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4. Adam's Sons.
Adam and Eve had two sons,
Cain and Abel. Cain was a ploughman and had a rough, unfriendly disposition.
Abel, on the other hand, was a pious boy and a shepherd.
One day they brought an offering to the Lord. Cain brought the fruits of his
field, while Abel brought the firstlings of his flock. That would have been a
pious, childish act, that they wanted to give God something of what he had given
them, just as children, when they want to give something to their parents out of
love, have everything from their parents. But Cain realised that God was not
pleased with his sacrifice because he was an unkind man. But the sacrifice of
the pious Abel pleased God.
Cain was enraged by this and rose up against his brother in the field and struck
him dead. But when he had done this terrible deed and had run away, thinking
that no one would know how his brother had perished, the Lord said to him,
‘Where is your brother Abel?’ - Cain wanted to talk to God as one might talk to
a human being. ‘I do not know,’ he said, ’where my brother Abel is - shall I be
my brother's keeper?’ - Then the Lord said to him, ‘What have you done? -- The
blood of your brother cries aloud to me from the earth. Cursed shalt thou be
upon the earth, which hath received thy brother's blood at thy hands. You shall
be unsteady and fleeting on the earth.’
Then the unhappy Cain no longer had the heart to come before the face his
parents, but he fled to another region with his evil conscience and the curse
that followed his deed. -
This was the joy and comfort that the poor human parents experienced in their
first children. God had mercy on Adam and Eve and gave them a third son: his
name was Seth. Seth became a pious man and later brought up his children in the
fear of God. The patriarchs Enoch, Noah and Abraham descended from him. Adam
reached a very old age and then returned to the earth from which he had been
taken.
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