What is the mark of Cain?
The sign of Cain is one of the first mysteries of the Bible, a strange accident that people have been asking for for centuries.
Cain, son of Adam and Eve, killed his brother Abel in a fit of jealous rage. The first murder of humanity is recorded in chapter 4 of Genesis, but no details are given in the scriptures about how the murder was committed. Cain's motive seemed to be that God was happy with Abel's sacrificial offering, but rejected that of Cain. In Hebrews 11: 4, we suspect that Cain's attitude ruined his sacrifice.
After Cain's crime was exposed, God imposed a sentence:
“You are now under a curse and led by the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the land, it will no longer produce its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on earth. " (Genesis 4: 11-12, NIV)
The curse was twofold: Cain could no longer be a farmer because the land would not produce for him, and he was also driven out of the face of God.
Because God marked Cain
Cain complained that his punishment was too harsh. He knew that others would fear and detest him, and would probably try to kill him to get rid of their curse among them. God chose an unusual way to protect Cain:
"But the Lord said to him," It is not so; anyone who kills Cain will suffer revenge seven times. Then the Lord put a sign on Cain so that no one would find him would kill him. "(Genesis 4:15, NIV)
Although Genesis doesn't explain it, the other people Cain feared would have been his brothers. While Cain was the eldest son of Adam and Eve, we are not told how many other children they had in the period between the birth of Cain and the killing of Abel.
Later, Genesis says that Cain took a wife. We can only conclude that it must have been a sister or granddaughter. Such mixed marriages were banned in Leviticus, but at the time when Adam's descendants populated the earth, they were necessary.
After God marked him, Cain went to the land of Nod, which is a play on the Hebrew word "nad", which means "to wander". Since Nod is never mentioned in the Bible again, it is possible that this could have meant that Cain became a nomad all his life. He built a city and named it after his son Enoch.
What was the mark of Cain?
The Bible is deliberately vague about the nature of Cain's mark, causing readers to guess what it might have been. Theories have included things like a horn, a scar, a tattoo, a leprosy or even dark skin.
We can be sure of these things:
The sign was indelible and probably on his face where it could not be covered.
It was immediately understandable to people who may have been illiterate.
The branding would have aroused fear in people, whether they worshiped God or not.
Although the brand has been discussed over the centuries, it is not the point of the story. Instead, we must focus on the gravity of Cain's sin and on God's mercy in letting him live. Furthermore, although Abel was also the brother of Cain's other brothers, Abel's survivors did not have to take revenge and take the law into their own hands. Courts had not yet been established. God was the judge.
Bible scholars point out that Cain's genealogy listed in the Bible is short. We do not know if some of Cain's descendants were ancestors of Noah or the wives of his children, but it seems that Cain's curse was not passed on to subsequent generations.
Other signs in the Bible
Another marking takes place in the book of the prophet Ezekiel, chapter 9. God sent an angel to mark the foreheads of the faithful in Jerusalem. The mark was a "tau", the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, in the shape of a cross. Then God sent six executioner angels to kill all the people who didn't have the mark.
Cyprian (210-258 AD), bishop of Carthage, stated that the mark represented the sacrifice of Christ and that all those who were found there at death would be saved. He remembered the blood of lamb that the Israelites used to mark their jambs in Egypt so that the angel of death would pass over their homes.
Yet another sign in the Bible has been the subject of heated debate: the mark of the beast, mentioned in the book of Revelation. The sign of the Antichrist, this brand limits who can buy or sell. Recent theories claim that it will be a kind of embedded scan code or microchip.
Without a doubt, the most famous signs mentioned in the scriptures were those made on Jesus Christ during his crucifixion. After the resurrection, in which Christ received his glorified body, all the wounds he received in his flagellation and death on the cross were healed, except for the scars on his hands, feet and side, where a Roman spear has pierced his heart.
The sign of Cain was put on a sinner by God. The signs on Jesus were put on God by sinners. The sign of Cain was to protect a sinner from the wrath of men. The signs on Jesus were to protect sinners from the wrath of God.
Cain's sign was a warning that God punished sin. The signs of Jesus remind us that, through Christ, God forgives sin and restores people to a just relationship with him.