the chapter “Cain - the son of Satan,” Leopold Szondi reports that he encountered in Gnostic manuscripts the statement that both Abel and Cain were supposed to be children of the devil.

Cain's father is sometimes considered to be the devil.

Does this seem incredible? But what happens if you really think about what Eve’s clarification means: “I have acquired a man from the Lord”?

Literally in the original she uses the verb “created”. But why not from Adam? And who did she consider Lord?

As the book of Genesis shows, the tempting serpent managed to outwit Eve once. Could he, or anyone else, do it again?

There is an opinion that the tempting serpent could have become Cain’s father (“Eve, the Serpent and Death”, Hans Baldung)

Cain had a twin sister . In his Commentaries, Rasha points out the peculiarities of the structure of phrases in the Torah when it comes to the children of Adam and Eve. Actually, according to this version, each brother had a twin sister. This removes questions about where the first people got their descendants.

We will return to the topic of speculation on the image of Cain, but for now we will consider how the story of Cain and Abel continued, according to the Bible.

Cain killed Abel and was doomed to wander for it

Cain and Abel devoted their lives to different activities:

• Abel tended the sheep;
• Cain was engaged in farming.

We all know what happened next: the brothers brought gifts to the Lord. Cain gave the fruits of the earth, Abel killed the firstborn of the herd.

The Lord did not accept Cain’s gift, and Abel’s brother took revenge:

Life 4:8

“And Cain said to Abel his brother: [let us go into the field]. And while they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.”

The story that smoke rose above Abel’s altar and fell to the ground at Cain’s is very late, it is not in the Bible.
The clarification “let’s go into the field” is not found in old sources. In its place is damaged text. Most likely, this is a late insertion in order to restore the integrity of the presentation.

What did Cain use to kill Abel? The Bible does not answer this question, but the apocryphal Book of Jubilees reports that it was a stone.

Next we see an interesting parallel, compare the two passages:

Life 4:9

“And the Lord [God] said to Cain: Where is Abel your brother? He said: I don’t know; Am I my brother’s keeper?”

Life 3:11–12

“And [God] said: Who told you that you were naked? have you not eaten from the tree from which I forbade you to eat? Adam said, “The wife whom You gave me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.”

Both Adam and his son try to “get out” when they talk to the Lord. This parallel may speak in favor of the fact that they are still creatures of the same flesh and blood.

Cain fails to deceive God, and the Almighty curses the first murderer on earth:

Life 4:11–15

“And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened its mouth to receive the blood of thy brother at thy hand; when you cultivate the land, it will no longer give its strength to you; you will be an exile and a wanderer on earth. And Cain said to the Lord [God]: My punishment is more than can be endured; behold, You are now driving me from the face of the earth, and I will hide from Your presence, and I will be an exile and a wanderer on the earth; and whoever meets me will kill me. And the Lord [God] said to him: therefore, whoever kills Cain will be avenged sevenfold. And the Lord [God] made a sign for Cain, so that no one who met him would kill him.”

There are some interesting points here.

Cain, condemned by the Lord for fratricide and fleeing from the wrath of God. Vikenty Ivanovich Brioski. 1813

• Cain killed Abel, so that there were two people left on earth besides him: Adam and Eve. If we give in to the Jewish source, then there are four: twin sisters are added. But who is Cain afraid of meeting on the empty land? There is an interesting version that Adam and Eve were either not the first or not the only people on the planet. Their story is told only because it involves the first murder in human history.
• The sign spoken of here is described differently in different interpretations. The rabbis list the following:
• a dog protecting Cain from other people;
• horns to defend against killers;
• the letter of God's name on the forehead.

Cain is doomed to eternal wandering, which makes him similar to another legendary character - Ahasfer, the Eternal Jew. Sometimes their images in art merge.

The expulsion of Cain is another parallel with the story of Adam, the descendant, the eldest son, lives the same fate as his parents.

Consequences of the first murder in history

But Cain did not want to hear God. Even after committing the crime, the killer did not come to his senses, his heart turned to stone, sin suppressed his conscience. God asked Cain where his brother was, and this was not so much a question (after all, for the Omniscient Creator there can be no secrets), but a call to repent. But Cain boldly answered the Almighty: “I don’t know, am I my brother’s keeper?” With his shamelessness, he only aggravated the sin and cut off the possibility of correction. For this he was condemned by God to exile and wandering.

Saint Cyril of Alexandria examines in detail the chain of sins of Cain:

“The first sin was that Cain wrongly divided and did not dedicate to God that which was most excellent. The second is that, having recognized sin, he did not turn to repentance and did not correct his sins by turning to the better, but was inflamed with anger and was irritated by the glorification of his neighbor, whereas it should have been better to compete with the latter, and not consider him an enemy and look at him unrighteous eyes. The third and, as it were, attack to commit a savage murder is uncontrollable envy. The fourth is the same: let's go to the field - proof of deceit and flattery. The fifth is the crime of unholy foul murder. As a sixth sin, he may be charged with lying before God” (Works of St. Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria. Book 2)

Having learned his sentence, Cain trembled. But not from repentance, but from fear that people will take revenge on him for the crime he committed. Once again showing His mercy, God marked Cain with a special sign that prevented anyone from killing the exile. With this sign, the Almighty stopped the threat of increasing murders due to the crime committed by Cain.

