God curses Cain to be a "restless wanderer of the earth." But he settles down in a city, naming it after his son, Enoch. Is there significance to that name?

Also, it seems as though it is Cain's creativity which is cursed too. God says, "When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you." If Cain did wrong because he was overvaluing or obsessed with his creativity mirroring Eve's same tendency (according to Rabbi Forhman's Garden of Eden series), and then it seems like it was his creativity here that was cursed. He was no longer able to grow crops. Would that not also affect his ability to procreate, the most profound creative act?

Do those questions make sense?

Interesting questions. Here's a couple ideas from one angle.

Since Cain wouldn't be able to grow crops himself (and meat was not eaten until after the Flood) he would have to depend on others to grow food for him. (And did the curse also affect his immediate offspring?) It makes sense for him to start a community where he could live close to others who provided him with food in return for his services (as cook, carpenter, harvester or herdsman). Such a community which coheres by the division of labor -- if it stays in one place -- is like a city, or the beginning of one.

Cain questioned whether we are our brothers' keepers. What would be the best way to teach him a lesson about that? --
Make him a wanderer who was prevented from producing his own food so that he would have to rely on others as his keepers. Wandering would multiply that lesson since he'd have to rely on a different people at the different places his wandering took him.

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Perhaps the son and the city are named the same because Cain sees them as doing the same thing for him. Now here's one guess as to what that is. Cain's son Enoch and the city Enoch would equally continue the name and influence of Cain beyond his lifetime. In that sense they are equivalent, and if his own extended survival is the paramount quality he values in his son, Cain would also see that a self-sustaining city equally extends his influence and give it the same name.
* Last updated by: DaleT on 1/26/2010 @ 6:04 PM *

How Did Cain Come Up with the Idea of Sacrifice?

How did he know that a sacrificial offering would be acceptable to God, rather than a disappointment to God that perfectly edible produce was being wasted? Between humans, our giving up or giving back or destroying something given to us would liklier be taken as a lack of respect toward the one who gave it to us.

I assume that he derived the idea of sacrifice from what he knew about the Lord and especially about how the relationship between the Lord and humans had changed in the Garden. Should we also assume that an offering of vegetable produce would -- like the meal Avraham prepared for the Lord and two angels -- be physically eaten by the Lord? There are a number of ways Cain might have understood the Garden's having been taken away from humans.

Sacrifice, in Cain's eyes, may be -

a symbolic re-enactment of the temptation the way it should have gone. If humans had forsaken (as being solely the Lord's) just a little part of the food available (such as the forbdden fruit) they could have enjoyed all the rest of the food.

a symbolic re-enactment of the taking away of the Garden from humans, perhaps so its lesson would not be forgotten.

a sign that he had controlled his acquisitiveness and did not need to be punished by food deprivation like his parents were for their acquisitiveness with respect to a property of God (knowledge of good and evil). By showing that he could control his acquisitiveness with respect to another property of God (creativity), he thought he could avoid being deprived of his total stock of food.

an action that makes him a little more like Godlike (in two resepcts, as a giver of sustenance and as a depriver -- Cain knew God in both roles).

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There is, of course, the obvious similarity of sacrificial offerings to gifts of thanks, things given in exchange for material benefits, and payments to God -- tokens of his fair share --for his contribution to agricultural production. But for Cain the fundamental aspect of sacrifice might have been self-deprivation modelled after the great first deprivation (the loss of the Garden to humans).
* Last updated by: DaleT on 1/27/2010 @ 10:02 AM *