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- Cain's Life as a Wanderer
According to the Scriptures, after Cain was cursed and marked by God, Cain left his parents and began a life of wandering:
"So Cain went forth from the presence of God and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden. And Cain was intimate with his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. And he built a city, and he named the city after the name of his son, Enoch." (Gen. 4:16-17)
In verse 16 we find that Cain leaves God's presence. By this we are to understand not just that his meeting with God ended and that Cain walked elsewhere, but that Cain decided to continue in his life of sin, cut off from God's presence. His murder of his brother Abel would have been a mortal wound to his relationship with his parents, and he apparently did nothing to try to heal that wound. Cain then dwells in the land of Nod, that is, the land of wandering, the land of nomads. This is in fulfillment of the words of Gen. 4:12 whereby God cursed Cain's agricultural endeavors, making it impossible for Cain live as a farmer as he had up until that time.
Then in verse 17, Cain and his wife -- according to unvarying tradition, one of his sisters -- have a son named Enoch (Heb. Chanok). Cain then builds a city and names it Enoch after his son. In that way, Cain apparently sought to escape from the nomadic consequences of God's curse on his agricultural efforts. By building a city and drawing together a structured community in an urban setting, Cain could settle in one place, no longer a nomad, and others in or near the city would do the farming for him. And so we see the earliest beginnings of urban life and what we might consider to be civilisation. Some have speculated that Cain's city of "Chanok" or Enoch was the ancient Sumerian city of "Unug" or Uruk (called Erech in Gen. 10:10). Wherever Enoch was located, presumably it was there that Cain's family first settled and began to flourish.
The Book of Jubilees relates the events of Gen. 4:16-17 very concisely, saying only, "And Cain took Awan his sister to be his wife and she bare him Enoch at the close of the fourth jubilee. And in the first year of the first week of the fifth jubilee, houses were built on the earth, and Cain built a city, and called its name after the name of his son Enoch" (Jubilees 4:9-10).
The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan, as usual, is much more expansive in its telling of the story of Cain and the beginnings of Cain's family. It includes a moving account of Adam and Eve's discovery of Abel's murder and his burial:
"When Luluwa heard Cain's words, she wept and went to call her father and mother, and told them how that Cain had killed his brother Abel. Then they all cried aloud and lifted up their voices, and slapped their faces, and threw dust upon their heads, and rent asunder their garments, and went out and came to the place where Abel was killed. And they found him lying on the earth, killed, and beasts around him; while they wept and cried because of this just one. From his body, by reason of its purity, went forth a smell of sweet spices. And Adam carried him, his tears streaming down his face; and went to the Cave of Treasures, where he laid him, and wound him up with sweet spices and myrrh. And Adam and Eve continued by the burial of him in great grief a hundred and forty days. Abel was fifteen and a half years old, and Cain seventeen years and a half. As for Cain, when the mourning for his brother was ended, he took his sister Luluwa and married her, without leave from his father and mother; for they could not keep him from her, by reason of their heavy heart. He then went down to the bottom of the mountain, away from the garden, near to the place where he had killed his brother. And in that place were many fruit trees and forest trees. His sister bare him children, who in their turn began to multiply by degrees until they filled that place." (II Adam and Eve 1:1-8)
