Beginnings · Not dated
Chapter 2
East of Eden
You will eat bread by the sweat of your face until you return to the ground,for you were taken out of it.For you are dust,and you shall return to dust.”
For parents
This chapter tells how Cain kills his brother Abel with a stone (Genesis 4:8): two blows and Abel lying dead, without gore. A man named Lamech also boasts that he has killed a man (4:23), which isn't described.
The woman had never once been hungry. Wherever she turned in the garden God had planted in Eden, there was fruit within reach, and a river ran cold and quick through the middle of it. Every tree was theirs except one. Before she was ever made, God had told the man, “Eat from any tree you like, but not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The day you eat from that one, you’re sure to die.”
The man had named every wild creature the Lord God had made, and the of them was the . Lately it was never far from her. She would look up from the river or the fruit and find it there, . She was standing by that tree when it spoke to her.
“So God won’t let the two of you eat from any of these trees?”
“Of course we can eat from the trees,” the woman said. “Just not that one.” She glanced up at it. “God said we’re not to eat it, and we’re not to touch it, or we’ll die.”
“Die?” said the serpent. “You won’t die. God knows your eyes will open the day you eat it, and then you’ll be like him. You’ll know good and evil.”
The woman didn’t answer. The fruit hung just above her head, near enough to smell. She could see it was good to eat, and beautiful, and she wanted the wisdom in it. Her eyes would open.
She reached up, pulled one loose and bit into it. Her husband was , and when she held the fruit out to him, he took it from her hand and ate.
Then their eyes were opened, his and hers together. They looked at each other and saw that they were naked, and each of them turned away. They tore broad leaves from a fig tree and, with clumsy fingers, stitched them into something to cover themselves.
The heat had gone out of the when the man heard the Lord God walking through the garden. He caught the woman’s arm, and the two of them hid among the trees.
“Where are you?” God called to the man.
“I heard you coming,” the man called back, “and I was frightened, because I’m naked. So I hid.”
“Who told you that you’re naked?” God asked. “Have you eaten fruit from the tree I ordered you to leave alone?”
“It was the woman,” the man said, pointing at her. “The one you gave me. She gave me some, and I ate it.”
“What have you done?” God asked the woman.
“It was the serpent,” she said. “It tricked me, and I ate.”
God didn’t ask the serpent . “Since you did this,” he told it, “you’re cursed above every animal, tame or wild. You’ll go on your belly, eating dust for the rest of your life. I’ll set you and the woman against each other, and your against hers. will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.”
He told the woman, “I’ll make carrying a child far more painful for you, and giving birth will hurt. Your will be toward your husband, and he’ll be the one to rule over you.”
Last of all, God spoke to the man, , who stood with his eyes on the ground. “You listened to what your wife said and ate from the tree I told you to leave alone. So now, because of you, the ground is under a curse. Getting food out of it will take painful work every day you live. It will give you thorns and thistles, and you’ll eat what the field grows. You’ll sweat for your bread until the ground you were taken from takes you back, because is what you are, and dust is what you’ll be again.”
Adam gave his wife the name , since she was to be the mother of everyone alive. God made clothes for them out of and dressed them. The fig leaves were left on the grass.
God said, “Now the man knows good and evil, like . What if he reaches out and takes from the tree of life too, and eats, and lives forever…”
God drove the man out of the garden to farm the same ground he had been taken from. The man and his wife went out, and when they looked back, they saw the God had placed east of the garden, and a sword of fire turning every way to guard the path to the tree of life.
The ground outside fought them from the first day. Thorns and thistles came up wherever Adam dug, and the sweat ran into his eyes.
The nights beyond the garden were cold, and Adam and Eve lay close for warmth, and in the dark they made love. Eve became pregnant, and the child grew in her until she could hardly bend to the work. When her time came, the pain was worse than anything she had known. It came in waves, each harder than the last, until she was on her knees in the dirt with her fingers dug into the ground, crying out, sure it would kill her.
Then her son was there, wet and squalling on her chest, and Eve, still shaking, said, “With the Lord, I’ve made a man!” A second son followed, Cain’s brother .
Cain took up his father’s work and farmed the ground, pulling the same thistles out of the same hard earth. Abel kept sheep, following the grass up into the hills and bringing the flock down at dusk.
When the harvest was in, Cain brought the Lord an offering from what he had grown, and Abel, down from the hills, brought the of his firstborn lambs. The Lord Abel and what he had brought. Cain and his gift, he did not. Cain was furious, and his face fell.
“Why are you angry?” the Lord asked him. “Why are you hanging your head? If you do the right thing, won’t your head be ? Otherwise, sin is crouched by the door. Its desire is toward you, but .”
Cain gave no answer. He went looking for his brother, found him with the flock, and said, “.”
Abel left the sheep and walked out with him past the last furrow. When there was no one to see them, Cain turned on his brother. He brought down on him once, then again, and killed him.
Cain stood over the body with the stone still in his hand. His brother’s blood was soaking into the ground, and somewhere behind him Abel’s sheep were calling.
The Lord Cain, “Your brother Abel, where is he?”
“I don’t know,” Cain said, his eyes on the ground. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
“What have you done?” said the Lord. “From the ground, a voice is to me. It’s your brother’s blood. So now there’s a curse on you . That ground opened its mouth to take in your brother’s blood, and it was your hand that spilled it. When you farm it, it won’t give you its full yield anymore. You’ll be on the run, drifting from place to place across the earth.”
“My is too heavy to carry,” Cain said. “You’re forcing me off the land today, and I’ll be hidden away from you. I’ll be a drifter on the run, and if anyone finds me, they’ll kill me.”
“Then if anyone kills you,” the Lord told him, “he’ll pay for it seven times over.” He set for Cain, so no one who came across him would strike him down.
Cain had called it too heavy to carry, and now he carried it. He went away from the Lord, leaving the fields he had cleared, his father and mother, and the ground that had taken his brother’s blood. His feet were raw, and he was still looking behind him, when he came to , east of Eden.
Cain stayed in Nod, and his gave him a son there, . Cain was building a city, laying its stones with his own hands, and he named it Enoch, after the boy.
Adam and Eve had lost both their sons, Abel to his brother’s hand and Cain to the road. Adam was a hundred and thirty years old when Eve had another son. She held him the way she had once held Cain. “God has given me another son in Abel’s place,” she said, “because Cain killed him.” She named him , and when Seth was grown he had a son of his own, . In Enosh’s day people began calling on the Lord by his .
Cain’s family grew, father to son, five generations of them, down to a man named , who married two women, Adah and Zillah. Zillah’s son Tubal-Cain worked a forge, beating bronze and iron into and tools of every kind, and he had a sister, . Adah’s son Jabal lived in tents and moved his herds from pasture to pasture, the first of all the herders who live that way, and his brother Jubal was the first to make music on the harp and the pipe.
Lamech had a song of his own. He called his two wives to hear it, and it was half song and half threat. “Adah, Zillah, listen to me. I killed a man who wounded me, a young man who struck me. If anyone who kills Cain pays seven times over, then anyone who kills Lamech pays seventy-seven.”