Who begat the first murderer Cain?

...she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have
gotten a man from the LORD. (Gen 4:1)

Another famous story: Cain kills Abel, his own brother. Now, what would
possess a man to do something as horrible as this? Cain didn't have a
hungry family to feed. There wasn't some kind of war going on. As we
recall, from Untold Garden of Eden, the serpent and Eve may have gone a
little farther than just eating a piece of fruit. They may have done a little
more than just talk. Their offspring, according to many ancient written
sources, was actually Eve's firstborn son Cain.[1]

The common term for fathering a child in the Bible is begat. Nowhere in
the Bible does it say that Adam - Eve's husband - begat Cain! Plain as that.
Although Cain was a child of Eve, could he possibly have had the genetic
make up of someone else - an upset and complaining angelic being, now
made human for his punishment? Could the Serpent actually be his father,
resulting from this seduction of Eve?

With all of the anger and resentment inside of this angelic being already,
could it be that the Serpent would naturally pass these negative attributes on
to whomever he sired? Could this have been a reason why Cain so easily
could have committed murder?

The Serpent (Azazel, Nachash, etc.), as postulated in Untold Garden of
Eden, may have used sex to seduce Eve. Through their fornication, she
may have become pregnant. According to some sources, as a result, there
may have been more than one child produced: they may have sired both
Cain and Abel. Why both? Again, nowhere in the Bible does it say that
either Cain nor Abel were Adam's son; nor were they listed in any of the
genealogies of Adam! Yet, Cain, for example, was said to be, in the Bible,
"of the wicked one" (I John 3:12). The Bible even says that the third-born
son of Eve, Seth, was the first child born of her who actually resembled
Adam, somewhat (Gen. 5:3)! Why? Could it be that the first two offspring
of the Bible may have had the blood of someone else?

Let's take a look at this verse:

And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain...
- Gen. 4:1 (KJV)

To many this is proof positive that Adam had sex with his wife; and was
the father of Cain. An open-and-shut case... or is it? The word knew, if we
examine the original Hebrew, here, does have the meaning of "to have sex
with" (which makes it easy to assume that they copulated). However, this
word could also mean something totally different!

The word knew actually comes from two Hebrew words: yada and eth.
The word yada not only means to "have carnal sex with," but also "to
recognize," "discern," or "acknowledge."[2] The word eth is untranslatable
in English, but it generally relates to "a sign," "a distinguishing mark," or an
"omen."[3] From these other meanings, we can reconstruct the English
translation of the verse, as it sets, into something such as the following:

And Adam eventually acknowledged the distinguishing sign that had
come upon Eve... - Gen. 4:1 (in retranslation)

Also, if we look at the Hebrew word for the translated word conceived,
here, we see it could also mean "to already be with child." Put them all
together... and we gather a whole new possible meaning for this verse:

And Adam eventually acknowledged the distinguishing sign that had
come upon Eve; that she was with child, and realized she was about to
give birth to Cain... - Gen. 4:1 (in retranslation)

Yes, studying the Hebrew, we see this verse could easily take on a whole
new meaning! See how easily verses could be mistranslated when the
people translating them might assume they should say something a certain
way? Could it really mean that Adam understood what went happened to
Eve, here; and that Cain was about to be born?

The next part of the same verse gives even more creditability to our
argument. Apparently, when Eve first saw her baby, Cain, she may have
assumed she had gotten him from somewhere beyond this world.[4]

And, as the rest of the verse states: Eve exclaims, "I have gotten a man
from the LORD" (Gen. 4:1 KJV). According to the New Jerusalem
Translation, however, the verse translates from the Hebrew just a little
differently:

...I have gotten a man from an angel of the LORD.

..."an angel of the LORD"? We recall (from Untold Garden of Eden) that
the surrounding terrestrial angels, soon after their fall, still maintained
somewhat of a heavenly "shine" to them while on earth. A number of
ancient texts actually stated that Cain was born with this same angelic
shine! Could Eve have "gotten" Cain through one of these fallen angels of
the garden, maybe - maybe even the Serpent? Even if Eve might have been
claiming only that she had gotten a man "from the LORD," she apparently
must have thought Cain was someone born of some very great
circumstance, or was of some very special significance, to state that.