Cain married and founded a city

The Bible also says little about the further fate of Cain:

Life 4:11–15

“And Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod, east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived and gave birth to Enoch. And he built a city; and he named the city after the name of his son, Enoch.”

The Apocryphal Book of Jubilees gives details of these events. First, we learn where Cain's wife came from:

“And Adam knew his wife Eve, and she gave birth to nine more sons. And in the fifth week of this jubilee Seth took his sister Azura to wife, and she bore him Enos in the fourth year.”

Secondly, we know that her name was Avan:

“And Cain took his sister Awan as his wife, and she bore him Enoch at the end of the fourth jubilee. And in the first year of the first week of the fifth jubilee houses were built on the earth, and Cain built a city and called it after the name of his son Enoch.”

Thus, Cain became the founder of the first city of Enoch in human history and continued his descendants.

Many researchers try to attribute the founding of the city to Enoch on the grounds that Cain was doomed to wander, but these are not very convincing versions. We have to admit that the text of Genesis simply contains one more of many contradictions.

Other meanings of this word:

• “..., you hear, he chops, and I take it away”
• "Godfather...", Coppola
• “Servant to the king, ... to the soldiers”
• ... Russian democracy
• ..., Son and Holy Spirit
• …-founder
• …founder
• Adam for Cain
• Alexander Menaker in relation to point 8 horizontally
• Old Man
• Father, but not pop
• dad, aunt, dad
• Dad
• Mafia head
• drama by Swedish writer Yu. A. Strindberg
• Friendly addressed. to an elderly man
• a wife's father-in-law, and who is he to her husband?
• A wife’s father-in-law, but who is he to her husband?
• a wife's father-in-law, but who is he to her husband?
• Originator of the offspring
• His little son came to him
• His little son came to him
• Carlo for Pinocchio
• kitty Vorobyaninov in relation to Russian democracy
• Pussycat for democracy
• Pussycat for Russian democracy
• Pussycat for Russian democracy.
• Kitty in relation to to Russian democracy
• Godfather...
• Who from the family of the French writer Honore de Balzac served in the military supply department
• Leo Tolstoy: “...Sergius”
• Mom is mother, dad is...
• mom - mother, dad - ...
• a man towards his children
• Appeal to a church minister
• she is the mother and he
• She is a mother, and he?
• She is a mother, and he?
• The founder of something
• Leaving an inheritance to a son
• Distinguished early in life
• The patronymic is given from him
• Dad
• Pope, but not Roman
• Dad
• Mother's partner in raising children
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's first and last teacher
• Potential grandfather
• poem by the Hungarian poet F. Juhász “My …”
• poem by Russian writer K. Simonov
• Razg. dad
• ancestor, founder of something
• Relative, man in relation to his children
• A novel by Alois Irasek
• novel by American writer Mario Puzo “The Godfather...”
• Balzac's novel "... Goriot"
• novel by the French writer Honore de Balzac “... Goriot”
• A male in relation to his offspring (usually about breeding, thoroughbred horses, dogs, etc.)
• A male in relation to his young
• the most dubious of all relatives
• The most dubious of relatives
• Father-in-law to my husband
• Made an awkward move
• Church minister or monk
• Father in law for wife
• Third to the Son and Holy Spirit
• The third is to the Son and the Holy Spirit.
• Tyatya
• Uranium for the Titans
• Coppola's film "The Godfather..."
• Francis Ford Coppola's film "The Godfather..."
• Family member
• What does the word “mother” mean among Georgians (Lev Uspensky “A Lay on Words”)

There is a version that Cain married Lilith

Lilith is a very ancient image, older than the Bible. Its roots cannot be traced in existing traditions. According to legend, she was Adam's first wife. Perhaps this is what the Bible says about her:

Life 1:27

“And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them.”

Lilith in some sources is called the wife of Cain.
As you know, God did not create a woman on an equal basis with a man, but later made her from a rib. So this verse may contain an echo of an earlier legend. According to it, Lilith quarreled with Adam and left him, after which she became an enemy of humanity.

According to one version, she could become the wife or mistress of Cain. But the Bible gives no reason to think so. Orthodoxy generally tries not to take into account the image of Lilith.

Cain's descendants continued his lineage: a summary of what happened next

A brief summary of further events is appropriate here: Adam and Eve had a son, Seth, and other descendants. Interestingly, the names in both family trees are very similar and differ in minor phonetic units:

• Cain - Enoch - Irad - Mechiael - Methuselah - Lamech - three sons: Jabal, Jubal and Tubalcain
• Seth - Enos - Cainan - Maleleel - Jared - Enoch - Methuselah - Lamech - Noah - three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.

The parallel is obvious. It is also interesting that Adam is translated as “man”, and his son is Cain. In the branch of Seth there is Enos, which in translation is also “man”, and his son is very consonant with Cain: Cainan.

2 lines of descendants of Adam may well be one, and Seth - Cain.

The most plausible explanation is that this chain reflects the same myth about the first man and the first representatives of various professions, since both blacksmiths and musicians are represented here.

That is, there is no line of Cain and line of Seth. These are the same people. Actually, considering that the Holy Scripture says almost nothing at all about Seth, this seems to be true.

Cain is also the hero of several apocrypha. The most interesting is the Ethiopian Book of Enoch. In it, the spirit of Abel visits Cain's descendant Enoch and complains that he will suffer until Cain's seed is blotted out.

There is also a parable where the story of the younger and older brothers is told in the images of bulls and cows.