A pre-biblical version of the Cain and Abel story: A subtle condemnation of a dysfunctional social structure

3.1 City-building and wandering

Cain’s behaviour is sometimes understood as portraying a wanderer who settled down, paralleling the experience of the Kenites. However, it seems odd for a wandering vagrant to settle down, while Cain’s founding of a city sits uneasily with the biblical assumption that Babel is the first city. Therefore, some scholars (e.g., Gunkel 1901: 2; Hendel 2008: 95–97) believe that originally distinct stories were joined together in Gen. 4 and that Cain amalgamates two different characters, a patriarch and a farmer. I will argue that these activities should be understood by appealing to the pre-J layer and that they were originally intended as metaphors.

City-building is easy to explain. The dominant organizational unit of Canaanite society was the kinship group and there was tension between less kin-based urban Canaanite centres and the more kin-based countryside; urban centres attempted to extend control over the countryside (Younker 2003: 159–60). Because people of Iron Age Palestine could survive only as part of a household or in cities (cities and walls were primarily built for protection), city-building is an expected consequence of Cain’s filial apostasy and it symbolizes loneliness and fear: he needed to protect himself since he was now alone. This behaviour principally emphasises the importance of a harmonious household for the individual’s survival; members of the household relied deeply on each other, and this interdependence is an important motif in pre-J and other stories of that time (see, §4.2).

Loneliness, depression, and fear are consistent with wandering if we plausibly understand wandering as a metaphor for depression or some kind of mental disturbance (Barré 2001: 177–87; Moudhy 2014, e.g., 156, 166). Because people of that time did not have our modern diagnostic categories, rather than referring to mental disorders (e.g., depression) directly, they described their behavioural manifestations (e.g., wandering, changed countenance); that is to say, they treated mental disorders as disorders of behaviour (Reynolds and Kinnier Wilson 2014: 2614; Moudhy 2014: 32–35). With this in mind, I will argue that by building a city and wandering, Cain seems to exhibit stereotypical behavioural manifestations of what we today call sadness, depression, anxiety, and anger.

Behavioural manifestations of wandering—agitation and aimless locomotion (the inability to sit still)—characterize depression, and wandering is also a sign of depression in Sumerian and Akkadian literature. For example, grief over his friend Enkidu (ANET, 90–91) is one of the reasons why Gilgamesh ‘roams the steppe’ (Kenneth 1999: 113) and the Akkadian Diagnostic Handbook associates rapādu ‘to wander’ with disorders with a strong mental component, like ašuštu (depression). A person can be seized by or fall ill with rapādu, while a pale or gloomy face or changed countenance are non-verbal expressions of distress (ašāšu), depression (ašuštu), or sadness (e.g., šapālu) throughout ancient Semitic literature (Moudhy 2014: 150–52, 236). The Bible describes depression as resulting from divine displeasure (Hos. 9.17; Job 15.23) or from a traumatic experience, such as the death of a loved one (Barré 2001: 187, 177–81; see Kselman 2002: 275–77). These two causes of depression can easily be identified in the Cain and Abel story, which is full of behavioural manifestations of depression and distress.

For example, Cain’s sadness and depression in verse 5 (Goldenberg 2003: 180–81; Moudhy 2014: 102–4) indicate that he interprets God’s surprising response as displeasure with Cain’s effort and Cain himself, whereas the depressive reaction from verses 13–14 results from his sudden realisation of the gravity of his behaviour and his fear of an uncertain future, which is why he builds a city. The sin that is crouching (lurking) in verse 7 could also be connected to Cain’s mental state. Disorders like depression were regarded as caused by evil demons (spirits) or by the anger of personal gods (Reynolds and Kinnier Wilson 2014) and the Akkadian Diagnostic Handbook also describes a man who ‘is continually worried (ašāšu), and his face continually becomes pale’ by saying that ‘the Lurker [the Demon] has struck him, from (when) it touched and connected with him’ (from Moudhy 2014: 143–46). Yahweh could be suggesting in verse 7 that humans ‘invite’ illnesses or distress by not acting rightly, and the presence of the Lurker-sin could also explain Cain’s unexpectedly mild punishment. In verse 14, Cain exhibits feelings of worthlessness, excessive guilt, and recurrent thoughts of death, which are clinical (behavioural) symptoms of what we today call depression (DSM-5: 160–61). Finally, he overemphasizes his punishment by adding to God’s words from Gen. 4.11–12 that he will be hidden from God’s face (shame, sense of worthlessness) and that anyone may kill him (self-destructive thoughts, anxiety, and panic are also typical for depressed people).

