The story of the first two sons of Adam and Eve, a herdsman and a farmer, whose offerings are received differently, and of the murder that follows. Genesis gives no reason why one offering is accepted and the other is not, and the silence has driven interpretation ever since. God warns the angry brother that sin crouches at the door and that he may yet master it, but the killing happens in a field, and the questioning afterward produces the retort about being a brother's keeper, a sentence of restless wandering, and a protective mark so that no one who finds Cain may kill him. The Qur'an tells the same episode without naming the brothers, adds the refusal of the victim to raise his hand in return, and closes with a raven scratching the ground to show the killer how to bury a body, a scene Genesis does not have.
Facts
Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteRabbinic tradition in Genesis Rabbah elaborates the brothers' rejected offerings into an argument over property and inheritance, some readings holding that Cain and Abel quarreled over which of them would possess the land on which the Temple would one day stand, turning the murder into a dispute over sacred territory rather than jealousy alone. 1 Scholarly NoteThe statement that to kill one soul is to kill all humanity follows the episode in the Qur'an and appears in the charge to witnesses in Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5 3 Meaning
Central MotifRejected offering and the first killing between brothers 1 History
Historical NoteThe phrase brother's keeper, drawn from Cain's retort to God's question, has passed into common English usage as a byword for denied responsibility toward others, well beyond its original narrative context. 1 Historical NoteThe Qur'an's version has the surviving brother express regret after seeing the raven's example, becoming one of the regretful, a note of remorse absent from the terser Genesis account, where Cain's only recorded reaction is fear of being killed himself. 2 Controversy
Point in DisputeThe biblical text does not state how Cain killed Abel; postbiblical Jewish and Islamic commentary supply differing traditions, a stone, a club, or strangulation, none of which appears in the base text itself. 1 Sources
Primary SourceThe episode survives in the Masoretic Hebrew text and, with some variation, in the Samaritan Pentateuch and among the Dead Sea Scrolls fragments of Genesis recovered at Qumran. 1 Learn More
Two Offerings and a Field
The first son is a worker of the ground and the second a keeper of sheep. Each brings an offering from what he has, produce from one and firstlings with their fat from the other, and God regards the second and not the first. The narrative gives no reason. Every later reading has had to supply one, from the quality of the offering to the disposition of the giver to a straightforward divine preference the text declines to explain, and the gap is what has made the episode so productive for commentators. What the text does report is the reaction: the face falls, and God speaks directly to the anger, warning that sin is a crouching thing at the door whose desire is for him, and that he may yet rule over it.
He does not. The brothers go out into the field, and the older kills the younger. The questioning that follows echoes the questioning in the garden: God asks where the brother is, receives the answer that he does not know and the counter-question whether he is his brother's keeper, and then says that the blood cries out from the ground. The sentence is that the ground will no longer yield to him and that he will be a restless wanderer, which he protests is more than he can bear, since anyone who finds him will kill him. God sets a mark on him for protection and declares a sevenfold vengeance on whoever does. The mark is a safeguard for the murderer, not a brand of shame, which is the reverse of how the phrase is usually used in English.
The Raven, and the Weight of a Single Life
The Qur'an tells the episode as a warning recited to a later audience, introducing it as the true account of the two sons of Adam and naming neither. The offerings are accepted from one and not the other; the threat to kill is spoken aloud; and the reply is the element that has no counterpart in Genesis, that if you stretch out your hand to kill me I will not stretch out mine to kill you, for I fear God. After the killing the murderer is left standing over a body he does not know what to do with, and God sends a raven that scratches the ground to show him how to hide the shame of his brother, at which he cries out that he cannot even do what a raven does.
The passage then draws the conclusion for which it is best known: that whoever kills a soul, other than for a soul or for corruption in the land, it is as if he had killed all humanity, and whoever saves one, it is as if he had saved all humanity. The same formulation appears earlier in rabbinic literature, in the charge given to witnesses in a capital case in the Mishnah, which reasons from the single ancestor of Genesis that no one may say their own line matters more than another. The two versions differ in wording and transmission and the relation between them is a standing subject of comparative study, but the shared move is the same: a story about one murder is turned into a statement about the value of any single life.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Cain, Figures Cain is the murderer of the Cain and Abel narrative.
Belongs to Tradition
Originated In
Sources
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