The curse of Cain and the mark of Cain are phrases that originated in Genesis 4, where God declared that Cain (the firstborn son of Adam and Eve) would be cursed for murdering his brother Abel. A mark was put upon him in order to warn others that killing Cain would provoke the vengeance of God, that if someone did something to harm Cain, the damage would come back sevenfold. Some interpretations view this as a physical mark, whereas other interpretations see the “mark” as a sign, and not as a physical marking on Cain himself. The King James Version of the Bible reads “set a mark upon Cain”.
The name Cain (He. qayin, meaning spear) is identical with the name Kenite (also qayin in Hebrew), which led some scholars to speculate that the curse of Cain may have arisen as a condemnation of the Kenites. However, in the Hebrew Bible, the Kenites are generally described favorably, and may have had an important influence on the early Hebrew religion (see Kenite hypothesis).
There is no clear consensus as to what Cain’s mark is. The word translated as “mark” in Genesis 4:15 is ‘owth, which could mean a sign, an omen, a warning, or a remembrance. In the Torah, the same word is used to describe the stars as signs or omens (Genesis 1:14), the rainbow as the sign of God’s promise to never again destroy his creation as with the flood (Genesis 9:12), circumcision as a token of God’s covenant with Abraham (Genesis 17:11), and the miracles performed by Moses before the Pharaoh (Exodus 4:8,9,17,28; 7:3; 8:23; 10:1,2).
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Author: Wikipedia
Keywords: Cain, Mark of Cain, Mark of the Beast, Cain and Abel
Bible reference(s): Genesis 4:11-16, Revelation 13:17
Source: This article uses material from the Wikipedia article “Curse and mark of Cain,” which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
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