The Land of Kain and His Descendants

 

Photo credit: Anni Vahlqvist

"And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the Land of Nod, on the east of Eden" (Gen. 4:16, KJV).

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

The Hebrew phrase "east of Eden" is quimat-Eden and appears to be a Nilotic reference to a fertile plain with bulrushes. The Ancient Egyptian word for bulrushes is qma. Perhaps the biblical writer has Mesopotamia in mind. The term Eden derives from the Akkadian term edinu, which refers to a fertile plain and describes the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. If Cain went to reside east of Mesopotamia, he would have been in Pakistan.

Identifying where Kain went is difficult because Eden extended from the Upper Nile Valley to the great rivers of Mesopotamia. The Bible describes Eden as a vast well-watered territory that extended from the sources of the Nile in Uganda and Ethiopia to the Tigris and Euphrates. In Genesis 2, one of the rivers on the southern border of Eden is called the Gihon (meaning "gushing"). The Ethiopians identify the Gihon with the Abay River. The Pishon is also associated with the Nile Valley because it "skirts the whole land of Havilah" (Gen. 2:11). Havilah is the name of one of Kush's sons (Gen. 10:7) and the Kushites lived in the Nile Valley. 

Evidence of the cousin bride's naming prerogative. 

Kain's unnamed daughter married her cousin Enosh 

and named their firstborn son Kenan after her father Kain.

It seems likely that Cain's journey eastward took him out of Africa into Canaan, the land named after him. There he married and built a city which he named after his son, Enoch. Enoch is a royal title.

Canaan is where we find some of Cain's descendants, the Kenites (Gen. 15:18–21; Ex. 3:1; Num. 24:20; Jg. 1:16; Jg. 4:11). The word "Kenite" and the name Kain are related to the land of Canaan, which is כנען, pronounced kena'an. The Kenites were descendants of Tubal Cain who is identified as an early blacksmith in Genesis 4. The Kenite smiths often camped outside of cities where they did their metal work. When Saul came to attack Amalek’s city, he warned the Kenites to move away, saying, “Go, depart, get you down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them: for ye shewed kindness to all the children of Israel, when they came up out of Egypt. So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites.” (1 Sam. 15:5-6)

The 5100-year fortified Canaanite town of Kinna-ret (Gennesaret) is mentioned by ancient Ugarit scribes and appears to refer to the Kinna people who were called kinah-hu in the Nuzi tablets. This is another explanation for the origin of the word "Canaanite". However, kinah-hu may be related to the names Kain and Kenan. The clans of the early Hebrew brothers Cain and Seth intermarried (caste endogamy). Women descendants of Cain married male descendants of Seth. Genesis 5 lists Kenan as Kain's grandson by his un-named daughter. This is an example of the cousin bride's naming prerogative, a distinctive feature of the marriage and ascendancy pattern of the early Hebrew. The name Kenan is a variant of Kain and Ghayin. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (2007) believes that ghayin lies behind the word kinah-hu. In the Canaano-Akkadian, "hu" is a pronominal suffix.

Related reading: Abraham Settled in the Land of Cain; Eden Was a Well-Watered Region