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Jubilees adds the death of Cain to its retelling of Genesis, killed by stones just as he killed Abel. The punishment mirrors the crime, following Psalm 7’s principle of proportional justice, where the unrighteous suffer as they harmed others.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Psalm 7:15
Hebrew Bible
13 He has prepared deadly weapons to use against him; he gets ready to shoot flaming arrows. 14 See the one who is pregnant with wickedness, who conceives destructive plans, and gives birth to harmful lies— 15 he digs a pit and then falls into the hole he has made. 16 He becomes the victim of his own destructive plans— and the violence he intended for others falls on his own head. 17 I will thank the Lord for his justice; I will sing praises to the Lord Most High!
Date: 600–201 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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.' 33 And in the twenty-fifth jubilee Noah married a woman named `Emzârâ, the daughter of Râkê'êl, the daughter of his father's brother, in the first year in the fifth week [1205]: and in its third year [1207] she bore him Shem, in its fifth year [1209] she bore him Ham, and in the first year in the sixth week [1212] she bore him Japheth.
Date: 170–125 BCE (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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