Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

According to rabbinic legend, God granted to lessen the punishment by allowing Cain to rest from his wanderings, and protecting him by a “mark,” a letter or a name on his forehead or arm.[1]

But wouldn’t such a mark make Cain an easy target for descendants wishing to exact vengeance upon him? Some scholars think that it is possible that the “mark of Cain” was really intended to protect Cain from the wrath of Abel’s ghost. Therefore, after having been “marked” by God, Cain’s spirit felt at ease, believing that the ghost of his murdered brother would no longer recognize and trouble him

The anthropologist Sir James Frazer cites an interesting parallel to Cain’s expulsion from the writings of Plato. ^[2] Plato relates that according to an ancient Greek belief, the ghost of a man who had just been killed was angry with his slayer. The spirit felt enraged at the sight of his murderer walking freely about with impunity at all his old familiar haunts and wanted justice. To avoid retribution, the murderer left his country for a year, until the ghost’s wrath had cooled down, but he could not return before performing the appropriate ablutions and necessary sacrifices. If the victim happened to be a foreigner, the slayer had to avoid the slain victim’s native land as well as his own. After he went into banishment, the slayer cautiously traveled along familiar and safer roads and kept a safe distance from an angry spirit who might be at his heels.[3] Indeed, there are many such parallels throughout the ancient and primal world.

Is there any contextual support for Frazer’s Macbeth-like or dybbuk-esque theory? One might argue that nowhere does the peshat suggest he feared his brother’s spirit, but the ambiguity of the text allows for a variety of different possible readings—especially when we consider the mindset of the original biblical story-teller who most likely did believe in the possibility of ghostly spirits.[4] Expanding upon this thought, given Cain’s guilty state of mind, it is logical to presume he most likely dreamt of his deceased brother and the unexpected appearance of Abel in his dreams filled him with fear and distress. Cain feared for the worst that the spirit of his brother would pursue him all his days, and for this reason, he required supernatural protection from God Himself.

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Notes

[1] Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan and Pirqe R. Eliezer 21.

^[2] Plato, Laws, ix. 8, 865 D–866 A;

[3] Sir James Frazer, Folklore of the Old Testament, Vol. 1, 86. In modern literature, we find a similar sentiment expressed by Coleridge’s The Wanderings of Cain (1798). Coleridge depicts how Abel’s ghost returned to torment Cain while he and his young son wander by moonlight in the wilderness. Enos asks his father in innocence why the squirrels refuse to play with him. A man of poetic imagination, Cain replies:

The Mighty One that persecuteth me is on this side and on that;

he pursueth my soul like the wind,

like the sand-blast he passeth through me;

he is around me even as the air! (Lines 31-33)

[4] Frazer’s exposition is all the more interesting, assuming of course, the biblical narrative might have been making use of common motif that was well known in the ancient world.