Therefore, insofar as the story as we now have it is not substantially different from its pre-biblical version, Cain’s behaviour should be understood as symbolizing his overall mental state and his apostasy rather than reflecting a historical connection with the Kenites. As my analysis will suggest, one important motif in pre-J is the complex agony that the firstborn son endures: he is first overprotected and loved too much (§3.4), then he thinks that he and his efforts are discarded in favour of the inferior brother (§4.2); this causes him terrible suffering (§3.1); (due to the influence of the lurking daemon) he mismanages his emotions and loses control over his reasoning and behaviour (God’s words from vv. 6–7 have no effect); he explodes with rage (verse 8), only to finally realise his guilt and fall immediately into severe depression and self-blame (God’s words from vv. 10–11 have an immediate effect).

3.2 Social status of the Kenites

Some scholars believe that Cain’s descendants had a reputation as people who were respected as a result of Cain’s impunity and the mark set upon him by Yahweh, but also feared for their vengeful character described in Lamech’s boast. Supposedly, this corresponds to the social status of the Kenites: some hypothesize that they were respected and feared because of the mystical character of their profession, metalsmithing. Metalsmithing made Kenites both marginal and important: as bearers of profound knowledge and powers, smiths were often viewed as ‘sacred’, but in an ambivalent sense, since they were also dangerous (McNutt 1999: 17). For his part, Moberly (2007: 17, 24) argues that Cain’s mark is not visible but is symbolic of a reputation embodied in Lamech’s boast. Cain’s behaviour and the behaviour of his descendants—namely, intensified malice and blood vengeance—are their defence (see Clines 2004: 73).

This hypothesis answers all three questions. Cain’s wicked character explains both why Yahweh does not regard him and his offering and why Cain kills Abel. Also, Yahweh does not exempt Cain from his deserved punishment but rather recognizes an already existing trait that protects Cain. However, the hypothesis also overemphasizes both the status of the Kenites and Lamech’s boast. The Kenites are not noted for blood vengeance, are mentioned only in a few biblical passages (Gen. 15.19; Num. 24.21–22; Judg. 1.16; 4.11, 17; 5.24; 1 Sam. 15.6; 27.10; 30.29; 1 Chron. 2.55), and we have no reason to believe that they were feared. In fact, Moses was married to a Midianite woman (Judg. 1.16; 4.11), while both the Kenites and the Rechabites were regarded as friendly, which makes them unique among Israel’s neighbours (Sparks 2009: 22–24). The view that Cain’s mark is symbolic of the reputation embodied in Lamech’s boast is also problematic: Lamech has killed only one person, which makes him no more dangerous than Cain. Lamech just wants the reputation of a dangerous, violent person; he is boasting. Therefore, plausibly assuming that the main story comes from pre-J, we have no reason to assume that pre-J intended Yahweh’s preferences or Cain’s behaviour to explain the reputation of the Kenites for they did not seem to have a particularly important reputation that needed to be explained.

3.3 The cult of YHWH

According to the Midianite-Kenite hypothesis, the story is a critical recollection of the period in which Kenites were the original, pre-Israelite worshippers of Yahweh, but their cult was primitive. Accordingly, Yahweh’s preference mirrors God’s selection of the Israelites and rejection of the Kenites’ primitive cult.

This theory is consistent with the marginal role of the Kenites and Israel’s friendly attitude towards them; some Kenites (or closely related groups) the Bible mentions could be devotees of Yahweh, and the mark of Cain could represent their tribal marks. Also, it has been suggested that the theory makes sense of the parallel between Cain’s impunity, on the one hand, and the Kenites’ immunity from the Israelites’ aggression in 1 Sam. 15.6, on the other. However, the theory is also problematic. The immunity (1 Sam. 15.6) was not granted based on their ethnicity, but rather because of their valuable metalsmithing services and, in the words of Saul himself, due to their kindness towards Israel at the time of Exodus. Besides, the aggression was directed at the Amalekites (see North 1964: 381–85; Blenkinsopp 2008: 140–44; Chung 2011: 251). Therefore, the usefulness of their profession explains the Kenites’ marginal role and Israel’s friendly attitude toward them better than their supposed connection to Cain.

