Cain is not envious, he is jealous. Jealousy can perhaps be understood as a helpless attempt to excuse the one who unexpectedly and suddenly gives his love to somebody else by attributing that dramatic loss to the power of the intruder. Lethal hate for the intruder expresses the continuing love for the original love object. Jealousy desperately tries to secure the love that appears to be lost.
Betrayed, rejected, and humiliated, Cain is overwhelmed by hatred for the rival who steals the object of his love. He kills his brother Abel out of jealousy. This appears to be senseless violence, but it is not without meaning.
To protect him from revenge by those who fear an explosion of violence, Cain is marked with a significant sign, a sign warning others not to repay evil with evil. The murder of Abel, an act stemming from disappointed love, must not be avenged; otherwise a fearful spiral of violence will evolve.
The mark protects Cain from those who fail to recognize how disappointed love has led to murder, from those who cannot appreciate the drama in which Cain has forfeited love on account of love. In order to conclude this analysis of meaningless violence, we must pay some attention to the shame dynamics that determine it. Narcissistic problems occupy a prominent position in contemporary culture Mooy They relate to the instability of self-esteem that without a clear cause fluctuates between feelings of utter worthlessness and grandiose magnificence.
This problem is exemplary exposed in the excessive concern of so many ordinary men and women about their public image and in their uncertainty as to whether that image is sufficiently appreciated. Acts of violence are affronts to self-esteem, affronts whose severity is experienced in direct proportion to the grandiosity of the originally imagined value of the self. The paradox in the dynamics of violence is that the judgments of others weigh so heavily because they reflect our repressed and hidden self-knowledge.
This is why shattering the illusion of assumed omnipotence and invulnerability leads to horrific consequences Mooy If violent behavior can be regarded as a reaction and defense against shame, the socio-political consequences of institutional disrespect and public disgrace are also relevant to our analysis.
As long as government bureaucracies continue to believe that they always know better than the average citizen, as long as big business continues to prefer interchangeability and replaceability to loyalty, as long as collegiality at universities, for example continues to be sacrificed to hierarchy, and performance to production, the effect of such policies and strategies are experienced as willful attacks on the self-esteem of ordinary citizens, clients, customers, and employees.
The individual must conclude that, in the eyes of those who are set above him, his value is nil and hence of no consequence. In a society in which nobody counts, every such narcissistic injury generates great anger. Violence in all its forms matches the pressure to present oneself as competent, successful, accepted, as someone of worth whose self-esteem is validated. This kind of violence is not only physical. Everyday crudity, vulgarity, and arrogance are expressions of the shameful and violent defense against attacks on a vulnerable self.
Shame is felt even more strongly when dealing with matters of intimacy. This accounts, in part, for sexual violence. Pornography, rape, domestic violence are no less narcissistic attempts to restore self-esteem by humiliating another Stoller Such violence, though unpleasant, is not meaningless. It has a purpose, although perhaps it suits us better to close our eyes to the dark side of our own existence. To cultivate the concept of meaningless, senseless violence is a final attempt to maintain the idea of a just world supporting the pretence of our own innocence.
That life support must be derived from the trust and hope we should have learned while we were fed and weaned as infants. Cherishing the hope that is in us, we might be able to conquer our vulnerability and follow our own path with equanimity, believing that some day we will be seen as we are.
That inner conviction must be achieved in childhood, when, in the relations with the most important people in our life, it is not injury that was predominant, but support and confirmation Erikson At the same time, a narcissistic vulnerability, for which hope of a better life to come is the sole panacea, is the result of an indifferent or distrustful pedagogy characterized by parental negligence or over-indulgence.
To keep hope alive, some desires must be abandoned and traded in for a more realistic vision of the future. Hope requires continual adaptation to the possibilities of the moment Pruyser Both the abandonment of desires and the continuous creation of new, more feasible aspirations are thus needed to counterbalance the temptation to surrender to delusory dreams cf. Capps Hope and shame, mutually exclusive, keep each other in a painful equilibrium, to be upset in favor of hope via a trained capacity for appreciating the absurd.
In the end, humor helps best to conquer the tyranny of the narcissistic self Kohut A sense of humor and a conception of the finite and transient nature of life ensure that illusions can be relinquished without any lapse into sarcasm or cynicism. Only when freed of illusions is it once again possible to believe in the power of the ego-ideal, of any ideal. Bastian, T.
Psyche , 44 , — PubMed Google Scholar. Berke, J. Shame and envy. British Journal of Psychotherapy , 2 , — Article Google Scholar. Capps, D. The depleted self. Sin in a narcissistic age. Minneapolis: Fortress. Google Scholar. Agents of hope, a pastoral psychology. Drewermann, E. Psychogramm eines Ideals. Olten und Freiburg im Breisgau: Walter-Verlag.
