• • •

The next scene, more dramatic, makes even greater demands on our imagination: the accused confronts his judge.

Cain was too clever to deny the facts, too shrewd to confess; instead he resorted to humor. Less sullen, more talkative, he seems changed by the murder. He devised a system of defense that included the use of irony: Master of the Universe, it seems that I am accused of murder; who is my accuser? My parents who live here on earth know nothing. How did You get Your information? Is it possible that there are informers up there?

Later he tried to use reason: Master of the Universe, let us be logical. I have never seen a corpse, I don’t know what death is; how could I know that it is enough to strike a man . . . to kill him?

He appears even more resourceful when, feigning indignation, he launched his counterattack: Master of the Universe, You declare me guilty? Guilty, me? Guilty of what? Of having been caught? Imagine a thief apprehended in a forbidden garden; he could tell the watchman: My job is to steal and yours is to prevent me from stealing; if I succeeded in entering the garden, whose fault is that? You are the watchman of the world. If You did not wish me to kill my brother, why did You not intervene?

Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yohai illustrates this idea with a parable: Two athletes fight to entertain the king. At the outcome of the contest will the victor be indicted for murder?

For Shimon Bar-Yohai, a fervent mystic, Cain and Abel were equals, endowed with the same privileges, the same virtues; neither was more just or had more merit than the other. Only later, in the third century, was Cain turned into a monster, the forerunner of killers. Earlier rabbinical literature depicts him as more human. Some sages assert that he had prophetic gifts, since he invoked the future for the needs of his defense: Six hundred thousand Jews will commit sins in the desert, and You will forgive them. Why then would You not forgive me?

According to the Biblical text, Cain was condemned to exile in perpetuity, not to death. He even enjoyed a strange immunity; no one had the right to imitate him by killing him. Was he protected by God? Yes. But also by his deed. Having done something nobody before him had ever done, he became untouchable, isolated by the newness and enormity of his crime. He left the country and became a builder of cities. So as to live in one? Probably. But what of the divine judgment condemning him to wandering? Does it mean that one can remain in one place and still be in exile? Probably. Exile is not necessarily linked to geography.

• • •

Time went by. One day Cain met his aging father, who asked him how things were going. He told him everything. The murder. The trial. The remorse. The penance. The atonement. God wants man to be redeemable, always. And Adam was moved to compose a song, Mizmor Shir leyom ha-Shabbat, a song celebrating the seventh day; the first human song was one of gratitude.