CAIN (Heb. Qajin = Arab. qajn "smith", a name connected in Gen. 4:1, by popular etymology, with qānāh "to possess"). - First son of Adam and Eve, brother of Abel (v.); the rabbinic opinion that considers them twins is unfounded. Through his hatred and fratricide, he is the first exponent of the moral disorder derived from Adam's sin. Offering with a grudging spirit and devoid of faith (Heb. 11:4) the products of the agriculture to which he had devoted himself, he saw his gifts rejected by God, unlike the pleasing sacrifices of lambs offered by his shepherd brother. Hence the threatening wrath of the wicked C., meditating the killing of the righteous Abel. God, speaking to his conscience, invited him (a somewhat enigmatic passage of Gen. 4:6 ff.) to resist, by doing good, the evil demon eager to take possession of him: "If you do well, are you not perhaps superior to the Evil One? But if you do evil, does not the Demon sit at the door? He strives to conquer you, but it is you who must dominate him." However, as the Apostle comments (1 John 3:12), C., moved "by the Evil One, killed (ἔσφαξεν 'slaughtered') his brother" after having invited him into the open country, and he answered God arrogantly, when He asked him for an account of the slain man, that he was not his keeper. But by "the voice of the blood" of Abel demanding justice, God cursed C., foretelling for him the future sterility of the earth, soaked in fraternal blood, with regard to him as a fugitive and wanderer. Awakened then to an awareness of the crime, dreading the harsh law of retaliation, C. obtained that God, merciful even in wrath, should promulgate a penalty of sevenfold vengeance on anyone who killed him, and should give him a sign forewarning of his non-bloody end.
It is erroneous to see, with the rabbis, in the "sign" a horn, a leprosy, a trembling, a face terribly contorted by remorse, or a tattoo, destined to make him recognized and spared by strangers who might have encountered him in the region of Nod, to the west of Eden, where he had fled.
For the archaeology, v. ABELE.
Bibliography5 works
Faustino Salvoni
FOLKLORE
A very widespread and ancient popular tradition, also mentioned twice by Dante (Inf., XX, 126, and Par., II, 50), sees in the spots of the moon the image of C. The details of the interpretation, however, vary somewhat. Some see there C. raising a forkful of thorns, or being forced to carry a bundle of thorns on his shoulders; others, C. standing, as one commentator on Dante, Buti, says, "on a bundle of brambles." The legends that seek to account for this way in which the people interpreted the lunar spots also present variants. An Abruzzese legend relates that C., having committed the fratricide, hid himself, but was condemned by God to stay in the moon, precisely so that everyone might see him; nor did it avail him to carry with him a great branch of thorn, which cannot hide him at all. Another, far more widespread but also more complicated, tells how, after Abel was killed, C., having become fearful, piled brambles around the cave where he lived, to protect himself from wild beasts. "You do well," God replied, "for the thorns will serve to crown my son." When C. later died, the devils rushed to drag him to hell, but he invoked God and reminded him of the praise he had received for planting the brambles. Then the Lord, in order not to contradict himself, ordered that by day C. should stay in hell, but by night go to the moon to tend the thorns; for this reason he is seen with the pitchfork in the air, full of brambles. In Friuli they even see C. killing Abel.