As our story continues, we see that, after the fall of Adam and Eve, God
was forced to deal out punishments to all of them - Adam, Eve, and the
Serpent. Curiously enough, most of the punishments to Eve seemed to
have some relation to pregnancy or childbirth. Why? Were they directly
related to the act the serpent and Eve participated in, just before the fall?
We see that the Serpent, too, had curses placed upon him by God, along
these same lines:

But He (God) turned to the serpent (in great wrath) and said: 'Since
thou hast done this... There shall not be left thee ear, nor wing, nor one
limb of all that with which thou did ensnare them in thy malice and
causesdst them to be cast out of paradise...
- Apocalypse of Moses 26:1-4

Apparently, God dished out punishments "an eye for an eye" - the
Serpent's sexual "limb" was cursed, maybe for the way he used it. This
answers a lot: how Cain allowed himself to go down the wrong pathways in
life; even how he would be able to commit murder so easily:

After Adam and his wife sinned, and the serpent had intercourse with
Eve and injected filth into her, Eve bore Cain. He had the shape from
above and from below (the earth)... Therefore, he was the first to bring
death into the world, caused by his side, as he came from the filth of the
serpent. The nature of the serpent is to lurk, so as to kill, and his issue,
Cain, learned his ways. - Zohar Pekudei 21[5]

In another curse, directed towards the Serpent, God made a prophecy -
probably one of the most important prophecies in the Bible:

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy
seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his
heel. - Gen. 3:15 (KJV)

The verse is a little complex; and is divided into two parts. First, it states
that the seeds (or descendants) of this Serpent will be at enmity with the
seeds (or descendants) of Eve. The seeds of the Serpent would form into
one bloodline; Adam and Eve's seed into another.

The second part of this verse simply is a prediction about Jesus, himself,
coming to earth; and how it will be he (as a member of Eve's seed) who
would be the one destined to eventually bruise the Serpent's head. But, in
the fight, members of the serpent seed would only be able to bruise Jesus'
heel in the process. What does this all mean? We will see: by having him
crucified on the cross, there were descendants of this Serpent who, in his
lifetime, were in the position to bruise Jesus' "heel" (i.e. they crucified him);
but Jesus would be victorious in the end! By raising himself from the dead,
he would be able to defeat the Serpent's curse of death on the world -
rectifying the curse of death that Adam and Eve had brought on to
everyone else! He offered everyone another chance at redemption, through
his sacrifice. In this way, he would be able to crush the serpent's power, or
headship, over the world. More about the specifics of this all, later.

But, first: if Jesus was from the true seed of Adam and Eve (which the
Bible clearly states he was), then this prophecy would have been fulfilled
upon his death, burial, and resurrection. There would be seeds of the
serpent, all throughout history, who would possess enmity with the blood
line that would eventually lead to Jesus. If Cain indeed had blood (or seed)
of this Serpent, then he, and his descendants, would naturally want to be up
in arms against anything that is truly of Jesus, God, and the Bible. We will
soon see what this all has to do with our world of the past; even today.

Those who have blood of this Serpent (and, possibly, other fallen angels)
would go on to form "mixed" multitudes of people; many of which would
adopt different morals, religious beliefs, and ways of life that those of the
typical follower of God. What this would lead to, quite often, is one of the
most important conflicts of our human history:

...the members of the mixed multitude are the children of the
primordial serpent that seduced Chavah (Eve) by the tree of knowledge,
so the mixed multitude is indeed the impurity that the serpent injected
into Chavah. From this impurity, which is considered the mixed
multitude, Kayin (Cain) came forth and slew Hevel (Abel)...
- Zohar 2 Beresheet A28[6]

There is a lot more on these "mixed" multitudes, and how many of these
different thoughts, attitudes, and ways of life developed since the Serpent,
will relate to the Bible, and our world. We will discover how much Cain
also influenced the entire world in the Way of Cain. But, first, to continue
with our discussion, and begin to understand how life was lived in these
early days Adam, Eve, and of Cain, please see "Birds" and "Beasts".

Footnotes:

[1] The Midrash Rabbah, Bereshith (Genesis) 24:6, trans. Rabbi Dr. H. Freedman and Maurice
Simon (London: The Soncino Press, 1961).
[2] Strong’s H3045 - yada, http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?
Strongs=H3045&t=KJV (accessed Aug. 11, 2010).
[3] Strong’s H853 - eth, http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?
Strongs=H853&t=KJV (accessed Aug. 11, 2010).
[4] Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Targum of Palestine / Targum of Jonathan Ben Uzziel), On the
Book of Genesis, Section 4, Berashith, http://targum.info/pj/pjgen1-6.htm (accessed Oct. 2,
2009).
[5] The Zohar, Volume 13, Pekudei, Section 21. Breastplate and Efod, 203, https://www2.
kabbalah.com/k/index.php/p=zohar/zohar&vol=26&sec=912 (accessed Feb. 24, 2010).
[6] The Zohar, Volume 1, Beresheet A, Section 28. Hevel-Moshe, 285, www2.kabbalah.
com/k/index.php/p=zohar/zohar&vol=2&sec=49 (accessed Feb. 24, 2010).


Copyright 2010, Brett T., All Rights Reserved