3.4 Cain’s name

Another parallel might be the name. Cain is the name of a tribe (e.g., Num. 24.22; Judg. 4.11) and a town in Judah close to Kenite country (Josh. 15.57), and it might be translated as ‘blacksmith’, which matches the occupation of the Kenites. However, Westermann (1992: 31) observes that, although Qayin seems to be derived from the Semitic root, it appears only in Arabic at a later epoch with the meaning of ‘blacksmith’ and it cannot be found in biblical Hebrew (see Hensel 2011: 46). Furthermore, because it has three similar semantic domains—’to form, fashion or forge’, ‘to produce, create’, and ‘to acquire, own’—and several etymological connections, the root of the name (קין‎) allows numerous translations. Augustine (Civitate Dei 15–17: 105), Philo (Cher. 41, 47), Flavius Josephus (Antiquities 1.52–1.71), and scholars like Vermeulen (2014: 34) understand it as ‘ownership, possession, and acquisition’, while other translations are ‘envy’, ‘jealousy’, ‘reed’, and even ‘song’ (see Franxman 1979: 65, 71; Gesenius 1906: 883–84, 888–89; Hess 1992: 806–7; APOT II, 138). Thus, there is a lack of consensus regarding how exactly to understand the name, and for very good reasons. To solve this and related mysteries, I proceed to defend four interconnected claims.

First, in pre-J, Cain’s name reflects his close relationship with his mother and highlights the conversion of the creation of אשה‎ (‘iššāh) from איש‎ (‘îš)—Cain’s name signals that she forged him from herself, that he is her precious son. Second, the peculiar structure of verse 1 makes sense if it is assumed that there is an important inequality between spouses in a dry-farming household that, in turn, exacerbates the inequality between siblings, since mothers turn their attention towards older sons. Third, the pre-J story is developed to address these two imbalances. Fourth, Yahweh’s preference and instructions from verse 5 make good sense on the hypothesis that Yahweh rejects the predetermined social roles typically imposed on members of a dry-farming society, since these roles cause interfamilial tensions. My defence of these claims begins with an analysis of verse 1.

The literal meaning of MT verse 1 contains too many peculiarities for them to be a coincidence: Eve calls her son a man, איש‎ (‘îš), which she has created or forged (קניתי‎/qānîtî, from קנה‎/qnh) with (את‎/’et) God (יהוה‎). ³ To understand the verse, we need to explain (i) why the baby boy is being referred to as a man, (ii) why the mother says that she ‘created’ or ‘forged’ this man, and (iii) why the deity is mentioned. I will argue that pre-J’s non-literal message answers all three questions, and that we need to understand the relevant socio-historical context to identify this message, after which, the meaning of the name reveals itself.

Interestingly, two nouns that refer to a ‘man’—אדם‎ (‘ādām) and איש‎ (‘îš)—appear in verse 1. An unnamed man, אדם‎, ‘knows’ ⁴ his wife, who then conceives and gives birth to another man, איש‎. Using the noun איש‎ in this context is very peculiar, not only because it is nowhere else used to refer to a baby boy (Wenham 1987: 101) but also because the mother might be saying that she created Cain with God, which explains why some ancient exegetes think that Cain was born with extraordinary abilities or that his father is of a divine/angelic origin. For instance, Latin and Armenian versions of Vita (21.3) say that he was born as a full-grown man; another interpretation is that he was lustrous (Charlesworth 1985: 264). Plausibly, the similarity of Cain (קין‎) and Kewan (כיון‎), ‘Saturn’, together with the tradition that his father is Samael (the devil) or an angel (Targum Pseudo Jonathan), prompted the legend of his lustrous face (Levine 1976: 73; Kugel 1998: 147–48; Ginzberg 2003: 103 n. 6). This interpretation could also be based on a very old survival of an Egyptian tradition in which the mother is a goddess who has conceived a child with the creator-god (Hoffmeier 1983: 47; Strange 2004: 349–50). Yet, it could be instead that the idea of Cain’s lustrous face echoes the Cave of Treasures (2.13–14), which describes Adam’s face glowing like the face of the sun. Some Muslim and Jewish traditions believe that Cain was special because he was born in the Garden (Kueny 2008: 115–16), and other interpretations also exist (see Royse 1988–1989: 221–23).

