Bible Stories and Religious ClassicsWells, Philip P. (Philip Patterson)
Religion
Bible Stories and Religious Classics
Wells, Philip P. (Philip Patterson)
Bible stories, English -- Juvenile literature; Christian literature for children
shalt eat thy bread unto the time thou return again into the earth; that
is to say till thou die, for thou art earth, and into earth thou shalt
go again.
Then Adam, wailing and sorrowing the misery that was to come of his
posterity, named his wife Eve, which is to say, mother of all living
folk. Then God made to Adam and Eve two leathern coats of the skins of
dead beasts, to the end that they bare with them the sign of mortality,
and said: Lo, Adam is made as one of us, knowing good and evil, now lest
he put his hand and take of the tree of life and live ever, as who
saith: beware and cast him out, lest he take and eat of the tree of
life. And so he was cast out of Paradise, and set in the field of
Damascus where as he was made and taken from, for to work and labor
there. And our Lord set Cherubim to keep Paradise of delight with a
burning sword and pliant, to the end that none should enter there ne
come to the tree of life.
After then that Adam was cast out of Paradise and set in the world, he
engendered Cain, the fifteenth year after he was made, and his sister
Calmana; but after another fifteen years was Abel born, and his sister
Delbora.
When Adam was an hundred and thirty years of age, Cain slew Abel his
brother. Truth it is, after many days Cain and Abel offered sacrifice
and gifts unto God. It is to be believed that Adam taught his sons to
offer to God their tithes and first fruits. Cain offered fruits, for he
was a ploughman and tiller of earth, and Abel offered milk and the first
of the lambs, Moses saith, of the fattest of the flock. And God beheld
the gifts of Abel, for he and his sacrifices were acceptable to our
Lord; and as to Cain his sacrifices, God beheld them not, for they were
not to him acceptable, he offered withies and thorns. And as some
doctors say, fire came from heaven and lighted the sacrifice of Abel,
and the gifts of Cain pleased not our Lord, for the sacrifice would not
belight nor burn clear in the light of God. Whereof Cain had great envy
unto his brother Abel, which arose against him and slew him. And our
Lord said to him: Where is Abel thy brother? He answered and said: I wot
never, am I keeper of my brother? Then our Lord said: What hast thou
done? The voice of the blood of thy brother crieth to thee from the
earth, wherefore thou art cursed, and accursed be the earth that
received the blood of thy brother by his mouth of thy hands. When thou
shalt work and labor the earth it shall bring forth no fruit, but thou
shalt be fugitive, vagabond, and void on the earth. This Cain deserved
well to be cursed, knowing the pain of the first trespass of Adam, yet
he added thereto murder and slaughter of his brother.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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