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Jubilees adds the death of Cain in its rewrite of Genesis, describing him as killed by stones, the means he used to kill Abel. This follows Jewish traditions, such as the Wisdom of Solomon, that the guilty are punished in the way they harmed others.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Jubilees 4:32
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
31 At the close of this jubilee Cain was killed after him in the same year; for his house fell upon him and he died inside his house, and he was killed by its stones; for with a stone he had killed Abel, and by a stone he was killed in righteous judgment. 32 For this reason it was ordained on the heavenly tablets: With the instrument with which a man kills his neighbor with the same he shall be killed; in the same way that he wounded him, in the same way they shall deal with him.'
Date: 170–125 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Wisdom of Solomon 11:16
Deuterocanon
14 For him who long before was thrown out and exposed they stopped mocking. In the end of what happened, they marveled, having thirsted in another manner than the righteous. 15 But in return for the senseless imaginings of their unrighteousness, by which they were led astray to worship irrational reptiles and wretched vermin, you sent upon them a multitude of irrational creatures to punish them, 16 that they might learn that by what things a man sins, by these he is punished. 17 For your all-powerful hand that created the world out of formless matter didn’t lack means to send upon them a multitude of bears, fierce lions,
Date: 50 BCE – 50 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... In the context of the present revelation of God’s wrath, Paul makes a universal claim about human beings: that they are “without excuse (ἀναπολογήτους)” because they failed to honor the Creator, about whom it is possible to know something (taking τὸ γνωστὸν τοῦ θεοῦ to mean “what is knowable about God”) by observing the works of creation, which God manifested to them (1:19–20). Their failure to acknowledge God leads to folly (1:21–22), which is demonstrated, on the one hand by their idolatry, and on the other by their immorality. Paul presents these sins as punishments in themselves; three times, he states that God “gave them up” or “handed them over” (παρέδωκεν; 1:24, 26, 28) to idolatry (1:25), “degrading passions” (1:26–27) and “every kind of wickedness” (1:29–31). This way of explaining human sinfulness resembles a principle articulated in the Wisdom of Solomon that was fairly widespread in apocalyptic texts: “one is punished by the very things by which one sins” (Wisdom of Solomon 11:16; compare Testament of Gad 5:10; Jubilees 4:32) ..."
Karina M. Hogan, “The Apocalyptic Eschatology of Romans,” in The Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition and the Shaping of New Testament Thought, ed. Loren T. Stuckenbruck (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017), 155–174.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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