Because of these peculiarities, there are various accounts of verse 1. For example, Stein distinguishes five senses of איש‎: agent, householder, authority, subordinate, and representative. He further argues that this is a term of affiliation, that it often situates the referent in relation to a group, and that it, unlike אדם‎, belongs to the semantic domain of relational terms (Stein 2006–2007: parts I–VII, esp. II, 1–3; 2008: 2–24; see Crown 1974: 110–12; Grant 1977: 2–11; Hoftijzer and Jongeling 1995: 118–20). Because איש‎ was often used to convey a relation where a member typifies or represents a group or category (e.g., Gen. 43.17, 19), Stein (2008: 7–9, 23) translates the exclamation with ‘I have created a member (of humankind)’, whereas Speiser (1960: 159–60) understands it as ‘I have created a member (of a family)’. The Contemporary Torah (Stein and Meyers 2006: 6) offers ‘I have created a person’, since איש‎ can designate a human being without regard to gender (see Clines 1993: 221–22). However, because Israelites already understood identity as relational—individuals were primarily members of groups (Meyers 2012a: 118–22)—using איש‎ to highlight this feature strikes me as unnecessary. Why would a pre-J mother want to say that she created a member of humankind? I think that, in the pre-J layer of the text, she has instead a smaller group in mind and that Cain’s name symbolises belonging to this group.

The mother says that she has קנה‎ this man את־יהוה‎ (‘et-Yahweh) and the fact that the comitative (companionship) nuance of את‎ is used might indicate that God physically participated in the conception. Dictionaries typically solve this problem by positing that the verse involves an exception to the rule (e.g., von Rad 1972: 103), preferring the instrumental nuance of את‎, that is, ‘with the help of’, as the applicable meaning (e.g., BDB, 85–86; Waltke and O’Connor 1990: 195; Arnold and Choi 2003: 101). In LXX, Eve acquired (ἐκτησάμην) the man: את־יהוה‎ is rendered as διὰ τοῦ θεου. Scarlata (2012: 33) suggests that διὰ, unlike את‎, demonstrates the mother’s dependency on God and conveys a sense of humility, and Sarna (1989: 32) notes that את‎ often has the sense of ‘together with’.

These interpretations are consistent with theological views of the time: early Israelites imagined Yahweh as a co-creator of each human, and the motif of an individual assisting a specific god in the creation of humanity is a familiar one in the Middle East. Therefore, although the instrumental nuance might imply that God functions as a tool, it is also plausible that the mother implies that she assists Yahweh in the creation of Cain: the אשה‎ (‘iššāh), brings forth an איש‎ together with Yahweh just as the אדמה‎ (ădāmāh) brings forth an אדם‎ together with Yahweh (van Wolde 1991: 27–28). However, because ידע‎ is a euphemism for sexual intercourse between אדם‎ and אשה‎ (see note 4), the deity cannot be the child’s father; thus, we should not think that the comitative nuance of את‎ implies that the deity physically participated in Cain’s conception. Nevertheless, the idea may be that Yahweh was helping her ‘create’ by getting her through a difficult childbirth (similarly, Rösel 1994: 102; however, Bokovoy 2013).

I am of course not alone in suggesting that Cain and Abel were not initially sons of the first human couple. Interestingly, however, even though most scholars accept this hypothesis, few interpret this story in light of the theoretical framework entailed by it. This is not surprising or wrong-headed, of course, given the purpose of biblical exegesis, but it may leave some important mysteries unsolved. What we need to appreciate is that, in a pre-biblical version of the story, the exclamation at the birth of Cain was not made by Eve but rather by an unidentified Early Iron Age woman. The אדם–‎אדמה‎ connection does not exist in pre-J. In pre-J, an unidentified woman, אשה‎, gave birth to Cain, who was not a son of Adam but a son of אדם‎, an unidentified commoner—since אדם‎ is usually translated as ‘man’, ‘humankind’, or ‘commoner’ (Kutler 1982: 73–77). Adding this story to the Primeval History added another layer and changed the characters by assigning them specific personal names (Adam and Eve), which substantially enriched the earlier story but also blurred the older layers and eliminated some hints necessary for understanding the storyline.

