Genesis 4

Genesis 4 presents the first human beings born outside the garden: Cain, a tiller of the ground, and Abel, a keeper of sheep. Both bring offerings to the LORD. Abel's offering — the firstborn of his flock, with their fat portions — is accepted; Cain's offering of the fruit of the ground is not, for reasons the text declines to specify. Cain's face falls. God speaks to him: why are you angry? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it. Cain speaks to his brother and kills him in the field. The LORD asks where Abel is. Cain denies knowledge — am I my brother's keeper? — a question that has echoed through Western literature and ethics ever since.

The divine verdict is a curse on Cain from the ground that has received his brother's blood: when he tills it, it will not yield its strength to him. He will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth. Cain protests that the punishment is too great — whoever finds me will kill me. The LORD puts a mark on Cain so that no one who finds him will kill him. Cain goes to the land of Nod, east of Eden, and builds a city. His line descends through Enoch to Lamech, who has two wives and boasts to them that he has killed a man for striking him and a young man for wounding him: if Cain's revenge is sevenfold, Lamech's is seventy-sevenfold. The chapter then pivots to Adam and Eve's third son Seth, and his son Enosh, and notes: at that time people began to call upon the name of the LORD.