Now you are cursed and banished from the ground, which has swallowed your brother’s blood.
Parallel translations
- WEB Now you are cursed because of the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.
- KJV And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand;
- BSB Now you are cursed and banished from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.
- NKJV So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.
- NASB Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
God pronounces Cain cursed from the ground that received his brother's blood. It shows the personal judgment that falls on the unrepentant murderer.
Overview
Whereas the ground was cursed for Adam's sake, now Cain himself is cursed in relation to the ground stained by Abel's blood. The judgment fits the crime, alienating Cain from the soil he worked. This intensifying curse shows sin's deepening grip on humanity and the certainty of God's just response to bloodshed.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 10
- Gal 3:10For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse. For it is written, “Cursed is everyone who doesn’t continue in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them.”
- Job 16:18“Earth, don’t cover my blood. Let my cry have no place to rest.
- Deut 28:15–20But it shall come to pass, if you will not listen to Yahweh your God’s voice, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come on you, and overtake you.
- Gen 3:14Yahweh God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed above all livestock, and above every animal of the field. You shall go on your belly and you shall eat dust all the days of your life.
- Deut 27:16–26‘Cursed is he who dishonors his father or his mother.’ All the people shall say, ‘Amen.’
- Job 31:38–40If my land cries out against me, and its furrows weep together;
- Isa 26:21For, behold, Yahweh comes out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity. The earth also will disclose her blood, and will no longer cover her slain.
- Deut 29:19–21and it happen, when he hears the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, “I shall have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart, to destroy the moist with the dry.”
- Gen 4:14Behold, you have driven me out today from the surface of the ground. I will be hidden from your face, and I will be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth. Whoever finds me will kill me.”
- Rev 12:16The earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the river which the dragon spewed out of his mouth.
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Christ at the center
From the first promise that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent (3:15), through Abraham's blessing to all nations and Judah's coming ruler, Genesis sows every seed that flowers in Christ — the true offspring, the better Adam, the ram caught for Isaac.
How Genesis 4:11 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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