Plausibly, because pre-J did not use איש‎ to explain the child’s gender (the child has a male name), the intention was to contrast the child, איש‎, with his father, אדם‎—implying that the two men are somewhat different. Because the father is represented with a non-relational term whereas the son is represented with a relational noun, it would seem that איש‎ has a specific relational role, and because the mother is making the exclamation, this role must be that of a son. From this, we can infer several important insights.

The first insight is that claims that the offering was rejected because the ground was cursed because of the Fall (e.g., Spina 1992: 319–22; Galambush 1993: 35) are incorrect: because Cain was initially a son of an unspecified commoner, the Fall cannot explain the rejection of his offering. This is not to say that the current version of the story does not contain this message—later reworkings might have added this layer to it—but it is to say that this was not initially the reason for Yahweh’s rejection of the offering. Similarly, because the events did not happen shortly after the Fall, we should not assume that Cain did not know what murder was. The second insight is that Cain did not get this name because of the Kenites but rather because he was ‘crafted’ or ‘forged’ by his mother. The connection between Cain and the Kenites exists, of course, but it is not intended by pre-J; rather, it was also developed later when Tubal-Cain was added to Cain’s genealogy (see §5). Finally, the most important insights concern the relationships between Cain’s parents and between Cain and his mother: the name of the boy hints at a special connection between him and the mother, and the mother is obviously trying to diminish the role of the father. So we see that this verse is not just about Cain’s birth. The relationships between members of the family in general seem to be a very important part of its message.

According to my analysis, verse 1 has a very sophisticated meaning: it contains the relevant socio-historical context (see §4) and the relevant backstory (i.e., Cain being the cherished son), and it even motivates the plot (Yahweh’s preference and the subsequent message). In short, it gives us everything we thought we did not have. Verse 1 is not just a verse but rather a beautiful, heartbreaking story of a woman who has enhanced her significance and social position by giving birth to her first son. Its meaning resides not in what it literally says but rather in what it communicates. And it communicates that, once upon a time, there lived a commoner (אדם‎) and his wife (אשה‎), who—and this is contextually implicated (see below)—depended on him and was subordinate to him. But one day, she got pregnant with her man and she gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, who completely turned her world around. She is no longer a woman (אשה‎) of a man (איש‎) (head of the household) but a creator of a new man (new head of the household). And she crafted this new man from herself, with the help of Yahweh, who was by her side during the difficult labour (את־יהוה‎ seems to imply that she suffered during the childbirth and that she is grateful to Yahweh for giving her the necessary strength).

Because an important part of the message communicated by verse 1 is contextually implicated, I proceed to reconstruct these implicatures by discussing the relevant context—viz., the relationships among the members of the dry-farming household—in more detail. These relationships are exceptionally important.

4.1 Spousal imbalance

Thus far, I have outlined my reconstruction of the pre-J verse 1 and argued that the verse subtly hints that there was a non-negligible imbalance between the spouses in dry-farming households. I will now reconstruct the relevant socio-historical context and defend my reconstruction of the verse by showing how the spousal imbalance complicates relationships between siblings in the household even further. My main idea is this: pre-J says that an אדם‎ (commoner) rather than an איש‎ (husband, man) knows his אשה‎ (wife), and אשה‎ crafts an איש‎ (man) rather than a son. Although it is said that אדם‎ had known his wife, it is not said that Cain is in his image and, because the mother only mentions herself and Yahweh, she likely intends to make the father’s role appear less important. The names of characters given by pre-J, the wordplay from verse 1, and the tension between the brothers make good sense on the hypothesis that the pre-J story addresses inequalities between the spouses and between the sons that are typical causes of conflict in dry-farming households. The imbalance between the spouses is not dominant, but it is important because it makes the imbalance between the sons even worse. So, let us see what this imbalance looked like.

