There were ten generations from Adam to Noah, to show how
long-suffering is the Lord, for all the generations provoked Him unto
wrath, until He brought the deluge upon them.[1] By reason of their
impiousness God changed His plan of calling one thousand generations
into being between the creation of the world and the revelation of the
law at Mount Sinai; nine hundred and seventy-four He suppressed before
the flood.[2]
Wickedness came into the world with the first being born of woman,
Cain, the oldest son of Adam. When God bestowed Paradise upon the first
pair of mankind, He warned them particularly against carnal intercourse
with each other. But after the fall of Eve, Satan, in the guise of the
serpent, approached her, and the fruit of their union was Cain, the
ancestor of all the impious generations that were rebellious toward
God, and rose up against Him. Cain's descent from Satan, who is the
angel Samael, was revealed in his seraphic appearance. At his birth,
the exclamation was wrung from Eve, "I have gotten a man through an
angel of the Lord."[3]
Adam was not in the company of Eve during the time of her pregnancy
with Cain. After she had succumbed a second time to the temptations of
Satan, and permitted herself to be interrupted in her penance,[4] she
left her husband and journeyed westward, because she feared her
presence might continue to bring him misery. Adam remained in the east.
When the days of Eve to be delivered were fulfilled, and she began to
feel the pangs of travailing, she prayed to God for help. But He
hearkened not unto her supplications. "Who will carry the report to my
lord Adam?" she asked herself. "Ye luminaries in the sky, I beg you,
tell it to my master Adam when ye return to the east!" In that self
same hour, Adam cried out: "The lamentation of Eve has pierced to my
ear! Mayhap the serpent has again assaulted her," and he hastened to
his wife. Finding her in grievous pain, he besought God in her behalf,
and twelve angels appeared, together with two heavenly powers.[5] All
these took up their post to right of her and to left of her, while
Michael, also standing on her right side, passed his hand over her,
from her face downward to her breast, and said to her, "Be thou
blessed, Eve, for the sake of Adam. Because of his solicitations and
his prayers I was sent to grant thee our assistance. Make ready to give
birth to thy child!" Immediately her son was born, a radiant figure.[6]
A little while and the babe stood upon his feet, ran off, and returned
holding in his hands a stalk of straw, which he gave to his mother. For
this reason he was named Cain, the Hebrew word for stalk of straw.
Now Adam took Eve and the boy to his home in the east. God sent him
various kinds of seeds by the hand of the angel Michael, and he was
taught how to cultivate the ground and make it yield produce and
fruits, to sustain himself and his family and his posterity.[7]
After a while, Eve bore her second son, whom she named Hebel, because,
she said, he was born but to die.