Erikson, E. Insight and responsibility. New York: Norton. Kohut, H. Formen und Umformungen des Narzissmus. Psyche , 8 , — Mooy, A.
Psychiatrie, recht en de menselijke maat. Over verantwoordelijkheid. Pruyser, P. Phenomenology and dynamics of hoping. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion , 3 , 86— Stoller, R. But God has compassion for Cain and gives him a mark so that no one will kill him.
Cain will live on, but his existence is only a shadow of his former life. By his very name, he is doomed to a short and uneventful life. In one sense, we are all Abel, destined for evanescence and death. But we are also like Cain, subject to anger and sinful impulses.
We are each the Cain of our own conscience, morally responsible for our deeds. Ronald Hendel, "First Murder Gen ", n. The biblical story of Cain killing Abel raises questions about why Cain killed Abel, reflecting the concern of biblical law to determine the intentions and state of mind of a killer.
Homicide is among the most heinous offenses in human society, and the ancient Israelites and their ancient Near Eastern neighbors sought justice by identifying and punishing the perpetrator. Religious interpreters have explained the mark God places on Cain in wildly diverse ways—from a badge of shame to the holy name of God. View more. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righ For they go the way of Cain, and abandon themselves to Balaam's error for the sake of gain, and perish in Korah's rebellion.
A categorization in which people or other objects are ranked relative to each other, some higher and some lower. Hebrew is regarded as the spoken language of ancient Israel but is largely replaced by Aramaic in the Persian period. And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.
Site HarperCollins Dictionary. Passages Home First Murder. Add this:. Moreover, God forbids Adam to intervene and protect his son. Destiny, then, is equivocal, since Cain is virtually forced to carry out the killing. The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan , a sixth century Christian work likely reworking a Jewish original , retells the story of Cain and Abel at great length.
In this version, Adam rather than his sons give YHWH the first offering, and Cain does not even participate, whereas Abel encourages them. Abel brings from the fruit of the land—the farmer vs. Abel, in his innocence, agrees, and out the brothers go, Cain holding his staff ch. Where are those sheep of yours that you told me to bless? Then Cain, when he came up to him, comforted him with his talk, walking a little behind him.
Then he hastened and smote him with the staff, blow upon blow, until he was stunned. By the breasts we have sucked, smite me not! By the womb that bare us and that brought us into the world, smite me not unto death with that staff! If you will kill me, take one of these large stones, and kill me outright. And Cain repented not of what he had done. Rabbinic exegesis also attempts to fill out the story by adding details. One approach, found in all three of the Jerusalem Targums mid to late 1 st millennium C.
In a non-midrashic vein, the biblical theologian Walter Brueggemann offers the challenging thought that,. Inexplicably, Yahweh chooses—accepts and rejects. Conventional interpretation is too hard on Cain and too easy on Yahweh … Essential to the plot is the capricious freedom of Yahweh. Like the narrator we must resist every effort to explain it.
Genesis is silent about what happened in the field, We are never told whether Abel was entirely the victim of an aggressive brother or whether he himself may have done something to provoke the crisis. Moreover, nothing explicit in the Torah connects the killing of Abel with the previous story about sacrifices.
Something else may have taken place to set Cain off. Genesis Rabbah 22 imagines the brothers arguing about matters entirely unrelated to the sacrifice:. The argument and stubbornness was even—and at least in the first case, ridiculous—only that Cain turned to violence. What really happens in the field v. Almost universally, Cain is maligned for committing first degree murder—but how would he have known what murder is?
Is he a villain, a monster, does he act in real or perceived self-defense, or as someone who loses control? Does the character deserve only our scorn, or perhaps also our sympathy? Please support us. Deep appreciation to the editors of TheTorah. The midrashists make a value judgment and claim that these were more or less leftovers.
Song of Songs Rabbah 4. Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer chapter 21 suggests that Cain only brought the remnants of a meal and some flax. See also R. Gerhard von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary. See discussion in, Nahum M. The article is currently available on Mikranet.
Sforno then points to Deuteronomy which deals with premeditated murder. Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel, and Lawrence H. Name spelling has been adjusted to standard English spelling.
Adam is further warned to tell no one of this and let matters take their course:. And the time arrived when Abel was killed by Cain his brother and he i.
And why did he murder him? Kim [Harkins]. And oftentimes when his father made an offering, he would remain [behind] and not go with them to offer up. But, as to Abel, he had a meek heart, and was obedient to his father and mother, whom he often moved to make an offering, because he loved it; and prayed and fasted much.
The text exists in Arabic and Geez. The English is from Solomon C. Malan, trans.
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