What happened to Cain after he killed Abel?

Answer 1

The only thing that can be known at present about Cain is that we have a biblical account which indicates where he was banished to, although we are not able to specifically identify this place at present.

Dr Henry M Morris in The Genesis Record (pages 144-145) comments that Cain may have been defying God's sentence that he would be a wanderer upon the earth by building a city. Morris states that the name of Cain's firstborn Enoch means 'dedication or 'commencement' both signifying that he was here beginning a new life away from his former one near Eden. Morris also points out that the word 'Nod' itself means 'wandering', Cain thus in the name of the city either defying God's prophecy or else remembering by this name God's sentence upon him.

Morris also notes in connection with Cain's building a city, that this is one of the identifying features anthropologists use for the beginning of civilization. Thus Cain, in the very next generation after Adam demonstrated that he was fully human and fully civilized as Adam of course was, his murderous act upon Abel notwithstanding.

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Answer 2

The biblical answer is as follows. Cain was a farmer, a tiller of the ground, and Abel was a shepherd. According to Genesis chapter 4, Cain killed Abel because Abel's offering found favour with God. God drove Cain out from the land, to live in the land of Nod, which was to the east of the garden of Eden. There, he built a city, which he called Enoch after his firstborn son.

However, many scholars believe that the story of Cain and Abel is a myth. S. H. Hooke (Middle Eastern Mythology) shows a clear parallel between the biblical account and an older Middle Eastern myth in which Tammuz had to choose between the shepherd-god and the farmer-god. The stories of Cain and Abel are simply myths that are not meant to be understood literally or rationally. Thus, we need not wonder where the land of Nod was, nor puzzle over the construction of a city, when the entire population of the world was still only one patriarch and his surviving son, Cain, along with their wives and Cain's child.