Page:Legends of Old Testament Characters.djvu/78

56 search of Cain, but could not find him; then he recited the following lines:—


 * "Every city is alike, each mortal man is vile,
 * The face of earth has desert grown, the sky has ceased to smile,
 * Every flower has lost its hue, and every gem is dim.
 * Alas! my son, my son is dead; the brown earth swallows him!
 * We one have had in midst of us whom death has not yet found,
 * No peace for him, no rest for him, treading the blood-drenched ground."

This is how the story is told in the Midrash: Cain and Abel could not agree, for, what one had, the other wanted; then Abel devised a scheme that they should make a division of property, and thus remove the possibility of contention. The proposition pleased Cain. So Cain took the earth, and all that is stationary, and Abel took all that is moveable. But the envy which lay in the heart of Cain gave him no rest. One day he said to his brother, "Remove thy foot, thou standest on my property; the plain is mine." Then Abel ran upon the hills, but Cain cried, "Away, the hills are mine!" Then he climbed the mountains, but still Cain followed him, calling, "Away! the stony mountains are mine." In the Book of Jasher the cause of quarrel is differently stated. One day the flock of Abel ran over the ground Cain had been ploughing; Cain rushed furiously upon him and bade him leave the spot. "Not," said Abel, "till you have paid me for the skins of my sheep and wool of their fleeces used for your clothing." Then Cain took the coulter from his plough, and with it slew his brother. The Targum of Jerusalem says, the subject of contention was that Cain denied a Judgment to come and Eternal Life; and Abel argued for both. The Rabbi Menachem, however, asserts that the point on which they strove was whether a word was written zizit or zizis in the Parascha.

"And when they were in the field together, the brothers quarrelled, saying, 'Let us divide the world.' One said, 'The earth you stand on is my soil.' The other said, 'You are standing on my earth.' One said, 'The Holy Temple shall stand on my lot;' the other said, 'It shall stand on my lot.' So they quarrelled. Now there were born with Abel two daughters, his sisters. Then said Cain, 'I will take the