In Israelite households, men were heads of families with certain authority over wives and children. Although women’s roles were important, the wife’s social position depended on her children: becoming a mother would improve a woman’s social position by giving her relative equality with the husband (see Marsman 2003: 122–53, 252–91; van der Toorn 2004: 427–29; Meyers 2012a: 118–22; Stiebert 2013). The spousal imbalance naturally turns the dominated spouse’s affection to children and away from her husband, which we also see in this story. Once we have identified the socio-historical context, we can plausibly infer that the Gen. 4.1 exclamation comes from a woman feeling relieved after having given birth to a male child: being an איש‎, the son takes his father’s place as the dominant male figure in the life of אשה‎ and enhances her social status. The verse emphasizes the reciprocal mother-son relationship (‘iššāh-’îš) as the conversion of the husband-wife (‘îš - ’iššāh) relationship: in a conversion of the creation of ‘iššāh from ‘îš, ‘iššāh now creates the son (see Galambush 1993: 44; Schneider 2008: 172; Mann 2021: 81–85) who, in return, confers on her the identity of a mother. Therefore, because we have good reasons to believe that קנה‎ likely originates from a pre-biblical tradition (it is inconsistent with biblical vernacular that typically uses ילד‎ ‘to bear/conceive’) and because the earliest Hebrew conception of creation sees it as a species of craftsmanship, אשה‎ seems to imply that the woman crafted or forged this איש‎ from herself (see Katz 1954: 130–31; Bokovoy 2013: 32, 19–35).

There is an additional, interesting aspect of the mother’s exclamation. Human characters usually misinterpret their situation in this story whereas the deity, whose voice is that of the author, sets things straight (Prince 1982: 10–16). We see this in the Cain and Abel story as well: God warns Cain that sin is crouching at his door, reminds him that Abel is his brother, tells him that there is no reason to be angry, and so on (Gordon 2011: 195–210). However, the mother does not misinterpret the situation; rather, she subtly refuses the passive role in the birth of children. This is why she, quite surprisingly, names the child and does not mention the father (similarly, Mann 2021: 84, 95). Her peculiar behaviour has led some scholars to the conclusion that the character of אשה‎ emerged from the female goddess Asherah, initially worshipped alongside Yahweh and then merged into Yahweh (Ackerman 2006: 189–92, 196), and some say that she is a fusion of two characters, one of which is the creator goddess Mami from the Atrahasis epic ‘Creation of Man by the Mother Goddess’ (ANET: 99–100; Kikawada 1972: 33–37). These hypotheses are problematic. Typically, the man is the creative force of conception, אדם‎ knows his wife; he is the subject and she is the object. However, in this story, the wife presents herself as the one who creates/crafts thereby directly contradicting the first part of the verse. And, typically, Asherah is Yahweh’s companion, a procreator; however, in this story, the mother says that Yahweh is her companion (who helped her with a difficult childbirth).

We see in verse 1 that pre-J developed a radically different female character and his idea seems to be quite ingenious: אשה‎ wants to subtly diminish, though not completely negate, the importance of male elements with respect to קנה‎ of Cain and elevate her own social importance beyond the normal station of a mother. Omitting the father and assigning God a comitative role is important for the mother, and it explains the origin of Cain’s name. Because creating implies owning (אדם‎ was formed from אדמה‎ and belongs to אדמה‎) and because קין‎ echoes קנה‎, Cain’s name likely represents someone who was crafted and implies belonging to the one who did the crafting (e.g., Katz 1954: 130–31). Because Cain is not in the image of his father and because Yahweh’s contribution is facilitatory, it follows that Cain, the איש‎, is in the image of אשה‎. He is her privileged, precious son: he confers her identity as much as she confers on him his. Accordingly, pre-J’s intention was not that קין‎ has a clear, etymologically reconstructable meaning, such as ‘blacksmith’ or ‘possession’. Rather, it is there to embellish and proliferate associations to crafting and representing; it symbolizes the mother’s love towards her firstborn son (similarly, Kass 1996: 20).

In conclusion, according to my analysis, pre-J verse 1 subtly hints at an imbalance between the spouses that causes the mother to turn her attention away from her husband and towards the firstborn son. But this shift is not what causes the imbalance between the sons. This imbalance already exists; the mother’s love only makes it more apparent. So, how serious was the inequality between the brothers in dry-farming households?

4.2. Sibling imbalance

This story is sometimes described as reflecting a trope that portrays conflicts between ancient nomads and farmers (Speiser 1964: 31; Good 2011: 47; Glouberman 2024: 6; see van den Brink, Bromley, and Chavas 1995: 373–99; Zucker 2020: 8). Quarrels between a shepherd and a farmer also occur in the Sumerian myths ‘Dumuzi and Enkimdu’ and ‘Emesh and Enten’. On this view, the story is a metaphor for the disturbing antagonism between farmers and herders competing for the same land. However, because farmers are the heroes in these myths, this hypothesis is inconsistent with Yahweh’s preference: the goddess Inanna, for instance, chooses Enkimdu, the farmer-god, over Dumuzi (ANET 41–42). More importantly, ancient pastoral and agricultural economies were deeply interdependent (Baier 1976: 3–7, 9; Levenson 1993: 73; Schwartz 1997: 178; Graves and Patai 2005: 94; Barker 2012: 84–91, 93–94). Cain and Abel were not competing in this sense at all. The early Israelite household food system depended on a combination of dry farming and small-animal herding; one farmer on their own was insufficient in this domestic economy.

