⁴⁵ until your brother’s anger against you turns away, and he forgets what you have done to him; then I will send and bring you back from there. Why should I lose both of you in one day?”

Boasting about Tomorrow

¹³ Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.”^{(A) 14} Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.^{(B) 15} Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.”^(C)

⁴ When the local people saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, “This man must be a murderer; though he has escaped from the sea, Justice has not allowed him to live.”^(A)

⁶ Your servant had two sons, and they fought with one another in the field; there was no one to part them, and one struck the other and killed him. ⁷ Now the whole family has risen against your servant. They say, ‘Give up the man who struck his brother, so that we may kill him for the life of his brother whom he murdered, even if we destroy the heir as well.’ Thus they would quench my one remaining ember and leave to my husband neither name nor remnant on the face of the earth.”^(A)

³⁵ But he said, “Your brother came deceitfully, and he has taken away your blessing.”

⁵ For your own lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning: from every animal I will require it and from human beings, each one for the blood of another, I will require a reckoning for human life.^(A)

⁸ Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out to the field.”^[a] And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.^{(A) 9} Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” ¹⁰ And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen, your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!^{(B) 11} And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. ¹² When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.”^{(C) 13} Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! ¹⁴ Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.”^{(D) 15} Then the Lord said to him, “Not so!^[b] Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him.^{(E) 16} Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod,^[c] east of Eden.