Troublesome TopicQAYIN GAINED AN ADVANTAGE

We are also told that, after Qayin (Cain, “Acquired from God”) was sent away, he proceeded to build a city (Gen 4:17).

What does that mean? How could he start a city with just himself and his wife?

First of all, the Hebrew word means “a fortified structure.” It was usually applied to a walled city, but it could also apply to any fortified structure.

 In the case of Qayin, I think it meant two things – a greater population and a position that could be defended against attack.

I think Qayin was very purposeful about establishing a larger population on his side of the ledger than his relatives would have on the other side of the ledger. He had the advantage in that he could start having children right away, while the next son to be born to Adam (“The red man made from dirt”) and Chavvah (“The one through whom God gives life”) would have to grow up first. The text of Genesis implies that Qayin was not yet a father when he was sent away (Gen 4:17). I believe that Qayin was determined to get back at his parents (and at God) by having children as quickly as possible and teaching his children to also have children earlier than his father had been telling him to do.

The fact that Qayin was building a fortified place of residence means that he feared retaliation for having killed Habel (Gen 4:14), and he may have been planning on using military force against his “opposition” and he wanted a secure place to retreat to.

 In the fifth generation after Qayin’s we read about a man named Lamech (we don’t know what that name meant). This was a different Lamech than the one who was Noah’s father. The evil Lamech probably had many children, as all people who lived several hundred years did. But three of his sons became renowned specialists in their respective fields. Jabal was the expert in the area of animal husbandry; Jubal was a specialist in making and playing musical instruments, and Tubal-Cain was the recognized leader among all who worked with metals (Gen 4:19-22). We do not know which side of the growing conflict was first in discovering Iron, but we do know that Tubal-Cain became the most advanced person in that field and therefore the teacher of those his father wanted to know its secrets.

Qayin had some children and grandchildren who were very large, maybe as much as 10 to 12 feet tall. Shayth and other sons of Adam also had children and grandchildren who were equally large. (There was great richness in Adam and Chavvah’s genes, and thus much diversity in size, skin color, hair color, eye color, and more.)  But I see two ways in which these extra-large descendants of Qayin were able to gain an advantage over the other descendants of Adam. Qayin was thinking and plotting with warfare in mind, therefore, his “side” of the conflict learned earlier than the other “side” that large men needed to marry large women in order to have large children. So they started purposefully putting large people together to preserve the extra-ordinary size. The other descendants of Adam (Shayth and his brothers), did not care about this as much and so they mixed people of different sizes in marriage, reducing the number of large people in their group. Secondly, the wicked descendants of Qayin were more violent and ruthless than the descendants of Shayth and his brothers.

Over time the household of Qayin had better fortifications, more people (due to a faster birth rate), a greater number of large men per capita, far more people willing to commit violent and ruthless acts, and they advanced more rapidly in the making of iron tools and weapons. By the end of Adam and Chavvah’s lives, the advantage of Qayin and his descendants was not only noticeable, it was troubling.  

The next lesson in this study is The Final Years of Adam’s Life.