Meanwhile, ‘Abel’ is believed to be derived from Jubal or Jabal, the ancestor of nomadic shepherds. In Genesis 4:22 we learn that ‘Tubal-cain’ was ‘an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron’, which lends credence to this etymology (Tubal was a district in Asia Minor, in what is now Turkey). ‘Cain’ is from a root word meaning ‘forge’ or ‘smith’, and is cognate with the Arabic kain, which means the same thing.
The Dictionary of the Bible even points to sources which tell us that certain castes were forbidden to keep cattle we can see how this would lead to their resentment of other castes who could do so, and profited as a result.īut a clue to the origins of the Cain and Abel story may also lie in the symbolic meanings of the brothers’ two names. This has been analysed as a reference to God’s preference for animal sacrifice as an offering, but it may also allude to the wretched life to which a particular group was reduced when their crops failed, and they were forced to make a living by doing smith work (see below) for other tribes. Cain’s crops are deemed unsatisfactory by God, while Abel’s sheep are received enthusiastically. Let’s begin with the incident involving the offerings of the ‘fruits’ of the field (i.e., Cain’s crops) and Abel’s sheep.
The clue to the deeper meaning of the story of Cain and Abel perhaps rests on two aspects of the narrative: the offering to God which Cain produces, and God is displeased with and the clues provided by the etymologies of the two brothers’ names. But what does the story mean? It’s often taken to be an injunction against murder, but that doesn’t get us very far, beyond a fairly self-evident moral point.
So, these two accounts must belong to different traditions. In other words, the Cain and Abel story probably originated in a separate source from the story of Adam and Eve, but was grafted on later, with the inconsistencies in the two stories left unresolved. So who, then, are these other people Cain is worried about? And where did his wife come from?
Yet Cain tells God that ‘every one that findeth me shall slay me’ (Genesis 4:14).
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