The pre-J narrative makes much more sense on the thesis that it addresses problems burdening the relationship between siblings from a typical dry-farming household and that it criticizes some features of spousal inequality and primogeniture. The mother’s excessive love intensifies the existing imbalance between the brothers, but she should not be blamed for it: the imbalance is social in nature. Cain is a worker of the soil not because humans were created from the ground (contra, e.g., Jørstad 2016) but rather because this is the task of the firstborn. Abel’s name and his occupation carry completely different associations: they reflect the low social status of a younger brother. He is a shepherd because this task typically falls to the youngest son or daughters (Ackerman 2008: 128; Meyers 2012b: 140–44, 151–52; Steinberg 2012: 287) and the customary readings of הבל‎ (hebel) are ‘meaningless, transience, worthless, futility, breath, vapour, vanity’ (Lewis 1994: 481; Hauser 1980: 299; Byron 2011a: 31), or even ‘nothing’ (Vermeulen 2014). Also, Abel is not called the woman’s son, but rather the brother of Cain (Craig 1999: 120).

So there is nothing extraordinary in the distribution of duties: Abel is a shepherd by birthright, not because Yahweh prefers shepherds or sheep. In fact, Cain’s occupation is much harder (Breitbart 2004: 122–23; Zucker 2020: 8). Transforming אשה‎ into Eve blurred pre-J’s sub-motif of spousal imbalance and it added important new layers to the storyline, such as the connection between Cain’s occupation and God’s commandment from Gen. 2.15 (going back to Gen. 2.5). J kept קנה‎ wanting to keep the wordplay with קין‎ whereas P used it to accentuate Seth’s importance. Levenson (2006: 116), for example, argues that, in P’s redaction, verse 25 presents a pattern where birth reverses death, elaborating the origin and designation of the one that has just been born. The names and words describing the birth and origin mimic that reversal: Cain was crafted by her whereas Seth (‘compensation’) was provided (שת‎/šāt) to her. ⁵

Because transforming אשה‎ into Eve blurred pre-J’s sub-motif of spousal imbalance, previous analyses typically focus exclusively on sibling imbalance understood as sibling rivalry, since the themes of envy and sibling rivalry are universal (see Schoeck 1987: 78; Kim 2001). The brothers are typically understood as archetypes of two contrasting groups, such as rich and poor, righteous and sinners, orthodox and heretics, black or white, and similar. ⁶ However, although the brothers do not have equal social status, they are not portrayed as being competitive—in contrast to, for instance, Dumuzi and Enkimdu. Their first conflict was in the field and this is not the dominant conflict; the dominant conflict is between Cain and Yahweh. Therefore, the presenting issue seems to be imbalance rather than rivalry. If there was rivalry, it was caused by God’s preference.

It is a point of consensus that the story is important because the formula of primogeniture is transgressed (Brueggemann 1982: 56; Knoppers 2000: 115–26; Brett 2004: 37; Perry 2005: 259–60; Lohr 2009: 486, 495). I would add that the origin of the conflict should not be associated exclusively with Yahweh’s preference or Cain’s character but principally with the unreasonable social expectations of each member of the household; these expectations are the real ‘villain’ of this piece. The mother’s excessive love and Abel’s ‘nothingness’ were designed to show how strong these expectations were. ⁷ Sibling imbalance was a very serious problem and fratricide constituted a disturbing 10% of all homicides in agrarian societies (Bremmer 2003: 77–92, esp. 90). The large number of stories dealing with sibling rivalry also suggests that tensions between male children seem to have been quite common in a dry-farming society: younger sons wanted to improve their social position, while older ones had to justify their privileged status. Dumuzi and Enkimdu are among many who fight for acknowledgement: each of the brothers attempts to convince the other of his superiority by praising his own virtues and achievements and ridiculing those of his brother (ANET 41). Cain and Abel do not seem to fight for recognition, but an important imbalance is apparent.

