see below) the fundamental fact that his descendants are doomed to wander in the uncultivated regions beyond the pale of civilisation. The vengeance which protects him is the self-acting law of blood-revenge,—that 'salutary institution' which, in the opinion of Burckhardt, has done more than anything else to preserve the Bedouin tribes from mutual extermination.[1] The sign which Yahwe puts on him is most naturally explained as the "sharṭ or tribal mark which every man bore in his person, and without which the ancient form of blood-feud, as the affair of a whole stock and not of near relations alone, could hardly have been worked."[2] And the fact that this kind of existence is traced to the operation of a hereditary curse embodies the feeling of a settled agricultural or pastoral community with regard to the turbulent and poverty-stricken life of the desert.
2. While this is true, the narrative cannot be regarded as expressing reprobation of every form of nomadism known to the Hebrews. A disparaging estimate of Bedouin life as a whole is, no doubt, conceivable on the part of the settled Israelites (cf. Gn. 1612); but Cain is hardly the symbol of that estimate. (1) The ordinary Bedouin could not be described as 'fugitives and vagabonds in the earth': their movements are restricted to definite areas of the desert, and are hardly less monotonous than the routine of husbandry.[3] (2) The full Bedouin are breeders of camels, the half-nomads of sheep and goats; and both live mainly on the produce of their flocks and herds (see Meyer, INS, 303 ff.). But to suppose Cain to exemplify the latter mode of life is inconsistent with the narrative, for sheep-rearing is the distinctive profession of Abel; and it is hardly conceivable that Hebrew legend was so ignorant of the proud spirit of the full Bedouin as to describe them as degraded agriculturists. If Cain be the type of any permanent occupation at all, it must be one lower than agriculture and pasturage; i.e. he must stand for some of those rude tribes which subsist by hunting or robbery. (3) It is unlikely that a rule of sevenfold revenge was generally observed amongst Semitic nomads in OT times. Among the modern Arabs the law of the blood-feud is a life for a life: it is only under circumstances of extreme provocation that a twofold revenge is permissible. We are, therefore, led to think of Cain as the impersonation of an inferior race of nomads, maintaining a miserable existence by the chase, and practising a peculiarly ferocious form of blood-feud.—The view thus suggested of the fate of Cain finds a partial illustration in the picture
- ↑ Bedouins and Wahabys, 148.—The meaning is that the certainty of retaliation acts as a check on the warlike tribesmen, and renders their fiercest conflicts nearly bloodless.
- ↑ Smith, l.c.—It may be explained that at present the kindred group for the purpose of the blood-feud consists of all those whose lineage goes back to a common ancestor in the fifth generation. There are still certain tribes, however, who are greatly feared because they are said to 'strike sideways'; i.e. they retaliate upon any member of the murderer's tribe whether innocent or guilty. See Burck. 149 ff., 320 f.
- ↑ Nö. EB, 130.
