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Every legend that gives Kane a death he deserves is
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pushed back against a portrait of God, who extends mercy
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in directions we find absolutely uncomfortable. Who protects people we
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would not protect, who builds through bloodlines we would have freaking.
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Ended in the minds of the people.
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Picture this. You're standing at the edge of everything you
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have ever known, not just your home, not just your family, everything.
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The garden where your parents once walk with God is
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to your west, sealed off behind a flaming sword and
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an angelic guard that makes clear no one is going back.
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Behind you is the grave of your brother, your brother
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whose blood you spilled with your own hands, in a field,
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a field that will not grow anything for you ever again.
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And God just looked at you and told you you
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are done. Here. This is Kin, the firstborn son of
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Adam and Eve, the first murderer in recorded human history,
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and the moment we are talking about right now, the
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moment of exile, is one of the most overlooked scenes
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in all of scripture, because here is where. Here's what
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gets me every time I read it. When God confronts
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Cain after the murder, Cain's response is not repentance at all.
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It is not grief, it's not denial. It is actual fear.
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Genesis four thirteen through fourteen, ken Cain said to the Lord,
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my punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, you
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have driven me today away from the ground and from
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your face. I shall be hidden. I shall be a
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fugitive and a wanderer of or on the earth, and
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whoever finds me will kill me. He is terrified, the
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first murdered. First instinct after being caught is not remorse
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for what he did to Abel. It's not It is
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panic about what might be done to him, and God,
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in one of the most theologically surprising moves in the
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entire Old Testament, respond uns with mercy. He marks Kaine,
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he protects Caine. He sends him east into the land
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of Nod, carrying a divine brand that says to everyone
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who might encounter him, do not touch this man. And
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then scripture just moves on. The Bible gives us a genealogy,
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a city name, a list of descendants, and almost nothing else.
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The most famous fugitive in human history disappears into the wilderness,
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and the text goes quiet. But history did not, because
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for thousands of years in Jewish mid rash, in medieval legend,
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in cathedral carvings across France, in apocryphal texts, and rabbinical
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debate spanning senties. People have been asking the question that
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the Bible frankly refused to answer. What happened to Cain
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after the exile? That is what we are covering today.
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The Biblical record first, because it always comes first on
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the show. Then the ancient traditions, then the folklore, and
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one legend in particular that survived long enough to be
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carved in stone in a twelfth century French cathedral. Stay
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with me, This one is going to go deep. So
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we moved to the biblical foundation, and before we get
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into the legends, we need to get the actual text
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locked in, because the Bible's version of Caine's post exile
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life is strange enough on its own. Genesis four sixteen,
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then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord
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and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
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The land of Nod. If you grew up in Sunday school,
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you probably just filed that away as a place name, right,
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But it is not just a place name, and Hebrew
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Nod comes from the root nud, which means to wander,
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to be a fugitive, to move restlessly without settling the
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land of wandering. And here's where it gets theologically interesting.
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Cain goes to the land of wandering, and the very
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next thing he does is builds a city, a city
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in the land of wandering. Okay. Genesis four seventeen. Cain
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knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. When
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he built a city, he called the name of the
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city after the name of his son, Enoch. This is
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not a subtle detail. The man cursed to be a
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wanderer immediately tries to plant roots. He names his city
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after his son, as if he can create permanence through naming,
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as if walls are a counter argument to a divine sentence.
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There's something deeply human in that right. In that response.
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God says you will wander, Caine says, watch me not wander,
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And then his descendants build the foundations of human civilization.
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Genesis four twenty through twenty two. Jabel was the father
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of those who dwell intents and raise livestock. His brother's
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name was Jubil. He was the other of those who
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play the liar and pipe, uh Zilah, Zilla, Zilli, delay
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Zi lay Zilie, also bore tubulcane. He was the forager
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of all instruments of bronze and iron, cattle, ranching, music, metallurgy.
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Some of the earliest names named foundations of human culture
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come through Cain's line, not through cess line the righteous branch,
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through the line of the exile. This is one of
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those moments where the text is doing something theologically serious
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and we miss it if we rush past it. The
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Bible is not handing us a simple good versus evil
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framework here right. It is showing us that God's common grace,
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the gift of culture and craft and music, flows through
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complicated people, through exiles, though the marked and the wandering.
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That is that is the Biblical record, right through the
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marked and the wandering. Cain goes east, Caine builds caine
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descendants to create, and Genesis goes what Genesis always does.
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It gives you one sentence that should probably keep you
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up for a week. Here's what that record does not
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tell us. It does not tell us what Cain looked
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like after years in the wilderness. It does not tell
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us how long he lived. It does not tell us
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whether he stayed in the city, or that he built
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or kept moving, and it does not tell us how
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or when or even if Cain died. That silence is
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the gap that history rushed in to feel to fill.
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Let's go into the mark traditions. The mark Genesis four
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fifteen and the lower put a mark on Gain so
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that no one who found him would attack him.
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That is it.
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That is all we get, no description, no explanation of
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what the mark was, where it was placed, or what
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it looked like to people who encountered it, and that
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ambiguity has been generating serious debates for centuries across Jewish
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and Christian interpretation. Jewish and Christian interpretive traditions produce answers
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that range from the plausible to a genuinely strange, and
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walking through the major ones is worth your time because
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each because they each represent a different theological argument about
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what God was actually doing. So we start with the horn.
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The oldest and most widespread tradition is that the mark
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of Kane was a horn growing from his forehead that
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comes out of early Jewish mid rash and became extremely
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influential in medieval European Christianity. Horns as a symbol of
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divine marking are not unusual in the ancient world. They
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carried They carried connotations of power and anointing and otherwise.