Ancient myths deal with sibling imbalance differently. Petersen (2005: 15–22) identifies three methods of resolving family crises in Genesis: separation (Abraham and Lot), covenant as a contract (Jacob and Laban), and gifting and a war of wits (Jacob and Esau). Some Egyptian myths include a portrayal of the wicked younger brother Seth viciously murdering the wise Osiris (Spence 1990: 63–74). Seth is presented as an aberration in creation in order to caution those younger sons who envied their brothers (Baines 1985: 461–482). ⁸ In contrast to Seth, in ‘The Story of the Two Brothers’, the young and exceptional Baîti is a devoted servant in the house of his older brother Anupu (Maspero 2002: 1–17). Seth’s envy and Baîti’s devotion reaffirm the social structure by praising the son who accepts his social role and scorning the one who rejects it. Likewise, Osiris’s trust in Seth and Anupu’s subsequent actions to save Baîti exemplify how older brothers should look after younger brothers and thereby show that they are worthy of their social status. Also, in the Hittite myth ‘Appu and his Two Sons’, the older son, who tries to trick his brother, is named Wrong, whereas the younger son is Right (Hoffner 2003: 153–155).

The message is everywhere the same: everyone should accept their social roles. The older brother should be the younger brother’s keeper (a role that Cain fervently rejects), whereas the younger brother (like Baîti) should be the older brother’s helper. This instruction is quite understandable: because states were unable to control violence, the household, as the principal organizational structure, needed cooperation to survive economically, and males had to protect each other. Some contemporary scholars (e.g., Swenson 2006; Jørstad 2016: 709) interpret Cain’s occupation and his rhetorical question in light of Gen. 2–3 by saying that humans should care for the land and other people. This hypothesis falls prey to a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy (inferring that, because event B comes after event A, A caused B). Cain’s occupation does not explain why he should care for Abel. His social position explains both his occupation and why he should care for Abel.

In short, the vast majority of the literature dealing with sibling imbalance tries to solve the problem by providing a set of rules—that is, moral instructions—on how to deal with the imbalance. Pre-J’s Cain and Abel story deals with sibling imbalance in a significantly different way: it offers a solution to the origin of the problem and tries to solve the problem at its core. Sumerian myths, for instance, end in peaceful settlements and emphasize both brothers equally. Enkimdu, the farmer-god, is an unusually peaceful person who refuses to quarrel with his brother (ANET 41–42). Similarly, Emesh eventually acknowledges Enten as the ‘farmer of the gods’ and the story ends ‘in brotherhood and friendship’ (see Kramer 1961: 49–51; Kim 2001: 66–67, Fig. 1). These stories, that is, offer implicit instructions on how to live with the problem: people should humbly accept their social roles and do their best to excel in them. In contrast, pre-J offers a radically different message: the cause of the rivalry is a social imbalance, not a child’s wicked character, and this imbalance should be the focal point of any proposed solution to the rivalry, not the character of the people representing the relevant social institutions. Pre-J presents the automatic allocation of roles according to birthright and gender as just as dangerous for the household as the dangers that come from the outside.

Once we have identified this layer of the narrative, we see that God’s favour is not at all peculiar: the deity rejects the unjust social structure and the practice of favouring the firstborn, which explains the message that Cain should not be angry and depressed and that acceptance and dignity come with doing what is right. Cain is angry and depressed because he thinks that he has lost some prerogatives of his birthright or possibly the birthright itself and that they were given to someone clearly inferior, which gives him a valid motive to kill Abel. This motive, then, makes the crime consistent with the narrative. By presenting even the deity as being incapable of resolving problems that lead to disturbingly common fratricides, pre-J shows how deeply difficult and disturbing the relevant problems are (see, e.g., Hensel 2011: 45–57), thus urging the audience to redefine the social constructs that generate these problems. Authors sometimes correct the audience’s misconceptions by not meeting their expectations and then explaining why what was expected did not happen (de Jong 1987: 62), and this is exactly what happens in pre-J. Having critiqued social norms by failing to meet the audience’s expectations, Yahweh argues against primogeniture saying that acceptance and honour are secured by doing what is right rather than by birthright. People should not accept their predetermined social roles; rather they should develop a new merit-based social structure.