Genesis 4:8-15 ▼

8 Instead, Cain told his brother Abel, |Let's go out to the wilderness.| When they were outside in the fields, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.

9 Later, the LORD asked Cain, |Where's your brother Abel?| |I don't know,| he answered. |Am I my brother's guardian?|

10 |What did you do?| God asked. |Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.

11 Now you're more cursed than the ground, which has opened to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

12 Whenever you work the ground, it will no longer yield its produce to you, and you'll wander throughout the earth as a fugitive.|

13 |My punishment is too great to bear,| Cain told the LORD.

14 |You're driving me from the soil today. I'll be hidden from you, and I'll wander throughout the earth as a fugitive. In the future, whoever finds me will kill me.|

15 The LORD told him, |This won't happen, because whoever kills you will suffer seven times the vengeance.| Then the LORD placed a sign on Cain so that no one finding him would kill him.