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Right when Moses descends from Sinai with a radiant face
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in Exodus thirty four, Jerome's Latin vulge renders that radiance
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as a horn, which is exactly why Michelangelo is famous.
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Moses statue has two small horns coming from his head.
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The translators were working with a tradition. The horn matters
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for the lamech legend, which we'll get into shortly, and
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is what makes the whole story mechanically possible. Okay, well,
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Perpetual trembling is the next one. Several rabbinic traditions described
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the mark not as a physical object, but as a
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physical condition. Caane trembled constantly, His body shook uncontrollably, a
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living a living sign written into his nervous system, visible
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to anyone who saw him. This interpretation reads the exile
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as an ongoing punishment expressed through the body itself. Every
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person who encountered Kane would encounter a man who could
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not hold still, who vibrated with something. No one else
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carried the mark has not or the mark was not
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something you could remove or cover. It moved with him. Next,
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you have a letter of God's name. In some Mitrashic
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tradition say God inscribed a letter of the divine name
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onto Cain. In some tellings it is placed on his forehead,
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and others the exact placement is less important than the
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claim being made. The mark says this man is under
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the protection of the Name itself. Touch him, and you
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answer to the source of all things. This reading gives
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the mark a kind of cobbalistic weight. It is not
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just identification, it is consecration, even for a murderer. The
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next is a dog. This is the one that always
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surprises people uh the first time they hear it. One
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Midrashic tradition says God sent a dog to walk with
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Kane as his companion and guardian throughout the exile, not
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just the symbol of that telling, and like an actual dog,
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the dog's presence broadcast Kane's protected status to any human
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who encountered him. You see the dog, you know this
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wanderer is marked. This reads almost like a folkal or motif,
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and it may have originated frankly as one the cursed
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wander with a faithful companion, moving through the edge of
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the known world, belonging nowhere. It is the kind of
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image that survives across all kinds of cultures because it
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resonates at a level that goes beyond theology. Then we
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moved to leprosy or physical disfigurement, and several traditions are
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suggest a mark was a skin condition, something that visibly
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altered Kine's appearance. Now this connects to other ancient Near
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Eastern conventions where divine judgment is written on the body,
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and the mark was not a symbol you could read.
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It was a transformation that you could see. Now, a
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luminous sign is the next one. So some traditions describe
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the mark as a kind of light or glow visible
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to those who eyes perceive it, not threatening but unmistakable.
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And Caine moved through the world carrying a mark of
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divine origin that separated him from every other person alive.
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What is striking about all these traditions together is what
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they are each arguing about underneath the surface. The trembling
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tradition says the mark is punishment. The divine letter tradition
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says the mark is divine authority. The dog tradition says
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the mark is provision. The horn tradition says the mark
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is identification. The light tradition says the mark is revelation.
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Each one is a different theological claim about what God
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was doing when he marked this man. Okay, Notice something
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Nobody is really arguing about whether Cain was marked. They
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are arguing about what kind of God the mark reveals.
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Was it punishment, warning, protection, or mercy. The text does
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not resolve it by any stretchy imagination, and the traditions
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keep arguing, which tells you something about how seriously people
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have taken, always taken this question the folklore trails. Now
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we get into the territory that marks. That makes sorry,
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that makes this episode worth building.
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Right.
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The legend that grew up around Cain's post exile life
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are not random. They are attempts by serious people, rabbis, monks,
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cathedral builders, medieval theologians to answer the question the Biblical
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text intentionally left open. Three main threads developed. I am
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calling them the Lamech thread, the Jubileese thread, and the
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wandering traditions. Okay, now we'll start with the Lamech thread.
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This is the one that ends up carved in stone
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in the twelfth century French cathedral, and it starts with
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one of the strangest passages in Genesis, Genesis four twenty
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three through twenty four ed and Zillah, hear my voice,
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you wives of Lamech, Listen to what I say. I
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have killed a man for wounding me, a young man
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for striking me. If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lemex
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is seventy sevenfold. Lamech is Caine's great great great grandson. Okay,
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five generations down the line, and that speech hangs in
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the middle of the genealogy with absolutely no context, no
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explanation of who he killed or what the situation was,
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just this boast, like a loaded weapon pointed at the reader. Okay.
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Ancient interpreters could not leave it alone, and the legend
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that developed and eventually found its way into medieval European
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art and cathedral architecture goes like this. Le Mech was blind.
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He could not hunt on his own, so he hunted
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with his with a young son acting as his guide,
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directing him towards game. The boy point what point Lamech
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would draw his bow and shoot on one particular hunt.
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The boy spots something moving in the underbrush, something large,
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and he directs his father to aim. Lomex shoots, he
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kills it. When the boy goes to see what they
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have brought down, he goes not to find an animal.
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He finds a man. A man with a horn growing
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from his forehead. Oh my gosh, the mark of Kine.
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Lamech had killed his own ancestor, the original exile, the
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first wander. Now Kine had aged beyond recognition after generations
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in the wilderness, or whether the mark had transformed him
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into something barely human, or whether God simply allowed the
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counter to happen exactly as it did. Of course, the
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legend does not specify. It leaves the mechanism open, and
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the focuses on the result. And then it gets worse.
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When lo Mech realizes what he has done, That he
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has killed Cain, that he has drawn blood older and
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more weaited that any other blood in human history. He
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does not mourn the ancestor. He turns to the boy.
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Some versions say he struck him down in his grief
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and rage. The boy who guided his hand, who pointed
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him towards the target without knowing what he was pointing
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him towards Lamech killed his son. Now read the boast again.
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I have killed a man for wounding me, a young
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man for striking me. The man was Kane, the young
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man was the son, and the client about seventy seven
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fold vengeance, a deliberate escalation of the sevenfold protection God
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promised Kane in Genesis four fifteen becomes something darker than