Biblical Views: Did Cain Get Away with Murder?

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Was Cain punished for killing Abel, or did God let him get away with murder? Most readers of the Bible would identify Cain’s punishment as being cursed and exiled from the ground (Genesis 4:11–16). But while this sentence seems to have satisfied God, not everyone was content. Readers often noticed that a significant detail was missing in the Genesis 4 narrative. At no point do we read how or when Cain died. We are told about Abel, and the deaths of Adam and Seth are both recorded (Genesis 5:3–8)—but not Cain’s. While there are many people in the Bible […]

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Endnotes

Book of Wisdom 10:3–4; Testament of Adam 3:5; Augustine, City of God 15.20; Genesis Rabbah 22:12; Ecclesiastes Rabbah 6:2; Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer 30.

In Genesis 4:23, Lamech boasts “I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me.” Modern commentators view this statement as an example of Hebrew parallelism rather than a claim by Lamech to have killed two separate people. But ancient interpreters often understood the verse to mean that Lamech killed both Cain and a younger son.

For a more detailed discussion of the Lamech legend and other ways that interpreters changed the story, see my Cain and Abel in Text and Tradition: Jewish and Christian Interpretations of the First Sibling Rivalry, Themes in Biblical Narrative 14 (Leiden: Brill, 2011).